El Niño weather event is biggest since 1997, may trigger soaking winter storms

http://www.mercurynews.com/drought/ci_28458401/california-drought-el-nino-weather-event-is-biggest

by sinak • 11 years ago

54 30 11 years ago

rav• 11 years ago

The title should say "may trigger soaking winter storms in California".

evan_• 11 years ago

Are you implying there are places in the world other than California? Interesting, this might require some further research.

3solarmasses• 11 years ago

Indeed. I'm also interested in learning about these mythical non-california places.

0xdeadbeefbabe• 11 years ago

Maybe other political parties too?

gregatragenet3• 11 years ago

It is in a newspaper from San Jose, California. Its implicit.

mbreese• 11 years ago

Not everyone here will immediately know that the Mercury News is a newspaper in San Jose.

junto• 11 years ago

California needs this as snow though right? Flash floods and the water ends up in the sea. Snow and the water is available as it melts over the year.

Shivetya• 11 years ago

Yeah because one of California's issues is they put into place extensive means to direct rain water into the ocean. Only one city went the route of creating aquifers to retain it; their name escapes me at the moment.

bebop• 11 years ago

The city's name is Downey. Here is an article that kinda talks about it, half way through: http://www.dailynews.com/environment-and-nature/20141203/how...

jagermo• 11 years ago

But California could be ready for this, right? I mean it would make sense to build cisterns or something to collect the water and use it for the next drought?

Or would that take too much foresight?

talmand• 11 years ago

I would have to say that foresight is quickly becoming a lost art because it tends to only produce results in long term settings. If it doesn't produce results today, tomorrow at latest, then no one wants to step up.

ghshephard• 11 years ago

Precipitation in water form, particularly if it's over time, will really help replenish groundwater. A lot of farms in the central valley are pumping water, and the underground reservoirs are being depleted.

Given the Drought/Flood nature of California, I would be surprised if they weren't seriously looking at figuring out how to store excess water in underground aquifer's during their seasons of plenty.

http://www.citywestwater.com.au/our_news_storing_water_300m_...

[Edit - See: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/TS80-218.pdf for more than you ever wanted to know about underground storage of water]

[Edit 2 - Apparently Storing water underground is a very, very well known approach to water management - http://www.srpnet.com/newsroom/releases/042015.aspx

thaumaturgy• 11 years ago

Correct. Sierra snowpack accounts for roughly 1/3rd of California's total water storage; without heavy snow in the mountains, the long-term prospects for drought relief are pretty grim.

And heavy snow requires both wet and cold conditions, and cold conditions in the west coast requires that the jet stream suddenly change from its current shape with north-south directional anomalies back to a more uniform circular shape, and so far that isn't happening -- partly because the arctic would probably have to get colder for that to happen.

I'm not generally a climate/weather alarmist, at least not in the short term, but I do think that the conditions we're seeing now in California will be considered really pleasant in 50 years or less, and in the short term, things are going to be really painful as people adjust.

delbel• 11 years ago

If we were really motivated, we could start a gigantic project to build more reservoirs and lakes up in the mountains to capture this rain. Even if they were to fill only every 10-20 years I'm sure there'd be some cost benefits over desalination. Even if they leaked. Long term protection from run off erosion of the top soil would outweigh any short term environmental costs. Think permaculture on a massive terraforming scale.

Jedd2• 11 years ago

A more permaculture approach would be to decrease run-off rates / increase infiltration capacity of soils over the entire region -- almost by definition permaculture isn't big on massive terraforming projects.

adrianN• 11 years ago

Changing run-off rates of an entire region is a massive terraforming project.

ffn• 11 years ago

We're supposedly starting to do this in LA, in particular, there is a lot of talk about tearing up the LA river so that whatever rain water we get can be restored to ground water.

kyteland• 11 years ago

I think a cheaper/easier solution is to just reintroduce the beaver back into the habitat and let them get to work.

http://www.resilientdesign.org/how-beavers-are-coming-to-the...

luckydude• 11 years ago

This sounds really good to me, I like beaver ponds. Does anyone know of any downside to reintroducing beavers?

maaku• 11 years ago

And in doing so, destroy a bunch of really beautiful valleys.

daurnimator• 11 years ago

Bad news for australia :( http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/updates/articles/a008-el-nino-...

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/tracker/

vfrogger• 11 years ago

This is great news, if only for the reason that there will be more Chris Farley GIF's on the internet.

cos2pi• 11 years ago

For those interested, the monthly report the article refers to is the NOAA/Climate Prediction Center ENSO discussion:

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/en...

El Niño weather event is biggest since 1997, may trigger soaking winter storms

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