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CA.Timothy
climber
California
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Dec 16, 2014 - 09:27am PT
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bergbryce
I like the map you posted and think state boundaries should be redrawn to reflect drainage basins. Wont ever happen however...
and on a side note, the map you posted still has drainage regions split. Take the 4 corners for example.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Dec 16, 2014 - 09:44am PT
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The forecast calls for rain for today.
The squirrels believe the forecast. They're doing the umbrella thing with their tails.
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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Dec 30, 2014 - 12:19pm PT
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dingus, you probably already know the stanford climate blog-- good post this weekn on the recent precip, snowpack, and short-midrange
http://www.weatherwest.com/
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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Dec 30, 2014 - 12:53pm PT
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so john m., this past week darrell steinberg came out and committed to the public record what all the insiders already knew-- that the final water bond was to underwrite conveyance. jerry brown said the same thing a few weeks earlier at the new directions conference, but his comments didn't get transcribed, so we'll let darrell explain how he helped muscle up a bond that was "conveyance [i.e., tunnel] neutral":
Here’s the cream part of the story. By the way Westlands and the Met and some parts of the ACWA coalition said, ‘we don’t want that much money for the Delta.’ It’s not that they were hostile, but this is a negotiation in politics. In 2014, it’s Westlands and it’s the other stakeholders who are primarily interested in conveyance saying, ‘We want more money for the Delta, because more money for the Delta means that we’ll have money then to mitigate the environmental impacts of the conveyance.’ And the Delta stakeholders saying, ‘We don’t want any money for the Delta, because that’s going to be used as an excuse to further the tunnels.” So again, the difference between what you want and what you need. We ended up in the 2014 bond actually providing money that can be used by the administration for Delta ecosystem restoration, but we didn’t put it into a Delta pod, and we didn’t shine a big light on it so that it would be a big political con. Nobody was fooling anybody, but there was an art to making sure that money was available to help, although mitigation is largely a private responsibility, and not making it so obvious that it created a political problem.
the full transcript is at maven's:
http://mavensnotebook.com/2014/12/29/senator-darrell-steinberg-on-legislative-leadership-getting-to-a-two-thirds-vote-on-the-water-bond-and-other-seemingly-impossible-missions/
since you seem to try to be versed on water issues, i gather that you already know maven's and have probably already read this, but i doubt that other followers of this thread will have seen it.
and for the rest of you, maven's is the one site i read every day on water, simply because it's a top-flight news and aggregation site rather than a commentary or blog platform. if you dial up just one, this one should be it, although i also routinely follow and recommend aquafornia, hdrowonk, restorethedelta, onthepublicrecord, the ucdavis watershed science blog, peter gleick's waterinstitute blog, and jeff michael's blog on econ and policy for the valley at valleyecon
i'll do a couple more separate posts to talk about the other issues
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Dec 30, 2014 - 01:24pm PT
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Jesus is watering my driveway today.
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Bob Harrington
climber
Bishop, California
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Dec 30, 2014 - 02:41pm PT
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klk, that's a good list of informative sites for California water issues. I'd add Mike Campana's Waterwired site, and Brown and Caldwell's news list (similar to Aquifornia).
Regarding current conditions, here's some data from LADWP's web site on current precip conditions for the eastern Sierra:
We're off to a bad start... The plot in the lower left gives snow water content in percent of normal for this date and compared to April 1, which is the approximate date of maximum accumulation. These are the same sites that you can find on the CDEC snow survey web site. The snow pillows are ranging from 16% to 43% of normal for this date, and according to the Mammoth Pass site, we're a little behind last winter.
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Cragar
climber
MSLA - MT
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Dec 30, 2014 - 02:44pm PT
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Surface schmurface....
How are them aquifers doing?
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Bob Harrington
climber
Bishop, California
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Dec 30, 2014 - 03:33pm PT
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Here's a map of California showing how groundwater levels changed from spring 2013 to spring 2014. It gives a pretty good overall picture of how groundwater levels have dropped in the San Joaquin, Santa Clara, and San Fernando basins (red), and many areas have held fairly steady (yellow) or dropped slightly (beige). There are some glaring blank spots on the map that are subject to a lot of groundwater pumping - e.g., SW San Joaquin Valley, Paso Robles, and Salinas Valleys. These data are from DWR's monitoring and from local agencies that are reporting water levels under the 2009 water legislation. The intent of that legislation was that local agencies would monitoring and report groundwater levels in their jurisdictions, but in many areas, local agencies have not adopted monitoring and reporting plans, hence the data gaps. Some of the areas that don't have monitoring and reporting plans have pretty serious problems, so if the data gaps were filled, this map would look even worse.
