Don’t expect a brawny El Niño to bust San Joaquin Valley’s historic drought

Fresno Bee

Scientists say a vast swath of warmer-than-normal water known as El Niño circulating in the eastern Pacific Ocean is poised to be one of the strongest of the past seven decades. It has the potential to play a key role in the formation of storms that could bring much needed rain and snow to California and at least ease the effects of the state’s severe four-year drought.

But there’s that one word – “potential” – that commands attention for the state’s residents, farmers and water regulators, according to weather experts. They add that it will take more than one good winter for the region to escape the grasp of a sustained drought.


“A strong El Niño refers to how much warmer than average the equatorial Pacific Ocean is,” said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center in Maryland. “The one we’re seeing now is currently strong. … It’s among the top two or three events we’ve seen going back to 1950.”

The warmest versions of El Niño to develop in the past seven decades occurred in 1997-98 and in 1982-83.

“In both of those events, California saw a lot of rain and snow,” Halpert said. “The hope is that this one delivers a similar type of pattern.”

No guarantees

Even with an El Niño that last month had sea surface temperatures warmer than normal and on the rise, there’s no such thing as “a sure thing” that the Valley and neighboring mountains will get above-normal rain and snow this winter and spring.

“The conditions are what we’d call ‘favored,’ but you can’t guarantee anything about climate. There are an awful lot of things that go on in climate,” Halpert said. “A strong El Niño shifts the odds in our favor. But even if you go to Las Vegas and play craps with your own loaded dice, you’re not going to roll a seven every time.”

23.57

Inches of rainfall in Fresno in 1982-83, a very strong El Niño year

20.16

Inches of rainfall in Fresno in 1997-98, a very strong El Niño year

How much?

Inches of rainfall in Fresno in 2015-16, expected to be a very strong El Niño year

Forecasters anticipate that this El Niño will bring a wet year for California, “especially in Southern California, but that’s not necessarily where we want it to be,” Halpert said, noting that most of the state’s water storage falls as mountain snow in Northern California.

“You can get too much, too fast sometimes, and that creates flooding and mudslides. And you got a taste of that recently,” he added, referring to October mudslides that trapped trucks and cars on Interstate 5 over Tejon Pass south of Bakersfield and on Highway 58 over the Tehachapi Pass between Bakersfield and Mojave.History shows that El Niño tends to be about an even-money proposition when it comes to dropping substantially more rain and snow on the Valley and the central Sierra Nevada. Both of the previous “very strong” El Niño events, in 1982-83 and 1997-98, packed a wet punch across the entire state. But other El Niño events have been duds.

After four dry winters, Fresno and California's San Joaquin Valley could see above-average rain and snowfall this winter from an El Niño ocean pattern in the eastern Pacific Ocean. But while chances for a wet winter are increased, meteorologists stress that there's no guarantee; it will take more than one good year to make up for the effects of the region's severe drought.

“There have been prior strong El Niño events that did not bring the Valley above-average precipitation,” said Brian Ochs, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Hanford. “Back in around 1965-66 (considered a strong El Niño), Fresno got below-average rainfall and there was snowpack in the Sierra that was average to below average.”

Since 1950, El Niño patterns have occurred 24 times. In 12 of those years, annual rainfall in Fresno has been below the 30-year norm of 11.5 inches. In the other 12, Fresno saw more rainfall than the long-term average. And in the Sierra, at Kaiser Pass in eastern Fresno County, the precious water content of the benchmark April 1 snowpack was actually below normal in 13 of the 24 El Niño years, and above normal 11 times.

That historical context is important for people to remember this year. But forecasters are getting more comfortable with the odds of more rain and snow this winter as the equatorial Pacific keeps warming up.
“A 50 percent chance of above-average rainfall around here is usually pretty confident,” Ochs said. “We’re pretty confident that we’ll see more precipitation than recent seasons, especially the past four years.”

The Valley has been locked in a sustained drought, and the current conditions are considered “extreme,” measured by the Palmer drought index. A database maintained by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information indicates that it would take between 125 percent and 150 percent of normal rainfall – between 15 and 18 inches – in the Fresno region over the next six months just to ease the current drought conditions to half the current severity on the Palmer scale. Even with a potent El Niño warming up in the Pacific, however, the NCEI suggests that the chances of getting that much rain are less than 20 percent.

