Hey everybody,
ABC 10 meteorologist Brendan Minchev here.
I hope you all had a good week.
It is the weekend again,
so it's time for another drought update.
Finally, all of the drought monitors
reflect the rain that we've
seen this month because with the
most with last weekend's update,
it didn't take into account the
rain that we saw on the 18th.
So even though we didn't have
any rain this calendar week,
the drought update,
because the data runs from
Tuesday to Tuesday,
this week's drought update finally
reflects all the rain that we've seen.
So we've seen 7.54 inches over 7
1/2 inches the month of January.
And the average to date,
so the average as of the 28th
of January is 3.51 inches.
So that means we are quite a bit above
where we normally would be for this
point in the month and the month.
And as a whole that's some good news.
So this month,
about four inches above where we normally
would be for the water year as a whole,
over 8 1/2 inches above average.
That's good news.
The total so far over 18 inches,
the average date is 9 depot, 9 1/2 inches.
And our departure from normal as we
just talked about is 8 1/2 inches.
So that is good.
News then as we take a look
at the state as a whole,
we noticed a lot of big numbers here.
The water year started October 1st,
so departure from average for the water year.
South Lake Tahoe, Stockton,
Fresno, San Francisco, Redding,
Eureka, Bakersfield,
Santa Barbara,
Los Angeles and even now San Diego all above
average for this point of the water year.
And Palm Springs is not that far
behind where they normally should be.
So we are off and running to a
good start for the water year,
calendar year as well.
We're going to need some more
as we work through what's left
of the rainy season we're.
About a little more than halfway
through the rainy season.
So we need some more before we
really hit those drier months.
But honestly we are doing good
as things stand right now.
So the drought monitor for January 29th,
you can see 0.64% of the state
is not in any drought at all.
That is up here in the far
northwestern part of California.
Most of the state is not quite
in the abnormally dry category,
but the moderate drought,
so 56.99% of the state,
that's this kind of beige color here
that you see that's that moderate.
Count category, the yellow,
the abnormally dry and you can
see that's mostly the Central
Coast north of Los Angeles just
before we get to the Bay Area,
severe drought 32.57% of the state.
The orange color,
there is no extreme drought
and there is no exceptional
drought with the latest monitor.
This is the best the drought
in California has been since
November 17th of 2020.
We can compare these using the drought scale,
the drought index here.
Basically it just adds up the percentages of.
What the state of the drought the state is
in or whatever region you're looking at.
So 212 was the scale for November 17th,
2020, now it is 221.
So again it is the best of the drought
has been since November of 2020.
That's been a long time.
A little bit of rain is in
the forecast for this Sunday,
just a touch, not really much at all.
You can see maybe 1/10 of an
inch across the valley that is
about all we're looking at.
So this storm really not going to
have much of an impact and even snow,
not looking at a lot of snow either
about half a foot in some places.
Immigrant gap donor,
very close to half a foot,
but for the most part the Sierra
with this storm that is working
its way through today for Sunday
mostly going to be 2 to 6 inches,
maybe locally higher amounts along the
highest peaks and passes that is about it.
So even though we're looking at a little
bit more precipitation in the forecast today,
really not going to impact any of the
snowpack or drop numbers all that much.
But talking about reservoirs,
let's take a look at the latest.
This was updated January 28th,
so Shasta, 87% of the average.
The date capacity at 56%,
that's some good news.
Oroville, 111% of the average to date,
capacity 64% and Folsom 113%
and capacity that 51%.
As we learned with Folsom last week,
Folsom is mainly used for flood protection
for the greater Sacramento area,
not quite as much for water storage.
That is more of the responsibility
of Shasta and Oroville,
but especially Shasta because it is so large.
The snowpack is also doing very
well right now.
Northern Sierra 105% of April 1st,
average April 1st typically when we
see the highest amount of snowpack.
So that's why we usually compare everything
to April 1st, so that's good news.
Northern Sierra 130% of of April
1st average in the central Sierra,
more good news 152% of average
in the southern Sierra.
So statewide 128% are snowpack
is of the April 1st average.
So that's good news.
We need that to continue to stick,
stick around as long as we don't
get any significant rain events as
opposed to these rain and snow events.
