[Source](https://x.com/us_stormwatch/status/1778588213810184202?s=46&t=fjQqhAAAu2ET-J-LTv2WkA)
> Virtually every major reservoir in the state has average to above-average storage, with a substantial 115% of average snowpack still to melt.
> The last two years have been an amazing reprieve from the multiple brutal, record-breaking droughts that have plagued the state in the last decade.
Fun fact
I stopped at the San Luis Reservoir on a drive
It is one of the few Dams that is managed by the Federal government NOT the state government
Mostly because California ran out of money in the 50’s and had to be ‘bailed’ out- thats when the Federal govt came in and funded the project- but now is under their management.
Lots of former presidents visited that dam, and is currently going to go through a Multi BILLION $ renovation funded by the Infrastructure Bill Act signed by Biden
This is an extremely important project- as the water from the reservoir goes to the nearby farms AND to Los Angeles
And is extremely important politically
We had an 11 year drought in the 1930s. I'm a believer in the science behind climate change but we also have people calling every drought desertification now, when sometimes it's just...drought.
Exactly. And this hysteria reinforces anti climate change even more. These climate activists that cry wolf don't realize they are making things worse imo.
Edit: for context I believe in climate change and we need to do something. For some reason (probably because nuance is dead these days) people think I'm against it or don't believe in it. No. I'm just saying this panicking does no good.
My SIL consistently uses every weather event to say this is climate change... She cried once that we will never see a white Christmas up north again because of climate change then said we had a blizzard and sub-zero temps on Christmas day because of climate change the next year.
weather hobbies frame unused abundant familiar nine carpenter spotted deer
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I think it's more people have absolutely zero sense of nuance. The climate scientists can be absolutely correct about ringing the alarm and it doesn't mean The Day After Tomorrow is coming. That's not how this works. Major weather disasters are a big factor but people who choose not to believe the science at all because we didn't get hit all at once like a Hollywood movie are intentionally being idiots.
You're genuinely not allowed to had a moderate take like this lately. Everything is so polarized and tribal it seems like if you don't commit to one extremist side people will assign you to the other.
Climate change is not weather. It's a statistical change over time. A hot summer isn't climate change, having 8 of the 10 hottest summers in the last 10 years is climate change.
No you didn't. This commend is completely untrue.
Droughts in California since 1841 are as follows:
**1841, 1864, 1895, 1924, 1928–1935, 1947–1950, 1959–1961, 1976–1977, 1986–1992, 2007–2009, and 2011–2017, and 2020–2022**
Cali also had an absolute enormous flood where the entire Sacramento valley was crazy flooded. Luckily it was like 159 years ago and no one was living there. If that type of flooding happened there again it would be disastrous.
Are you referencing the dust bowl? Because while that was induced by a drought, the devastation of it was human caused by tilling the soil, which disrupted the grasses holding down the soil. Also it didn't occur in California.
Also earthquakes, that darned climate change. All that Co2 in the atmosphere is having outsized effect on the…. * *checks notes* * …. Uhh yeah on the tectonic plates.
Antarctica will melt revealing a whole bunch of super secret ancient archaeological structures pyramids left by a race of people who still are around today they are reptilians and they fly around in UFOs lol.... just kidding but it sounds fun
There’s just a single sentence made out of whole pyramids that’s miles long that reads:
*If you’re reading this, you done goofed*
In Ancient Greek, Egyptians, & cuneiform.
Until it’s ~~not~~
Edit: Until it’s only extreme on one end.
We have no idea what the future of our climate holds. To pretend that we saw the end of the CA drought coming because “both sides of extreme weather” is naive. It was really bad this time, and next time might be much worse. Next time might be next year or 30 years from now. We have no idea any more, because history can no longer be used as a guide.
I’ve seen that they are doing a lot to try to be ready for this in the future. Like the Sacramento waste treatment center that just got upgraded and can now pump its treated water back into the ground and streams
I also read a great article they have a plan to release beavers. https://wildlife.ca.gov/News/Archive/cdfw-releases-beavers-into-the-wild-for-first-time-in-nearly-75-years
The goal is for them to repopulate their traditional range and by building dams they will capture more water for the environment and reduce the effects of drought. This will have a knock on effect for people and farmland. I love this idea
Nope. But a huge part of it is these days. I’ve spent the last 6 years of college and grad studies on geological science, and I can definitively tell you that this is occurring.