What the future holds

The odds are even longer for bringing the drought to an “end,” a standard defined as improving the region to a -0.5 on the Palmer scale, as opposed to the -4 it is at now. To do so would take between 150 percent and 175 percent of normal rainfall – or a minimum of 18 inches, and likely much more – in the area over the next six months. The NCEI analytics place the chances of that happening at less than 11 percent.

Kevin Werner, the Seattle-based Western region climate services director for the National Centers for Environmental Information, said history can be instructive for people’s expectations for winter weather, with or without an El Niño.


“Historically, we characterize the climate in the Southwest and California as long periods of dry punctuated by much shorter periods of wet, and sometimes extreme wet,” Werner said. “Regardless of El Niño or climate change or anything else, that climate tends to be one that’s highly variable and tends to see a lot of dry days, dry months or even dry years. That’s the normal.”
“There are many other four- or five-year droughts in the paleo-climate data that go back to 1000 AD,” he added.

A scientific evaluation of tree rings, produced last year for the state Department of Water Resources, reinforces that historic climatic perspective. The width of trees’ annual growth rings tends to correspond to wet and dry years as indicated by river flows.

In the San Joaquin River watershed, an analysis of tree rings indicates that over the past 1,100 years, the region has endured 35 sustained droughts of at least four years in length before the current drought began. Five of those periods have occurred since 1900. The average length of those extended droughts was more than six years, and the two longest drought periods reflected in tree rings were 12 years, from 1450 through 1461, and 13 years, from 1471 through 1483.

Ready for rain

The people in charge of keeping Fresno’s streets and neighborhoods from flooding say they’re confident of being able to handle the rainfall if the Valley gets a string of winter storms.

“The pipeline collection system, our underground pipes, are built for a two-year intensity storm,” said Alan Hofmann, general manager of the Fresno Metropolitan Flood Control District. “It’s built to handle about a half-inch of rain per hour. It’s quite a bit of rain.”

Hofmann recalled one May storm that dumped about three-quarters of an inch of rain in a 15-minute period, “and it flooded intersections (on Blackstone Avenue) like crazy. But an hour after it stopped, the water went away into the basins.”

Most of the storm-drain basins in Fresno’s system can handle about 6 inches of rainfall.

“Our criteria is for us to have enough capacity for the largest two-day storm on record,” Hofmann added. “We’ve got 100 years of records, so we went in and found the largest two-day storm, so we know we can handle that.”
If multiple days of heavy rain start to fill the basins to their brims, a system of pumps can move water from basin to basin and eventually into irrigation canals that carry water to the countryside.

In the years since the last big El Niño winter in 1997-98, the flood district has continued to develop and enlarge its system of basins.
“Even in the 1997 El Niño, I can’t think of more than a handful of basins that went into the streets because they exceeded their capacity,” Hofmann said. “We have considerably more capacity today than we did in the 1997 event.”
Weather experts add that even a gully washer of a winter for the Valley and the adjacent Sierra cannot fully heal the region’s drought wounds. That’s because breaking a drought of this magnitude requires more than just rain falling by the bucket-load and snow burying the mountains.

“It’s possible in one year do a pretty good job of filling your reservoirs,” said Halpert. “But when you look at drought, you’re looking at time scales of short-term drought and long-term drought. … A long-term drought goes more into the groundwater. Over the last few years, your area has survived by draining the groundwater – and that’s not going to recharge in one year.”

The underground water table takes years to recharge, “and it doesn’t take nearly as long to drain it,” Halpert added. “That’s a challenge that folks in California are going to be dealing with for a long time.”

November Update

Dear Member:

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for a Happy New Year.

November high temperatures were cooler than normal (5 degrees).  Total rain for the month was 1.74" compared to an average for November of .94".   So far this season, we're ahead of normal rainfall.

If you haven't dialed back the watering times on your controller, it's now time to cut back to 10 or 20% or even turn it off.  There's plenty of moisture in the ground now as the weather has cooled.

Neighborhood News

Alan and Linda Byrum moved into the home recently owned by Jason Pitts and family.  They are long time residents of the Fresno area, but downsized from a larger home north of us.  Welcome to the neighborhood.

Water Usage

Usage in November was the best of the year,26% better than the target and 34% better than last November. Year to date, we are still 12% better than last year and now 1% better than the target usage.  Click here for larger view.

We were required for the first time to report our water usage from June through November to the SWRCB and compare that to usage for the same period in 2013.  The reporting instructions also asked about the number of days per week landscape watering was allowed.