We will be just fine honestly
as we work towards April.
But I want to break these
numbers down a little bit more.
We always talk about water storage
as in reservoirs and lakes and then
kind of separately as snowpack.
We always say they're related.
But let's take a look at how these
numbers really are related and how they
really impact the state as a whole.
So this is from the California,
Nevada Climate application program,
CNAP.
And what we can do with these
graphics here is we can really see
how much the reservoir storage and
the snowpack storage
contributes and which part.
Or both of those numbers are really
helping us right now as to where
we are with our water storage.
So this is for Northern California,
the Western Sierra really has a whole.
So it's kind of this part of California,
the northern part and down in towards
the central part of the state as well.
So reservoir storage just
a little bit below average.
This solid blue is the average for the
water year and you can see that line,
the lighter blue line just below
that when we talk about snowpack.
So the reservoir plus snowpack
look how much better we're doing,
we're actually above average
as a whole when you compare.
Or take into account both
the reservoirs storage,
so liquid water and the frozen water,
the snowpack storage way above.
But the majority of that is coming
from snowpack because you can see
we're above average in terms of
water in reservoirs and snowpack,
but below average.
If we're just looking at our reservoir
storage and we'll zoom in a little bit
there and you can kind of get that number.
Again,
the solid blue is your average and
then the darker kind of Gray is your
average for both the reservoir plus snowpack.
All right, let's move on and we'll
talk about Shasta specifically.
So Shasta just talked about.
87% of average day, 56% capacity,
that blue line there is average.
This is just lake level for Shasta right now.
You can see it is still trending upwards
right now and it's pretty close to average.
Again 87% that's pretty good.
It is in a much better spot
than it has been in years past.
But when we take a look at
Shasta snowpack and Shasta Water,
you can see the reservoir storage
below average as we would be expected.
We just saw that in the previous map.
And then we take a look at reservoir
plus snowpack.
This is just for the Shasta area.
Most of our plus no pack is also below
the average for this time of year.
So even though we've had all this rain,
we've had all this snow.
And yes,
the drought has improved significantly.
I'm not saying it's not and it has
significantly helped our situation,
but the reason why we haven't
seen drought totally eliminated.
The reason why we're still talking
about the need to potentially conserve
water as we go into the summer
months is because we haven't quite
hit the historical averages when
we're talking about the reservoir
plus snowpack for the Shasta area.
And Shasta is critically important.
For California's water,
the state as a whole,
because we in Northern California
get some of our water,
a lot of our water from Shasta and
then we also send that water down
to Southern California as well.
So the whole state really does depend
on Shasta for a lot of its water.
So you can see this average line
is the reservoir
plus snowpack storage and the Orange
line is where we're at right now.
So we are not there when it comes
to average for the Shasta area.
Again, this is just for the Shasta area.
There's still time left in the water here
as we've talked about for that to change
and we are trending in the right direction.
But just trying to break down these
numbers a little more in a way that we
really haven't seen before looking at
Northern California storage levels when
we're looking at just reservoir storage,
again still below average.
But when it comes to
reservoirs plus snowpack,
now we are a little bit above average.
So breaking it down by region,
even by lake, we can see there's still
certain areas that need some work.
For instance,
Trinity Reservoir up north still needs a lot
of work done to get towards average there.
Shasta,
even though it is about 50%,
it's not quite towards average just
yet for this point in the year.
So we've shown this not for a while,
but we've shown this previously
before we had a lot of the rain.
The Sierra drought busting meter,
the number that we've kind of come up with
is somewhere in the neighborhood of 114.1.
Which is,
that's calculated by adding the
precipitation deficits over the previous
three water years for these eight
particular stations in the Sierra.
That's kind of the ballpark number.
It's not a guaranteed we could
have less than that and still
totally bust out of this drought,
which is good news.
But the average water year for this
these eight stations in the Sierra is
53.2 inches of liquid water equivalent.
And so far this current water year,
we're at 37.3,
that's about 32.7% of that 114 number.
That is kind of our ballpark of
water that we would like to see
the bus throughout the record.
Wettest water year we've ever had,
2016 to 17, we saw 94.7 inches still.
There's still a long ways to go really
before we approach this number.