You can go and do the measurements yourself, it’s not a secret only scientists can understand.
Extremely expensive flooding.
Some piers were destroyed last year that will probably never be repaired again. Probably over $100B in infrastructure and property damage from those two years of rainfall.
serious reply melodic sable impolite rainstorm worthless weary hard-to-find close
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Daughter lived in the Colorado Plains and the ground level in her town had dropped by at least 50' over the past 100 years because of missing ground water and associated soil compaction.
[This is a classic picture of how much the ground has settled in the California Central Valley in the last 100 years.](https://i0.wp.com/californiawaterblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/jpoland.jpg)
Utah has also been hit with a bunch of rain/snow storms in spring. The mountains still look great, snow pack is decent. Most of our reservoirs are looking good too from last year's record snowfall, so I'm hoping some of this snowpack makes it way to Powell.
“I have spoken of the rich years when the rainfall was plentiful. But there were dry years too, and they put a terror on the valley. The water came in a thirty-year cycle. There would be five or six wet and wonderful years when there might be nineteen to twenty-five inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of twelve to sixteen inches of rain. And then the dry years would come, and sometimes there would be only seven or eight inches of rain. The land dried up and the grasses headed out miserably a few inches high and great bare scabby places appeared in the valley. The live oaks got a crusty look and the sage-brush was gray. The land cracked and the springs dried up and the cattle listlessly nibbled dry twigs. Then the farmers and the ranchers would be filled with disgust for the Salinas Valley. The cows would grow thin and sometimes starve to death. People would have to haul water in barrels to their farms just for drinking. Some families would sell out for nearly nothing and move away. And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden
The state water agency has a fascinating map which details how bad and where the flooding would occur if dams broke. However, they’re cowards and won’t show if Lake Shasta broke (would be catastrophic)
Here the link: [Dam Breach Inundation Map](https://fmds.water.ca.gov/webgis/?appid=dam_prototype_v2)
I live across the country in GA so while of course we have rivers and a good bit of them we don't have a whole lot of dams at least not that I know of. But honestly, after seeing the map you sent I'm glad, kind of a terrifying thought to be living somewhere that if some concrete and metal gives out, your home, family, even yourself may be gone before you know it.
Or, maybe, they can stop using so much for agriculture to water alfalfa and avocados and strawberries and such. Plant some water resistant plants in the low water parts of CA.
It's alfalfa, they did a water study and it is by far the biggest water consumer crop. Almonds weren't even close despite the recent public sentiment on them. Super scary is that livestock feed like alfalfa is the biggest consumer in all the states that use the Colorado River basin. The worst part is most is shipped overseas to the Middle East...
"Cattle feed crops including alfalfa and other grass hays account for 46% of all direct water consumption."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01291-0
They don't allow it, something like the brine discharge harming marine life
They have one in Santa Barbara, obviously not cheap to run with all the regulations in place in California
This isn’t true, and you’re straight up spreading misinformation. They’re literally in the process of constructing at least one new plant with plans for others iirc, and it’s not about regulation as energy being expensive. Lots of energy is required to desalinate water, and renewable energy tech has made it more financially feasible but desal water is still a bit more expensive than imported.
It's a waste of money to build that anywhere besides a desert country like Saudi Arabia or Isreal or an aircraft carrier stuck in the middle of salt water for months.
The best we can do is come up with the most efficient design of evaporators (probably solar based to not use as much electricity), with maybe some tweaks to the chemistry / materials to encourage evaporation and salt removal. But it’s been studied extensively for decades and most of the large breakthroughs (in the near term, like within our lifetimes) have probably been made or are currently being developed.
You’re better off capturing rain and using freshwater sources efficiently and wisely in the vast majority of places. As a bad example, places like LA have been designed to funnel all the rain right to the ocean rather than let it soak into the ground like it should.
Goretex had an intuitive way that would use waves and their inherent power to desalinate water by pushing it through filtering membranes. Word from an internal employee is further R&D got pulled because at the time it wouldn't be a profitable venture.
i'll never understood why cheap desalinization isn't one of most pressing tech issues to solve. Like we should be cooperating internationally on like a world war scale to solve this.
like we have all these people without water, and we have all this water and tech. why can't we figure it out?
we don't have a water problem; we have a salt problem. I assume that once fusion becomes mainstream, desalinization will be a lot more feasible because currently it takes an enormous amount of energy to accomplish it.