Cost Comparison

Included in the graph below is an estimate of the year to date cost of purchasing water from the City of Henderson, Nevada, the City of Fresno, and the current charges by BWC.  Click here for larger view.

Secretary Ross joins other water leaders to discuss drought at CentralValley symposium

Fresno Bee 

Some of the state’s top water officials, along with local farmers and activists, convened in Clovis on (November 18) to talk about agriculture and the impact of the drought.

Los Angeles Times reporters hosted the conversation, called “Water in the West,” as part of a series of talks around the state. Helping sponsor the event were the San Diego Union-Tribune and Netafim, an agriculture drip irrigation company.

Around 100 people showed up at the Clovis Veterans Memorial District building to listen to experts including Karen Ross, secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, and Mark Cowin, director of the California Department of Water Resources, give an overview of the issues that have emerged during the drought.

Cowin said the past four years have given California a crash course in how to adjust to limited amounts of water. But he said the state still needs to become more efficient and invest more in its water systems.

“It’s a matter of preparing for the future,” he said. “These past few years have given us, I think, a preview of what we can expect more of in the next century. If scientists are correct, if global climate change affects California the way we now expect it to, we can expect more of these extended dry periods.”

Nikiko Masumoto is already preparing for climate change on her family’s organic peach, nectarine and grape farm in Del Rey. The Masumotos have experimented with deficit irrigation (limiting water) but grew smaller peaches as a result.

Masumoto said the marketplace isn’t in favor of small fruit. She said she hopes the drought leads people to understand that size doesn’t dictate value of food.

“We have a very narrow definition of what a perfect peach, for example, is,” she said. “It might not always be pretty.”

Times correspondent Peter King, a Fresno native and former Bee staff writer, moderated a separate question-and-answer session with Ross. He asked her to address the paradox between people hearing about the suffering of farmers and rural communities, while at the same time California is experiencing record crop production value.

Ross said farmers are resilient and becoming more productive with the water available by focusing on higher economic uses, such as nut trees. That adaptation cloaks the harsh reality that some have felt during the drought, she said.

“Agriculture is very site-specific and where the drought has impacted is very site-specific. We can’t let those numbers be a one-size-fits-all.”

But Sarah Woolf, a farmer and president of the water management service Water Wise, said there isn’t enough water to meet the demands of a growing population, environmental protection and the agriculture industry. She stressed the importance of being more efficient in water use and improving storage and groundwater supplies.

“There’s land not being farmed,” she said. “I don’t think, as a farmer and someone who recognizes the high demand of California food products, that we should decrease our agricultural footprint.”

Cowin agreed about the need for better drought preparation, but he said there’s no way to avoid its effects completely.

“I don’t mean to sound pessimistic here, but I do think it’s not likely that we’re going to make such investment that we’re going to be able to withstand a four- or five-year drought of the nature we’ve seen the last few years without some level of impact,” he said.

Tensions, threats as California’s new groundwater law takes shape

Sacramento Bee

Kings County walnut farmer Doug Verboon worries that his own wells could run dry because of a new, deeper well a neighbor dug right next to his property. Verboon, a county supervisor, has called for restrictions on well drilling and groundwater sales to other counties. John Walker jwalker@fresnobee.com

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article45802360.html#emlnl=Morning_Newsletter#storylink=cpy

Drive the farm roads of sparsely populated Kings County, and it’s hard to miss them: clusters of pipes, cylinders and electrical boxes jutting from the soil every few hundred yards or so, in almost every direction. These are the groundwater pumps that ensure water soaks the vast fields of tomatoes, corn, alfalfa, cherries, almonds and walnuts even when the ditches run dry.

They’ve helped make agriculture the single largest industry in Kings County, where crop values actually have grown by $753 million during California’s drought.

So maybe it shouldn’t have surprised County Supervisor Doug Verboon, who owns a small walnut farm, that he got a hostile reception at a recent gathering after he suggested the county impose restrictions on drilling new wells and selling groundwater to other counties.

“Can you afford a bodyguard?” he recalled one grower asking him. It was bluster, Verboon said. The real fighting is going to take place in front of a judge.

“We’re going to get sued no matter what,” Verboon said.

The tensions in Kings County offer just a taste of what’s expected in cities and towns throughout California’s farm belt over the next few years as local officials work to enact the state’s first-ever groundwater regulations. They are under orders to begin actively managing underground aquifers that for generations have been treated as a private resource, with property owners empowered to dig wells and extract as much water as they wanted without particular regard for their neighbors or government agencies.

