Drought and extreme weather in the US

Heat smothering California from north to south

LOS ANGELES — A statewide heat wave was expected to east somewhat Sunday, but forecasters predicted that many places in California will still bake in higher than normal temperatures

• Tom Hor, originally from Cambodia, relaxes under a tree shade at Echo Park in Los Angeles, Friday, Oct. 3, 2014. As high temperatures were ranging from the low 100s in Southern California to the 90s in the normally more temperate San Francisco Bay Area on Friday, National Weather Service forecasters warned it was just a warm-up for what lies ahead this weekend. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

Press Democrat,

5 October, 2014

The Sacramento and Los Angeles areas were expected to see temperatures in the mid-90s again while the forecast for inland Southern California was again in triple digits, the National Weather Service said.

More significant drops in temperature were expected during the week.

The usually temperate San Francisco Bay Area was even in the upper 90s in several places Saturday.

Many of the thousands who crammed Golden Gate Park in San Francisco for the annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival were chugging water and dumping it on their heads as they danced to banjos and fiddles in the midday swelter. The festival's final day Sunday will be 5 degrees cooler, forecasters said.

Normally closed for the season by now, the Raging Waters theme park in San Dimas, where it reached 102 degrees Saturday afternoon, was open to provide relief and recreation for another weekend.

In San Jose, some sought icy refuge during the public skating hours of at the Sharks' hockey practice facility.

"It's so hot outside. We couldn't think of anything else to do except to come to the ice rink where it's not 95 degrees," Clarissa Harwell told KGO-TV.

Temperatures also made rare trips into triple-digits on the Central Coast in San Luis Obispo and Santa Cruz.

The heat brought a red-flag warning of critical wildfire conditions, the National Weather Service said.

The U.S. Forest Service has implemented 24-hour firefighter staffing. The Los Angeles County Fire Department has beefed up many of its firefighting crews from three to four people and stationed extra equipment in strategic locations.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is urging people to set thermostats at 78 degrees to avoid overtaxing the power grid and bringing on outages.

It's Official: California Just Entered 4th Year Of Severe Drought

In California, the start of October brings an anniversary with little cause for celebration.

Huffington Post,

3 October, 2014

The state ended its third driest year on record and entered a fourth consecutive year of drought, as the U.S. Geological Survey’s water calendar year came to a close Wednesday. Amid a rare autumn heat wave bringing triple-digit temperatures to the state, officials are warning Californians to prepare for the near certainty that the coming months will do little to relieve the parched state.

Satellite images provided to The Huffington Post by NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment capture the state’s declining water storage.

"Day-to-day conservation -- wise, sparing use of water -- is essential as we face the possibility of a fourth dry winter,” Department of Water Resources Director Mark Cowin said in a press release at the close of the water year.

It would take 150 percent of the normal precipitation in the new water year to pull the state out of drought, state climatologist Mike Anderson told California media outlet KQED.

KQED also reports that odds are in favor of only a “pipsqueak” El Niño in the coming months, which experts say could bring no rain at all.

While relying tremendously on groundwater supplies has kept Californians comfortable, the practice could come back to bite residents and farmers as the drought ensues.

"That's essentially borrowing on tomorrow's future,” Cowin told the Los Angeles Times. “We'll pay that price over time."

"Nobody Has Any Idea How Disastrous It's Going To Be" Warns California Water Expert

Zero Hedge,

5 October, 2014

Newly released images created from NASA satellite data illustrate the staggering effect the California drought has had on groundwater supply in the state. AsMashable's Patrick Kulp explains, the images show the amount of water lost over the past 12 years, with different colors indicating severity over time. “Nobody has any idea how disastrous it’s going to be,” Mike Wade of California Farm Water Coalition told the Associated Press, as RT reports a growing number of communities in central and northern California could end up without water in 60 days due to the Golden state’s prolonged drought. While California is bearing the brunt, experts note"We're seeing it happening all over the world, in most of the major aquifers in the arid and semi-arid parts of the world."