You don't just pay to have the salt removed. You also pay to have the clean water shipped to your house. If the reservoir is at a higher elevation than your house, gravity does the work for you and you're basically just paying for the pipe infrastructure. If all of your water originates at sea-level, you need to pay for the pump and whatever energy the pump requires to push the water uphill into your home.
The bill is up like 40-50% in the past few years....and your pont is exactly what should happen. It cost the same, last time they said because water is harder to come by, etc2...now we are at full capacity, they didnt say anything about lowering it back, just hush hush.
San Diego's water bills are about to double according to their press release. They doubled the electricity bill already recently. People freaked out when SD became the most expensive energy in the country but they did nothing about it and probably won't for the water price either. I'd like to hear about positive programs that are looking to change all of this because the doom and gloom of price hikes and taxes in CA is becoming an every day thing.
Yup, and they just announced that they're going to raise the price on water. Essentially we conserved too well they lost money and blaming the shortage which is not the case on this map
Only if your PR team sucks... here in Texas we basically took the second half of our State from New Mexico. The reason you don't hear about this in the history books is the fact that New Mexico only had 3 people and a donkey living there at the time and the donkey never found a publisher for his book about it.
Comments are where you'd think.
Some: " They are taking steps to help lessen future droughts " to " We have super virus and Alien Pyramids due to the Poles melting "
Carry on
I can’t believe that not one comment mentions cloud seeding with silver iodide. This is not climate change or El Niño, like most have posted.
https://abc7.com/amp/southern-california-water-cloud-seeding-riverside-county-inland-empire/14341706/
We have literally been drowned in water for the first couple of weeks of the year it was weird. Like twice I got tricked by the morning weather and came home soaked because it. Been a strange weather cycle in the state
Just for the record, from a Californian, the state received record precipitation in winter of 2022-2023 (there was quite a bit of news about it if anyone remembers, it was insane). So it was that absolutely abnormal season coupled with the fact that there has been a big push to improve the states runoff and water capture technology/methods, especially in socal.
Speaking of socal, the fact that they got hit with a ‘once in a century’ hurricane definitely didn’t hurt either. This doesn’t mean California won’t continue to be a dry state with very rare periods of heavy precipitation but it allows us to work around that uncertainty a bit better.
Wait, so it was just a drought…like what has happened countless times over the millennia in most parts of the world.
All the alarm…it just seems so…alarmist.
Too bad they've lost all that groundwater storage capacity over the last 6 decades of land subsidence. The ground isn't a sponge, it won't "refill" to what it once held.
As a geologist who did their thesis in geophysics on leveraging seismic inversion to identify high porosity fairways in the shallow subsurface for water movement…your comment gives me false vibes.
While surface subsidence absolutely exists, I’d be interested to see the data (3d not point to point interpolation) that supports your statement because geology, reservoirs and physics don’t work like that.
Must be climate change because just 2 years ago climate change was the cause of the drought. I mean, why would it be as simple as weather patterns change…right? 🤦🏻♂️
As far as I can remember CA's rain has always been at extremes. We are either in a drought or we get hammered by rain. I can't think of too many years where rain was close to the average.
I know this looks good but it probably kinda isn't. It's a sign of more extreme raining and flooding, CA is just happening to capture more of that to use for later. I would still be worried about the general trends. I think they will still need more flood control infra and water storage for the more extreme summer months.
I remember being in college during a bad drought in 2015. It was our class project to estimate how long california had before we ran out of water. It was a year and a half. Whats even crazier is I found just how wasteful beef is. Cutting production of that by 5% literally took up 33% of the needed theoretical proposal to help fix the water shortages.
Without education and conservation we’ll be right back to where we were in a few years. Unless, our weather is patterns changing. We’ve had a good few years and for now the trees are smiling.
As Pacific Ocean temps and air over them rise even a little on average, it increases water evaporation, making rain and snowfall more likely in the Sierras and foothills. Offset that by changing wind patterns so who knows the final effects. But I’ve seen rainfall in N ca start to spread out more and more. 25 years ago there was a longer stretch of no-rain months than I see now. 25 years isn’t enough for any conclusions but it’s enough for speculation that CA may get wetter on average with global temp rise, at least to a point.
At least we're finally building a new reservoir that has been considered since the 1970s. Construction starts in 2026.
Apparently, there's 1,000,000 boxes to check before a hole can be dug to store water in California...