But even amid the sobering accounts of dried-up wells, salt-tainted groundwater and collapsing aquifers in California farm country, no one expects regulation will be easy to set up or sell. Instead, the entire process – starting with just who gets to decide how much water can be “sustainably” pumped in a region – is expected to spark lengthy debate and complicated lawsuits. This is particularly true in farm-rich regions such as Kings County, where the groundwater basins are critically overdrawn.

“Based on my experience, the more severe the overdraft – the harder the problem – probably the more likely you’ll end up being in the courts,” said Jeffrey Dunn, an Irvine attorney who specializes in groundwater adjudication cases.

By now, at the tail end of year four of California’s drought, the story of the state’s groundwater woes has been widely chronicled. This year alone, farmers across the state lost nearly 9 million acre-feet of surface water from the state and federal water delivery networks, nearly half their usual supply.

They largely made up for the loss by sinking thousands of new wells and furiously pumping water from below. In the parched San Joaquin Valley, the effects of decades of unregulated groundwater pumping have become more pronounced in the drought. As in much of California, seasonal crops such as cotton and tomatoes have given way to vast orchards of walnuts, pistachios and almonds. These high-demand crops are lucrative, but can’t be fallowed in a drought, leading to more groundwater pumping when surface deliveries are cut.

In some areas, the land is sinking as aquifers are depleted. Portions of the Delta-Mendota Canal, which brings water to much of the San Joaquin Valley, have buckled. NASA researchers found a stretch near the California Aqueduct, the key highway of the State Water Project, that sank 8 inches in four months last year. A spot near Corcoran in Kings County, sank 13 inches in one recent eight-month period.

Saying such conditions posed a threat to the state’s long-term water supply, the Legislature last year passed legislation that imposes sweeping new regulations on groundwater extraction. The laws call for creation of new local agencies with broad powers to restrict pumping and impose penalties for overuse and failing to allow inspections.

Existing state agencies, including the Department of Water Resources and State Water Resources Control Board, are charged with overseeing these local agencies and taking over their programs, if deemed inadequate.

The state is still in the process of finalizing its regulations, but local officials are tasked with making most of the critical decisions about how to create a sustainable system of groundwater use in their region. Questions abound: Who manages the agencies? How will they be funded? How much groundwater can be drawn overall – and how will that be divvied up among individual property owners? Should zoning ordinances be used to limit new wells and the types of crops that can be planted? How is groundwater use tracked? How are violators punished?

The notion of setting limits on groundwater use threatens a business model deeply ingrained in California’s farm economy. Groundwater makes up about 60 percent of all fresh water consumed in California during drought years, and about 40 percent in average years. Given the stakes, a top state groundwater official acknowledged legal challenges are all but inevitable.

“It’s a big state. Probably, unfortunately, there will be litigation,” David Gutierrez, program manager for groundwater sustainability at the Department of Water Resources, recently told the State Board of Food and Agriculture. “Our job is to develop those regulations aside from who’s going to sue who.”

California’s new groundwater legislation affects 127 basins that regulators have deemed to be medium or high priority because of their importance to the state’s water supplies. The basin management agencies must be formed by 2017. The agencies overseeing the 21 basins that have been deemed critically overdrafted have until 2020 to set up long-term management plans. The rest have until 2022.

The legislation doesn’t specify the makeup of the basin management agencies, other than saying members should be local public officials. An existing entity, such as a water district or county board, could manage a basin, or they could be created from a combination of agencies. Their charge will be to ensure water use in their region is balanced – that what’s pumped out can be replenished over time.

A critical unanswered question is how this process will mesh with long-standing California laws that protect water and property rights.

The new groundwater legislation doesn’t prohibit unhappy water users from filing lawsuits hoping to circumvent the process. Under established water law, property owners can ask a Superior Court judge to settle groundwater disputes through a process known as adjudication, in which the judge ultimately rules on who has a right to how much water. Gov. Jerry Brown signed two bills this fall that aim to streamline the adjudication process and prevent litigants from using the courts to hamstring conservation efforts. But these lengthy, costly legal proceedings are left largely untouched by the new groundwater measures.