Via Mashable,

California is currently experiencing the third year of one of the most severe short-term droughts ever recorded. Data from U.S. Drought Monitor shows that as of Sept. 30, 82% of the state is facing extreme or exceptional drought conditions.

But the state is not the only area being plagued by critical drops in groundwater reserves. Data collected by GRACE indicates that the supply of groundwater is in decline worldwide, especially in regions that rely on it most.

"We're seeing it happening all over the world. It's happening in most of the major aquifers in the arid and semi-arid parts of the worldwhere we rely on those aquifers. But we're able to see now the impact we're having on this over exploitation," Famiglietti told Science Magazine.

But it's getting extremely serious in California (as RT reports),

A growing number of communities in central and northern California could end up without water in 60 days due to the Golden state’s prolonged drought.

There are now a dozen of small communities in Central and Northern California relying on a single source of water – which has the water resources board concerned they will not have any at all in two months’ time.

At a mobile home park north of Oroville, more than 30 families are severely cutting back. The water supply is so tight it is shut off entirely between 10 pm and 5 am, according to CBS Sacramento. The families are relying on one well – all the others have dried up – and have to drive five miles to buy drinking water for themselves and their animals.

*  *  *

In conclusion...

“Nobody has any idea how disastrous it’s going to be,” Mike Wade of California Farm Water Coalition told the Associated Press.

Severe Weather Outlook Video

High heat will bake parts of the West again today while rain lingers in eastern New England. The next chance for severe thunderstorms will come in to the Tennessee Valley on Monday

Damaging hail and hurricane-force winds slam Texas
People in Dallas-Fort Worth metro area are cleaning up after severe weather. More than 180,000 people remain without power. Elizabeth Dinh of Dallas station KTVT reports from Arlington, Texas.

Louisiana Has a Wild Plan to 

Save Itself from Global 

Warming

Too bad the state is being destroyed from within

Internetwork Media  

New Republic,

30 September, 2014

Louisiana is disappearing. Since 1932, the Gulf of Mexico has swallowed 2,300 square miles of the state’s wetlands, an area larger than Delaware. If no action is taken, the missing Delaware will become a missing Connecticut, and then a missing Vermont. The loss of the marshes has catastrophic implications, because they are the state’s first, and strongest, defense against hurricanes.

Two culprits are responsible for most of the destruction. The first is the Army Corps of Engineers, which over the past 130 years has built many of the levees that pin the modern Mississippi River in place to prevent flooding. Without a restrained river, Louisiana would be unsuitable for human civilization. But it was the flooding that built and sustained much of the southern part of the state in the first place. For millennia, whenever a breach opened in the riverbank, muddy water rushed through, depositing alluvium that solidified into land. When one crevasse plugged with mud, the river opened breaches elsewhere. Since the Mississippi has been hemmed in, most of its sediment, instead of replenishing the wetlands, discharges straight into the Gulf of Mexico and disappears off the continental shelf.

The other major destructive force in the region is the fossil fuel industry. One-quarter of the nation’s energy supply passes through southern Louisiana, and much of its infrastructure lies in Plaquemines Parish. Over the last century, energy companies have dredged thousands of miles of canals for tanker ships and pipelines. The canals score the marsh, a defacement plainly visible from the window of an airplane flying above. They are like straws sucking in saltwater from the Gulf, eroding the fragile root systems that hold the wetlands together like woven thread. As the Earth warms, and sea levels rise, more saltwater intrudes, accelerating the deterioration.

Meanwhile, coal terminals and oil refineries and gas storage facilities continue to sprout along the lower Mississippi, belching out more emissions, hastening the rise of the oceans, and coating Warren Lawrence’s dream house in soot.

In recent years, Louisiana has tried to have it both ways, restoring its wetlands while encouraging energy development. In 2012, the state published a Coastal Master Plan endorsed by scientists, state representatives, and energy executives, which listed 109 projects that should be undertaken in the next 50 years in order to offset the depredations of the previous century. Of the 109 projects, one of the most critical, and most ambitious, was called the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion

To read the article GO HERE