This map came from a CA Natural Resources Agency/Dept. of Water Resources report "Public Update for Drought Response," Nov. 2014, available at:
http://www.water.ca.gov/waterconditions/docs/DWR_PublicUpdateforDroughtResponse_GroundwaterBasins.pdf
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Bob Harrington
climber
Bishop, California
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Dec 30, 2014 - 05:09pm PT
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Ding, good catch! DWR's data base has a hand-full of wells scattered across the ridge between Huntington Lake and Mammoth Pool Res. They are in very unlikely locations and the well head elevations are supposed to be around 300 feet, which is obviously impossible at those locations. My guess is that the wells are misplaced on the map because they have the wrong coordinates in their data base. I'll try to remember to shoot an e-mail to DWR when I get back in the office.
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Bob Harrington
climber
Bishop, California
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Dec 30, 2014 - 05:49pm PT
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Here's something else to consider as you ponder the drought.
This is a plot of El Nino status versus percent of normal runoff in the Owens River watershed (think Mammoth to Olancha). Each year from 1951-2012 is classified according to El Nino conditions, and for each of those categories, the percent of normal runoff is plotted for each year in the category. The El Nino classification is from the Golden Gate Weather Services web site ( http://ggweather.com/enso/oni.htm ) and the percent of normal runoff is calculated from LADWP's stream gauges in the eastern Sierra, with 'normal' being the average over 1961-2010. The horizontal bar is the mean runoff for the years in each category, and the vertical bar is the 90% confidence interval for the mean.
There have been a lot of reports in the media over the past year associating the likelihood of an El Nino with the likelihood of a good winter. You can see from this plot that the mean runoff for the strong and moderate El Nino years is above average (118% and 108% respectively), runoff averaged 85% of normal in the weak El Nino years, and all the other categories were near normal. The uncertainty on the mean values is large, because there's a very large spread of runoff within each category.
Although some very big winters occurred during strong and moderate El Nino conditions, very dry years can also occur during those conditions. Likewise, wet and dry years can occur during strong La Nina conditions. So, don't put too much stock in media reports forecasting a good or bad winter based on El Nino/La Nina conditions - there's a lot of uncertainty in 3 to 6 month precipitation forecasts.
This plot is specific to the Owens watershed, but I don't think it's atypical of central and southern California. The Golden Gate Weather web site has nice national (US) maps of precip for each year.
El Nino has been hovering in the neutral zone for the past couple of years.
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Gene
climber
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Dec 30, 2014 - 05:56pm PT
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Bob Harrington,
Thanks so much for posting the info on ground water depletion. Drawing >10 feet in a year is staggering. I suspect that few people realize the magnitude of the problem. Here in the Central Valley there is a mad rush to punch big wells into the ground and grow almonds. It's crazy and unsustainable.
Gene
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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Dec 30, 2014 - 06:58pm PT
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hey there, say, chaz... loved the squirrel umbrella pic... :)
and malmute's large photo...
say, actually this is a great thread... some of it is a lot over my head, but i really appreciate it, thanks, all...
please, keep us up, with your updates, or info, and all the etcs...
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Dec 31, 2014 - 01:05am PT
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Thanks Neebee.
My instruments may be primitive, but they work - if you know how to read them.
It's snowing at 2,000' in east Redlands right now.
Little dinky 1/4" snowflakes, but it's not rain and it's not hail.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 31, 2014 - 01:18am PT
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There's always atmospheric rivers, but then that's not really the way you want this drought to end.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Dec 31, 2014 - 10:13am PT
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I don't agree with the old indian when he puts down the idea of "understanding".
He is obviously ignorant of the attempt of ALL people, including his own tribe, to UNDERSTAND nature. To do otherwise, is to stumble around in the middle of summer, wearing snowshoes.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Oh yeah, his tribe, and many other local tribes, have survived far worse dry periods in the local region over the past 1500-2000 or so years than any of you white city slicker science minded folk ever could.
Oh, really? You must not have noticed what has happened to the whites and reds over the last 2,000 years. The reds have shrunk into drunken irrelevance, not even able to keep their own lands, while the whites have taken over the planet.
why do the red folk continue to exist? Because the better of the white folk decided to allow them to.
Particularly if the conservatives had their way, the Indians would be an extinct group, and all their resources taken for profit.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Thanks for perpetuating the totally negative stigma that the modern material city whitey has towards his culture, Ken M.
Oh, I'm not talking about the individual, I'm talking about the native american as a whole. If you don't think there is an alcohol problem (which there is evidence that is caused by genetic differences in enzymes that break down alcohol, NOT due to any flaw in character alleged by some Republicans).
If you think this is not the case, then you have never been involved in Indian healthcare. Where is Lois when we actually need her??
Just because a description may be negative, does not mean it is not true. But I guess you prefer "politically correct" ways of describing things?
but that's right, you don't want to UNDERSTAND things, you just want to have a cult about it.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Dingus...Lay off the fire water...
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clinker
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
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You thin skinned righty tighties
What is not to love Bruce?
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