Adjudications generally require a judge to untangle the water rights of every well owner in a groundwater basin, whether they are cities, irrigation districts or homeowners. The more wells in the basin, the more twisted the knot for the judge to unravel. Plus, the various factions – down to residential well owners – are allowed to bring in expert witnesses to offer their views on basin boundaries, hydrology and historical water use.

“I think, in most areas, the local water users and districts and counties are thoroughly committed to try come up with a management approach rather than litigation approach,” said Sacramento attorney Kevin O’Brien, who handles water disputes. “Everybody understands the expense and time involved in these groundwater (adjudication) cases, many of which take 10, 15, 20 years to resolve.”

Yet that was exactly the approach that a group of local activists preferred in San Luis Obispo County, when supervisors recently placed unprecedented restrictions on groundwater use. The action followed years of complaints from area landowners about wells drying up because aquifers were overdrafted.

Sue Luft, a retired environmental engineer, and her husband, Karl, experienced it firsthand. In 2004, Luft decided to retire and start a small winery. The couple bought 10 acres in Paso Robles in the heart of the rolling brown hills of San Luis Obispo County’s thriving wine country.

Their well began to fail just three years later. Luft dipped into her family’s retirement savings to drill a new deeper well. It’s pulling from a source so deep that the water that comes up is rank with sulfur, salt and boron. The couple resorted to buying a costly filtration system to make the water safe to drink and for irrigation of their zinfandel grapes.

“Our neighbors all around us have drilled new wells, but immediately next door, the neighbor can’t afford to,” she said. “He’s trucking water. A few of the neighbors are trucking water.”

The county Board of Supervisors took action after studies showed that the groundwater levels below Paso Robles were dropping precipitously as arid pastureland was replanted with vineyards. In 2013, the supervisors passed an ordinance requiring farmers in the Paso Robles basin to offset their groundwater use if they wanted to plant new crops. A landowner, for example, would have to remove an acre of alfalfa if he wanted to plant 3.6 acres of new vineyards to ensure the groundwater demand stayed the same.

Last month, the supervisors voted to make the ordinance countywide – and permanent. Voters in the Paso Robles region will decide in March whether to form a groundwater management district. If the measure passes, they also will choose who would sit on a new board, and whether to use a parcel tax to fund it.

The decisions appeared to put San Luis Obispo County years ahead of most jurisdictions in implementing key goals of the new groundwater legislation. But the county’s efforts almost immediately were undermined. A group of vineyard owners and property-rights activists sued, saying they would rather a judge divvy up the groundwater through an adjudication than allowing local politicians to shape the regulations.

Ryan Newkirk, a sixth-generation Paso Robles farmer, is spearheading the legal case with his mother. He said the restrictions the county has put on groundwater use amount to the “government picking winners and losers” based on faulty assumptions.

“I don’t see a lot of responsibility in the regulation that we’re seeing,” said Newkirk, who grows grapes in the region. “It’s just a kind of a rush to get something done, whether it’s right or not. Whether it’s based in fact or not. The potential for us to be negatively impacted by the regulations is what scares us.”

The adjudication is still likely years from being resolved. Should voters approve the new groundwater agency, it’s not clear how its formation will mesh with the legal process.

In Kings County, Russell Waymire is among a group of farmers already expressing concerns about the prospect of new regulations, though they’re still years from being implemented.

Waymire, 64, has been an outspoken advocate for local farmers on water issues. Drivers along the major highways in the San Joaquin Valley likely have seen his handiwork: dozens of yellow signs that read, “Congress Created Dust Bowl.”

Waymire, the 2009 “Agriculturist of the Year for Kings County,” said he was forced to quit farming commercially in the 1990s when his government surface water deliveries were curtailed. He still grows some crops, but his primary income now comes from selling agricultural real estate in the Hanford area.

Absent the government restoring historic surface-water delivery levels, he said, groundwater is the only thing preventing more San Joaquin Valley farmers from going out of business. He speaks of restrictions on pumping in bleak terms: shuttered schools, broke local governments, vast brown fields of dust.

“I refuse to comply myself,” he said. “Because it’s a prescription for bankruptcy.”

Waymire said he hopes area farmers will sue to prevent the groundwater restrictions from being implemented.

Kings County supervisors have heard those threats loud and clear. They’ve also watched the uproar over the groundwater regulations in neighboring San Luis Obispo County.

At the advice of the county’s attorney, the supervisors have held off on taking proactive steps to regulate groundwater. Instead, they’re waiting for the state to finalize the regulatory process, and for various local agencies to figure out what form the county’s groundwater management structure will take. The supervisors said they also hope, in the years ahead, the state will step up to help pay for the county’s inevitable legal fees.