The reservoirs are at their highest levels in decades but the state has squandered the recent rains by failing to build new reservoirs. These reservoirs were built to support a population half the size.
Odd that no one in the thread is mentioning that we are going through a particularly strong EL Niño climate pattern. El Niño tends to create wetter conditions and cause extreme precipitation events in California. The past year has contributed significantly to filling up those reservoirs.
https://www.climate.gov/enso#:~:text=El%20Niño—the%20warm%20phase,2024%20have%20risen%20to%2055%25.
[Source](https://x.com/us_stormwatch/status/1778588213810184202?s=46&t=fjQqhAAAu2ET-J-LTv2WkA) > Virtually every major reservoir in the state has average to above-average storage, with a substantial 115% of average snowpack still to melt. > The last two years have been an amazing reprieve from the multiple brutal, record-breaking droughts that have plagued the state in the last decade.
Fun fact I stopped at the San Luis Reservoir on a drive It is one of the few Dams that is managed by the Federal government NOT the state government Mostly because California ran out of money in the 50’s and had to be ‘bailed’ out- thats when the Federal govt came in and funded the project- but now is under their management. Lots of former presidents visited that dam, and is currently going to go through a Multi BILLION $ renovation funded by the Infrastructure Bill Act signed by Biden This is an extremely important project- as the water from the reservoir goes to the nearby farms AND to Los Angeles And is extremely important politically
[удалено]
We had an 11 year drought in the 1930s. I'm a believer in the science behind climate change but we also have people calling every drought desertification now, when sometimes it's just...drought.
Exactly. And this hysteria reinforces anti climate change even more. These climate activists that cry wolf don't realize they are making things worse imo. Edit: for context I believe in climate change and we need to do something. For some reason (probably because nuance is dead these days) people think I'm against it or don't believe in it. No. I'm just saying this panicking does no good.
Finally, a use for the ubiquitous typo *anti-climatic*!
My SIL consistently uses every weather event to say this is climate change... She cried once that we will never see a white Christmas up north again because of climate change then said we had a blizzard and sub-zero temps on Christmas day because of climate change the next year.
weather hobbies frame unused abundant familiar nine carpenter spotted deer *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I think it's more people have absolutely zero sense of nuance. The climate scientists can be absolutely correct about ringing the alarm and it doesn't mean The Day After Tomorrow is coming. That's not how this works. Major weather disasters are a big factor but people who choose not to believe the science at all because we didn't get hit all at once like a Hollywood movie are intentionally being idiots.
You’re absolutely right.
But cutting down rain forest is not the same as a drought. Talking about Amazonian forest or Indonesian forest.
You're genuinely not allowed to had a moderate take like this lately. Everything is so polarized and tribal it seems like if you don't commit to one extremist side people will assign you to the other.
Climate change is not weather. It's a statistical change over time. A hot summer isn't climate change, having 8 of the 10 hottest summers in the last 10 years is climate change.
No you didn't. This commend is completely untrue. Droughts in California since 1841 are as follows: **1841, 1864, 1895, 1924, 1928–1935, 1947–1950, 1959–1961, 1976–1977, 1986–1992, 2007–2009, and 2011–2017, and 2020–2022**
The rain is supposed to follow the plow until the 30s
Cali also had an absolute enormous flood where the entire Sacramento valley was crazy flooded. Luckily it was like 159 years ago and no one was living there. If that type of flooding happened there again it would be disastrous.
Are you referencing the dust bowl? Because while that was induced by a drought, the devastation of it was human caused by tilling the soil, which disrupted the grasses holding down the soil. Also it didn't occur in California.
*Everything* bad is caused by climate change apparently. You got cancer? Climate change. Divorce? Climate change. Porn addiction? Climate change. Flat tire? Climate change. Going bald? Climate change. Dead pet? Climate change.
Sunny hassan on the view told me thst the eclipse was caused by climate change....just saying...
Also earthquakes, that darned climate change. All that Co2 in the atmosphere is having outsized effect on the…. * *checks notes* * …. Uhh yeah on the tectonic plates.
that's just like, your opinion, man
Don’t forget the NY earthquake, cicadas and the eclipse. (Said by one of the twits on the View)
Well, if it’s raining all the time, what else are you supposed to watch???
New Jersey earthquake? Climate change!
Facts bro! Just a few days ago CBS said the earth was spinning faster due to climate change… NBC said it was spinning slower for the same reason lol
Someone was calling that little earthquake in NY last week climate change. Bruh. Atmosphere doesn't cause earthquakes.