But again,
there's opportunities for us to
totally move out of the drought
without exactly hitting that number.
But that would depend on lakes filling up,
reservoirs filling up in our
snowpack to stick with us as we
work through the rest of the wet
season and into the drier months.
So that snowpack can kind of naturally
melt with the warmer months as opposed to.
Melting all at once with
a significant rain event.
One other thing that happened
this week is DWR,
they're water allocation.
They changed it from 5% to 30% and
we're told that's about half of what
they normally deliver in a good year.
So that's good news.
We're again trending in the right direction.
I don't want to say we're not still
obviously work to do with some more
rain still expected as we work
through the next 10 days or so.
Not significant events like what we've seen.
But again, we're making progress.
That's some good news.
I do want to shift gears a little bit.
There's a new tool in the
toolbox for some water managers,
not just here in California
but all across the globe.
Because as we see from the graphics that
we talk about every single weekend,
we have a lot of ways to look
at the water that we have,
whether it be in snowpack,
whether that be in liquid form and a lake
or a reservoir or river or even the ocean.
But not everywhere has that luxury.
We actually in California are kind
of the exception where we have
really good monitoring of our water
and obviously for good reasons.
But again,
there's a new tool in the toolbox
and it's called SWAT.
We're looking at water from space,
let's send it over to the experts.
And
we just had a visit from a variety
of secretaries of California
agencies last Friday to discuss
how how these new measurements
might help us manage our resources.
California is no stranger
to water management.
Water officials use a
variety of tools to make sure
not a single drop of water in
this state is unaccounted for.
And now they're getting another
tool in their toolbox whose?
What is the surface water
and ocean topography mission.
It's an international mission that is a
collaboration between the United States,
France, the United Kingdom and Canada.
It is flying right now all around the world.
We launched in December,
on the 16th of December.
Three in the morning from Vandenberg
Space Force Base and what we are doing
is we built a new piece of extreme
engineering to observe the world's water.
So we'll see all of the about 90% of of
the water that is covering the earth.
So we're talking about surface water,
oceans, rivers, lakes, reservoirs,
the observations that we will have
with what will help us understand how
the storage changes in California in
surface water and that's pretty great.
But that's that's not everything we need.
We need to manage not only the
surface waters and and So what will
help us do that in a way,
in a way like we've never
been able to do that before,
but we also need to better
understand groundwaters.
We talk a lot about water, and rightfully so.
It's a finite resource and yet it's
one we largely take for granted,
especially freshwater, which is vitally
important for sustaining life. Freshwater
is stored in places like lakes and ice
caps, but perhaps most importantly,
it is stored underground.
About 90 percent,
99% of the Earth's freshwater that
is liquid is actually underground
and and that makes it a really
valuable resource for for freshwater.
But the problem is it takes a whole
lot of energy to go pump it and
then we've been pumping a whole lot
of it for a long time and and and
groundwater takes generations to replenish.
I used to think of groundwater as the
savings account for water but are now
really think of it as the family heirloom.
In times of drought we always think
about the water. That we don't have.
When we get the rain and things
are looking up, it's easy to forget
about just how dry it can get. So,
I mean, listen, the beauty of
living down here in California,
this is a gorgeous right.
We have the sun, we have the sediments,
we can grow crops.
It is really incredible.
We produce a lot of the food for the
nation and and for other places on Earth.
That that's great, right?
But then it's sunny.
We have some pretty long drought
and we just hopefully just got
out of a three-year drought with
the rains that we got, but.
Managing those resources is really, is,
is really what we're talking about here.
And so understanding how much we
have in the surface water systems,
understanding how much we have
underground and how to use it
exactly for what we needed, right.
So I
mean, we're lucky
because we have observations of our
rivers and our reservoirs in California.
That's not always the case around the world.
It's actually mostly not
the case and anywhere else.
That's where SWAT comes in by being.
Able to map out and see water across
the globe and how it changes overtime.
It'll allow water managers to make
more informed decisions as well
as make our weather and climate
models better by giving us new
data about how our oceans work.
It's going to be incredible to just see
those first measurements when they come.
And we'll be looking at the
breathing of the Earth's arteries
and and legs and reservoirs like
like we've never seen them before.
Including California's is
going to be really fun.