“There’s no question there will be lawsuits,” said Larry Spikes, the county’s administrative officer. “I don’t believe even the most congenial efforts to regulate groundwater will happen without lawsuits occurring … You’re really talking about a sea change in how this has been done.”

Still, Supervisor Verboon is among those in the county who say something needs to change. Increasingly, Verboon said, he hears other small farmers complaining that only the wealthiest among them – the big corporate operations – can afford to pay the tens of thousands of dollars required to install wells deep enough to reach the receding groundwater.

“It’s almost turned into a competition: Who can have the deepest well in the aquifer near your farm,” he said. “We need to have some kind of ordinance to protect us from trying to kill each other off. We don’t want to be fighting over water to survive.”

This isn’t an abstract concept for Verboon. His neighbor recently dug a massive well just feet from the edge of Verboon’s walnut orchard. He wonders whether his two shallower wells might soon pump nothing but air.

“Now you can see the concern you have with your neighbors when it comes to property rights,” Verboon said, glancing over at his neighbor’s pump. “Because whose water is he taking now?”

Bill McEwen: Planning next summer’s water budget

Fresno Bee
The drought has driven a sliver of discontent into a happy home.

My wife likes the grass to be green. But she also knows that we need to play by the rules. So we faithfully obeyed Fresno’s twice-a-week water restriction. The timers were set all summer to Wednesdays and Sundays, and we limited our watering to 10 minutes.

You can guess what happened.

The grass in front gave way to large patches of dirt. The backyard grass virtually disappeared.

“We’re going to lose the grass, anyway,” I said in July. “Let’s stop watering the grass and focus more of the water on the trees in back.”

Don’t bother guessing who won that argument.

Two fruit trees perished in the heat of summer; others are showing signs of stress. With November’s arrival, we are limited to watering on Sundays.
What’s more, our utility bill says we are using a bit more water than Fresno’s “average household.”

At the bottom of last month’s bill was this warning: “If required by drought conditions, your Stage 3 Water Allocation will be 13,593 gallons. You are currently 7,740 gallons above your Stage 3 Water Allocation. Please help to conserve this precious resource.”

Actually, I thought we were conserving this precious resource.
Two folks from the city had come out in early summer and conducted a water audit. They were pleasant and didn’t scold us. They found a leaky sprinkler pipe and a couple of malfunctioning sprinkler heads, and they suggested that we reposition some sprinklers so that they sprayed more on the landscape and less on the back patio.

My brother-in-law came over and did the repairs. You should also know that we follow many of the drought “rules.” We have low-flow toilets, wash full loads of clothes and dishes, take shorter showers than we used to, and let yellow mellow.

However, our three-bedroom home is on a 0.37-acre lot. It’s a lot that people who preach “sustainability” hate with a passion. In their eyes, it’s much too big for just two people.

The flip side is, we have a lot of trees. According to the nonprofit TreePeople, trees clean the air, combat climate change, cool streets, cut energy bills (if situated close to a house) and save water by shading thirsty lawns. Moreover, they provide cover for birds. In fact, I like to think of our backyard as something of a bird sanctuary.

So I am hoping that El Niño spares us from Stage 3, our reservoirs and aquifers start getting refilled, and the California economy – primarily ag – recovers the $4.9 billion and the 35,000 jobs lost to the drought in 2014 and 2015.

Last week’s rain was appreciated. The dirt where the grass used to be turned to mud, which is nicer to look at than dry, dusty dirt.

But regardless of whether El Niño is a boom or a bust, we have to think about water differently.

I’ll start with what I’m going to suggest to my wife: We need to treat water like we do most everything else. That’s right, we need to budget our water.
If it’s green grass you want, then something else has to give.

Showers have to get shorter – again. Our low-flow toilets have to be yanked and replaced with even more water-efficient models. Maybe we’ll replace our landscape with drought-tolerant plants. Or rip out the plant bubblers and install drip. And a green lawn might mean a smaller lawn. A much smaller lawn.

Then there’s this: When guests visit for a week, we can limit them to three showers during the stay and tell them to go potty at the gas station around the corner.

That will get the relatives talking.

I could chop down a few fruit trees so that the last two or three thrive. Or I could start filling up garbage cans with free recycled water from the city’s plant on Jensen Avenue just like my retired colleague George Hostetter and others are doing.