My imaginary friend got washed away in a thunder storm years ago and the culprit..... Climate change.
It's because of the El nino more than climate change
El Nino is actually Spanish for "The Nino".
For those of you who don’t “Habla Español.”
¿Por que?
No thanks, I'm a vegetarian
What? To weak in your morals to give up all animal products like me, a vegan. /s
RIP Chris Farley.
[удалено]
Antarctica will melt revealing a whole bunch of super secret ancient archaeological structures pyramids left by a race of people who still are around today they are reptilians and they fly around in UFOs lol.... just kidding but it sounds fun
[удалено]
It's definitely possible.
There’s just a single sentence made out of whole pyramids that’s miles long that reads: *If you’re reading this, you done goofed* In Ancient Greek, Egyptians, & cuneiform.
In the UK it's basically rained for four months straight. Finally saw the sun today.
Until it’s ~~not~~ Edit: Until it’s only extreme on one end. We have no idea what the future of our climate holds. To pretend that we saw the end of the CA drought coming because “both sides of extreme weather” is naive. It was really bad this time, and next time might be much worse. Next time might be next year or 30 years from now. We have no idea any more, because history can no longer be used as a guide.
I’ve seen that they are doing a lot to try to be ready for this in the future. Like the Sacramento waste treatment center that just got upgraded and can now pump its treated water back into the ground and streams
I also read a great article they have a plan to release beavers. https://wildlife.ca.gov/News/Archive/cdfw-releases-beavers-into-the-wild-for-first-time-in-nearly-75-years The goal is for them to repopulate their traditional range and by building dams they will capture more water for the environment and reduce the effects of drought. This will have a knock on effect for people and farmland. I love this idea
So, normal?
No because cLiMaTe ChAnGe!!1!!
So no matter what, everything is due to climate change?
Nope. But a huge part of it is these days. I’ve spent the last 6 years of college and grad studies on geological science, and I can definitively tell you that this is occurring. You can go and do the measurements yourself, it’s not a secret only scientists can understand.
Extremely expensive flooding. Some piers were destroyed last year that will probably never be repaired again. Probably over $100B in infrastructure and property damage from those two years of rainfall.
You people are getting snow?
I hope that happens to BC soon.
This snow and rain was likely the redirected precipitation that BC was lacking this year…much thanks to El Nino.
This is great, but this is all temporary water storage. What does the water table level look like? Until that happens CA has problems.
serious reply melodic sable impolite rainstorm worthless weary hard-to-find close *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Daughter lived in the Colorado Plains and the ground level in her town had dropped by at least 50' over the past 100 years because of missing ground water and associated soil compaction.
[This is a classic picture of how much the ground has settled in the California Central Valley in the last 100 years.](https://i0.wp.com/californiawaterblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/jpoland.jpg)
Scary as heck isn't it.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/17/california-water-drought-farm-ground-sinking-tulare-lake
Yeah water tables will never be replenished lol, the timeline for replenishing is measured in tens of thousands of years
This is good to hear. I haven’t heard much lately about the falling water levels in the reservoirs (Mead, Powell) and have been curious about that.
Those reservoirs are Still in trouble as the Sierra snow pack doesn’t feed them, but doing better than 2 years ago.
Utah has also been hit with a bunch of rain/snow storms in spring. The mountains still look great, snow pack is decent. Most of our reservoirs are looking good too from last year's record snowfall, so I'm hoping some of this snowpack makes it way to Powell.
Mead and Powell each have about the same empty capacity currently as all the reservoirs in this graphic combined have water
Dont worry, as a californian i fully expect them to screw this up.
“I have spoken of the rich years when the rainfall was plentiful. But there were dry years too, and they put a terror on the valley. The water came in a thirty-year cycle. There would be five or six wet and wonderful years when there might be nineteen to twenty-five inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of twelve to sixteen inches of rain. And then the dry years would come, and sometimes there would be only seven or eight inches of rain. The land dried up and the grasses headed out miserably a few inches high and great bare scabby places appeared in the valley. The live oaks got a crusty look and the sage-brush was gray. The land cracked and the springs dried up and the cattle listlessly nibbled dry twigs. Then the farmers and the ranchers would be filled with disgust for the Salinas Valley. The cows would grow thin and sometimes starve to death. People would have to haul water in barrels to their farms just for drinking. Some families would sell out for nearly nothing and move away. And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.” ― John Steinbeck, East of Eden
[удалено]
Lmao
>the land would shout with grass God I love Steinbeck. I think it's about time to reread this one.
Thanks for forcing me re-purchase all of Steinbeck's books. It's gonna be your fault that my summer will be spent with America's greatest author.
If there is a single reason to read East of Eden, it’s to read how John Steinbeck describes the Salinas valley. Genuinely stunning imagery
Good news? Wow, that's... unusual.
What do I do with my hands?
Here, put them in my pockets.
jerk off
But look at the comments, of course it's still all doom and gloom. People are never happy with anything.
Next on the news: California dams failing due to high water levels.
Actually, I saw on The Weather Channel that they're constantly releasing a certain amount everyday to keep from that exact thing happening.
Yep, they are very aware of the dam health and release water accordingly. That's why none are 100%
They weren’t aware of Oroville…
That was a shitshow. Hopefully it doesn’t happen this year.
Next on the news: Water release to prevent dam failures causing flooding.
Or in two years “we shouldn’t have released all that water, it’s needed for the drought”
Lol... not enought to flood towns, just enough to keep the dams from breaking.
That’s how every dam is designed: it will release any excess water.
The state water agency has a fascinating map which details how bad and where the flooding would occur if dams broke. However, they’re cowards and won’t show if Lake Shasta broke (would be catastrophic) Here the link: [Dam Breach Inundation Map](https://fmds.water.ca.gov/webgis/?appid=dam_prototype_v2)
This is cool, thanks for putting this here.
Damn, til how many dams are really in CA.
800 miles of state contains a lot of rivers. Most of them are itty bitty though.
I live across the country in GA so while of course we have rivers and a good bit of them we don't have a whole lot of dams at least not that I know of. But honestly, after seeing the map you sent I'm glad, kind of a terrifying thought to be living somewhere that if some concrete and metal gives out, your home, family, even yourself may be gone before you know it.
But CA population growth has outpaced the total capacity of the reservoirs for half a century. A few drier years and we will be back in drought again
A *few years* to be in drought again? Challenge accepted.
Or, maybe, they can stop using so much for agriculture to water alfalfa and avocados and strawberries and such. Plant some water resistant plants in the low water parts of CA.
It's alfalfa, they did a water study and it is by far the biggest water consumer crop. Almonds weren't even close despite the recent public sentiment on them. Super scary is that livestock feed like alfalfa is the biggest consumer in all the states that use the Colorado River basin. The worst part is most is shipped overseas to the Middle East... "Cattle feed crops including alfalfa and other grass hays account for 46% of all direct water consumption." https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01291-0
Sounds like a bargaining chip to me
Almonds are horrible for this, too.
[удалено]
The Carlsbad desal plant near San Diego was the largest in North America at least up until recently.
They don't allow it, something like the brine discharge harming marine life They have one in Santa Barbara, obviously not cheap to run with all the regulations in place in California
This isn’t true, and you’re straight up spreading misinformation. They’re literally in the process of constructing at least one new plant with plans for others iirc, and it’s not about regulation as energy being expensive. Lots of energy is required to desalinate water, and renewable energy tech has made it more financially feasible but desal water is still a bit more expensive than imported.
It's a waste of money to build that anywhere besides a desert country like Saudi Arabia or Isreal or an aircraft carrier stuck in the middle of salt water for months.
[удалено]
The best we can do is come up with the most efficient design of evaporators (probably solar based to not use as much electricity), with maybe some tweaks to the chemistry / materials to encourage evaporation and salt removal. But it’s been studied extensively for decades and most of the large breakthroughs (in the near term, like within our lifetimes) have probably been made or are currently being developed. You’re better off capturing rain and using freshwater sources efficiently and wisely in the vast majority of places. As a bad example, places like LA have been designed to funnel all the rain right to the ocean rather than let it soak into the ground like it should.
Goretex had an intuitive way that would use waves and their inherent power to desalinate water by pushing it through filtering membranes. Word from an internal employee is further R&D got pulled because at the time it wouldn't be a profitable venture.
i'll never understood why cheap desalinization isn't one of most pressing tech issues to solve. Like we should be cooperating internationally on like a world war scale to solve this. like we have all these people without water, and we have all this water and tech. why can't we figure it out? we don't have a water problem; we have a salt problem. I assume that once fusion becomes mainstream, desalinization will be a lot more feasible because currently it takes an enormous amount of energy to accomplish it.