Some things I am not willing to do.

Rocks reflect too much heat to be a substitute for grass. Another brother-in-law went that route. Ripped out the whole front lawn and did the native-plant desert thing. It is beautiful. But you lose 5 pounds walking from the sidewalk to the front door on a July day.

Synthetic grass is too hot for Fresno, too.

Don’t even mention that paint-your-lawn-green thing. They did that at a house a couple of streets south of mine and the result was a shade of green best described as “psychedelic.” Now that lawn is fading to a version of Crayola’s magic mint.

But to each his own.

It really is about choices and budgeting because water – like money – doesn’t grow on trees.

October Update

Dear Member:

October temperatures were slightly higher than normal (2 degrees) with a nice storm arriving mid-month bringing .36" of rain.  Total rain for the month was .49" compared to an average for October of .73".   

If you haven't dialed back the watering times on your controller, it's now time to cut back to 10 or 20% or even turn it off.  There's plenty of moisture in the ground now as weather cools.

Neighborhood News

It is with sadness that we report the passing of long time Sanders Court resident Sam Reid on October 25 after a short illness.  Our condolences go out to his wife Maealene and Sam's family.  

We welcome to the neighborhood Raja Bhamra and his family who recently moved into their new home on the corner of De Wolf and Belmont.

Water Main Shut Off Valves

Progress has been made in locating the water shut off valves for each of the BWC serviced homes.  Only a few remain to be located and the project should be finished soon.

Kings River Pipeline Information

The City of Fresno will be holding a community meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 18, from 6 to 8 p.m. to discuss the design and anticipated construction activities associated with the Kings River Pipeline. The meeting will be held in the Belmont Country Club Banquet Hall, at 8253 E. Belmont Ave., and will include a presentation by City staff at 6:30 p.m. An open house session will be held throughout the meeting to allow for one-on-one discussions with project representatives. The meeting format and information presented will be the same as the September 30 community meeting held at Temperance-Kutner Elementary School.

The Kings River Pipeline is a 13.1-mile-long, 72-inch-diameter water pipeline that will transport untreated water from the Kings River to the new Southeast Surface Water Treatment Facility (SESWTF) to be located at the northwest corner of Armstrong and Olive Avenues on 58 acres. The pipeline route will begin at a diversion point near the Fresno Canal #3 crossing of East Trimmer Springs Road, and will travel west along Belmont Avenue to Armstrong Avenue, then north along Armstrong Avenue to the SESWTF. The pipeline will bring water into the facility for treatment and distribution to customers throughout the City, reducing reliance on groundwater and replenishing groundwater supplies. The current schedule shows construction to begin in Summer 2016 with completion in Spring 2018.

The purpose of the community meeting is to meet with the Belmont Country Club  and Water Corporation community to discuss and gather input on specific elements of the design and construction plans. During the November 18 meeting, attendees will hear from City representatives about the pipeline design and construction schedules. Residents will have the opportunity to ask questions about and provide input on design and construction issues. The City looks forward to discussing the Kings River Pipeline plans with the community. If you are unable to attend the meeting and would like to provide a comment, or for more information, please visit www.rechargefresno.com or call 844-FRESNOH2O.

Water Usage

Usage in October was better compared to September.  October usage was 12% better than the target and 19% better than last October. Year to date, we are still 11% better than last year and only 1% behind the target usage.  Click here for larger view.

Cost Comparison

Included in the graph below is an estimate of the year to date cost of purchasing water from the City of Henderson, Nevada, the City of Fresno, and the current charges by BWC.  Click here for larger view.

Warm weather complicates El Niño, drought outlook

Sacramento Bee

Like a lot of Californians, Sue and Steve Duroncelet are getting whipsawed by conflicting weather. After dutifully letting their Land Park lawn go brown, the couple now are having to trim their trees to prepare for El Niño storms while they sweat out an early-fall heat wave.

“We’re ready for cold air,” Sue Duroncelet said Thursday as she and her husband walked through midtown Sacramento.

It’s been warm in Sacramento, way too warm for mid-October, the latest twist in a year of often maddening weather patterns. While a cooling trend may give some immediate relief, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says higher-than-normal temperatures likely will be the rule and not the exception this fall and winter. That could be a problem: Warm weather could hinder how much drought relief California will get when the much-anticipated El Niño arrives and the precipitation starts to fall.