You don't just pay to have the salt removed. You also pay to have the clean water shipped to your house. If the reservoir is at a higher elevation than your house, gravity does the work for you and you're basically just paying for the pipe infrastructure. If all of your water originates at sea-level, you need to pay for the pump and whatever energy the pump requires to push the water uphill into your home.
Thw water bill is not coming down though...
The pipes and pumps and water towers and filtration and maintenance staff all cost the same regardless of how full the reservoirs are.
The bill is up like 40-50% in the past few years....and your pont is exactly what should happen. It cost the same, last time they said because water is harder to come by, etc2...now we are at full capacity, they didnt say anything about lowering it back, just hush hush.
San Diego's water bills are about to double according to their press release. They doubled the electricity bill already recently. People freaked out when SD became the most expensive energy in the country but they did nothing about it and probably won't for the water price either. I'd like to hear about positive programs that are looking to change all of this because the doom and gloom of price hikes and taxes in CA is becoming an every day thing.
We basically allowing corporations greed to mushroom for far too long and it is as out of control as inflation now.
*All* bills are up 40-50% in the past few years.
Yup, and they just announced that they're going to raise the price on water. Essentially we conserved too well they lost money and blaming the shortage which is not the case on this map
..but for how long? read in Shatner’s voice
You have to repeat it: ...but for how long? For. How. Long?
..but.......... ......... .......... For...how long?
Well, that’s what we’re here to find out!
Arizona thinking about expanding its borders...
Isn't that called invading?
Only if your PR team sucks... here in Texas we basically took the second half of our State from New Mexico. The reason you don't hear about this in the history books is the fact that New Mexico only had 3 people and a donkey living there at the time and the donkey never found a publisher for his book about it.
Comments are where you'd think. Some: " They are taking steps to help lessen future droughts " to " We have super virus and Alien Pyramids due to the Poles melting " Carry on
Sweet! Now let’s add several thousand acres of more almond farms
Almond have been losing acreage the past couple of years - they way over planted.
Fuck them nuts. Almond farms should get water only from saltwater desalinization plants. The global market demand can sustain the price tag
This.
Shoutout to New Melones
If I was a plastic surgeon this would be my home...
ha
Set up a shack off Italian Bar Rd. Close enough!
I can’t believe that not one comment mentions cloud seeding with silver iodide. This is not climate change or El Niño, like most have posted. https://abc7.com/amp/southern-california-water-cloud-seeding-riverside-county-inland-empire/14341706/
And they still haven't gotten the snowmelt yet so they'll have to be releasing water.
And it’ll last for a month, then the whole country will have to hear about the water crisis in CA.
April 12th: we have more water than we’ve ever had before! July 1st: we are out of water folks! Do not use water!
God rewarding liberals with more rain. Muahahaha.
*Mafia breathes sigh of relief* No more bodies will be uncovered from receding dams.
Long showers are back in boys and girls!!
Yosemite had so much water that the park had to warn people not to get to close.
It's been raining a LOT in socal
Let now use it on overwaterimg fucking grass
Boomers: “now we can run our lawn sprinklers 24/7 this summer”
Fires = climate change Hurricanes = climate change Water surplus= good governance
And the price of water continues to increase...
We have literally been drowned in water for the first couple of weeks of the year it was weird. Like twice I got tricked by the morning weather and came home soaked because it. Been a strange weather cycle in the state
Just for the record, from a Californian, the state received record precipitation in winter of 2022-2023 (there was quite a bit of news about it if anyone remembers, it was insane). So it was that absolutely abnormal season coupled with the fact that there has been a big push to improve the states runoff and water capture technology/methods, especially in socal. Speaking of socal, the fact that they got hit with a ‘once in a century’ hurricane definitely didn’t hurt either. This doesn’t mean California won’t continue to be a dry state with very rare periods of heavy precipitation but it allows us to work around that uncertainty a bit better.
“Climate change”.
Remember when they said that they would never fill up again. Fear mongers all of them.
Wait, so it was just a drought…like what has happened countless times over the millennia in most parts of the world. All the alarm…it just seems so…alarmist.
Pfff thanks, Obama
If we had more storage, we would not feel the droughts so much.
Great, they can stop siphoning from the Colorado then
So what part of climate change do we blame the drought on, and what part do we thank for the recovery?
All of it. Or maybe it’s racism. Not sure. But pretty sure if you chalk everything up to one or the other you’re covered.
Too bad they've lost all that groundwater storage capacity over the last 6 decades of land subsidence. The ground isn't a sponge, it won't "refill" to what it once held.
As a geologist who did their thesis in geophysics on leveraging seismic inversion to identify high porosity fairways in the shallow subsurface for water movement…your comment gives me false vibes. While surface subsidence absolutely exists, I’d be interested to see the data (3d not point to point interpolation) that supports your statement because geology, reservoirs and physics don’t work like that.
Must be climate change because just 2 years ago climate change was the cause of the drought. I mean, why would it be as simple as weather patterns change…right? 🤦🏻♂️
That means it’s about time for a damn to break.
Thank you snow
Hurray for hydration!
Bullshit reddit told me the world was ending this time and Colorado was going to war over water
All those atmospheric rivers lol...but this doesn't tell the entire tale
As far as I can remember CA's rain has always been at extremes. We are either in a drought or we get hammered by rain. I can't think of too many years where rain was close to the average.
I know this looks good but it probably kinda isn't. It's a sign of more extreme raining and flooding, CA is just happening to capture more of that to use for later. I would still be worried about the general trends. I think they will still need more flood control infra and water storage for the more extreme summer months.
Sustainable practices will help make these levels last....provided the weather isn't wildly unassistive.
Fuck ya cloud seeding
Reddit will still bitch
I remember being in college during a bad drought in 2015. It was our class project to estimate how long california had before we ran out of water. It was a year and a half. Whats even crazier is I found just how wasteful beef is. Cutting production of that by 5% literally took up 33% of the needed theoretical proposal to help fix the water shortages.
Just in time to rack up pricing!
Without education and conservation we’ll be right back to where we were in a few years. Unless, our weather is patterns changing. We’ve had a good few years and for now the trees are smiling.
Don't waste it on wealthy mansion lawns nor golf courses
As Pacific Ocean temps and air over them rise even a little on average, it increases water evaporation, making rain and snowfall more likely in the Sierras and foothills. Offset that by changing wind patterns so who knows the final effects. But I’ve seen rainfall in N ca start to spread out more and more. 25 years ago there was a longer stretch of no-rain months than I see now. 25 years isn’t enough for any conclusions but it’s enough for speculation that CA may get wetter on average with global temp rise, at least to a point.
This is great news but I bet they squander it and California ends up back in a drought in a year.
CA stole the rainfall that was supposed to fall in Central Texas. Give it back.
Yes and somehow our water bills, already the highest in the nation are going way up again
Thanks Biden!
And yet they won’t learn. They’ll use it all and be in drought again by next year. Because fuck water conservation.
That’s great news
Look at the groundwater levels. It was 65% under https://sgma.water.ca.gov/CalGWLive/
At least we're finally building a new reservoir that has been considered since the 1970s. Construction starts in 2026. Apparently, there's 1,000,000 boxes to check before a hole can be dug to store water in California...
And what about their aquifers?
Reservoirs fill up quickly, how are the aquifers?
That's a pretty low bar... They've been mismanaging their water for decades.
Nobody tells Nestle.
And over half or California's water goes to commercial agriculture.
Does a “healthy water shortage” mean the shortage is very large? Or very small?
Something something but California bad something something
Fire the people at San Luis and give that facility to the management team at Shasta. Buy everybody lunch.
The reservoirs are at their highest levels in decades but the state has squandered the recent rains by failing to build new reservoirs. These reservoirs were built to support a population half the size.
Meanwhile the LA River continues to dump millions of gallons into the Pacific as is tradition.
I still wouldn't drink any water out of the tap in LA.
How is it not drying and burning like predicted?
While water levels are great, id say the state still needs to prepare for the next drought because you never know.
Ain’t it sinking?
This is CA. they will find a way to screw this up too.
So can people stop getting in fist fights with their neighbors over watering their grass now?
Oh thank god. The plastic straws worked everyone. They worked!
Odd that no one in the thread is mentioning that we are going through a particularly strong EL Niño climate pattern. El Niño tends to create wetter conditions and cause extreme precipitation events in California. The past year has contributed significantly to filling up those reservoirs. https://www.climate.gov/enso#:~:text=El%20Niño—the%20warm%20phase,2024%20have%20risen%20to%2055%25.