The oceanic agency delivered its latest winter forecast Thursday, and it was something of a mixed bag. It reiterated earlier predictions that California can expect one of the strongest El Niño winters ever, with above-average rains increasingly likely for the central and southern parts of the state.

Northern California, home to most of the state’s major reservoirs, remains tougher to forecast. The agency said the Sacramento Valley has an 80 percent chance of getting normal precipitation this winter, and a 34 percent to 40 percent chance of above-average precipitation.

However, the agency said exceedingly warm temperatures will mean much of that precipitation is likely to fall as rain instead of snow, undermining El Niño’s ability to ease the drought substantially. What California needs most is a generous snowpack in the northern Sierra Nevada, capable of keeping reservoirs, rivers and canals filled with runoff well into next spring and summer.

Overall, “the winter outlook is good news for California,” said Mike Halpert, deputy director at the federal agency’s Climate Prediction Center in College Park, Md. But he said El Niño likely will translate into “drought improvement,” not “drought removal.” The heaviest precipitation should begin in January.

Speaking on a conference call with reporters, Halpert said California’s accumulated water “deficit” is almost certainly too steep to remedy in one winter. California needs about three times the normal precipitation to bring the state back into balance; the wettest winter in modern history, in 1983, brought twice as much precipitation as normal.

“One season of above-average rain and snow is unlikely to erase four years of drought,” Halpert said.

Meanwhile, the unusual fall heat is making it harder for some area water district managers to reach their mandated conservation goals. The Fair Oaks Water District had cut water use by 39 percent since June, when statewide mandates went into effect. In September, the savings trailed off to 25 percent, said general manager Tom Gray. He said the challenge is that while most homeowners have contentiously let their lawns die, they’re still watering the trees and shrubs that otherwise would wither in the heat.

“Even those same water-responsible people are still using outdoor irrigation,” Gray said. “At this time of year, (normally) they’d be trending back. They’re not.”

The unseasonable weather also has kept state fire crews on full alert. They responded to 125 new fires last week. A 600-acre fire near Hollister is still burning, said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

“We’ve not changed or talked about the reduction of staffing that we’d normally be doing this time of year,” Berlant said.
The unseasonal heat is enough to frustrate even meteorologists who study weather patterns for a living.

“Fall’s a nice time of year. You cool off. You shouldn’t be in mid-October and it’s 95 degrees outside,” said Jason Clapp of the National Weather Service in Sacramento, ending the last sentence with a disgusted “ugh.”

Temperatures hit a high of 96 on Tuesday in Sacramento, a record for Oct 13. Although temperatures have cooled somewhat, Thursday’s high downtown of 90 was still several degrees above normal. Earlier predictions of a wet weekend have given way to a mere 20 percent chance of sprinkles late Saturday.

Mike Anderson, the state climatologist, said the warm spell “has a lot to do with some lingering summer patterns. We have a lot of warm air. We haven’t quite gotten into our fall pattern.”

El Niño is a phenomenon marked by warming sea temperatures in the Pacific during summer and fall. It usually unleashes a torrent of rain in Southern California, but the impact is generally less predictable in Northern California.

Halpert, of the national oceanic agency, said this winter’s El Nino is shaping up as one of the three strongest in the past half-century, and the chance of a wet winter in Northern California is improving. “As we get closer to winter, we’re probably tilting a little more toward a wetter-than-average winter” in Northern California, he said.

Heavy rains would help replenish the region’s underfilled reservoirs, at least in the short term. Folsom Lake fell to its lowest level in 23 years this week, bringing the giant reservoir to just 17 percent of capacity.

In the Sierra, however, snow would be better than rain. That would translate into snowmelt that provides additional water next spring and summer, over and above what can be safely stored in Folsom, Shasta and other reservoirs during the storm season. The difference between a rainy winter and a snowy one can be enormous. The Sacramento region received two-thirds of its normal rainfall last winter, but the Sierra snowpack was just 5 percent of normal, leading to record drought conditions.

Asked about the expected snowpack around Lake Tahoe this winter, Alan Haynes, a hydrologist with the federal agency’s California Nevada River Forecast Center, said “it might be slightly more likely to be wet and slightly more likely to be warmer.”

Tahoe tourism officials will embrace that forecast. After a winter that forced at least seven Tahoe-area ski resorts to shut down prematurely, the possibility of any kind of meaningful precipitation is a reason for hope.

“If you have any kind of moisture, your odds of it being cold enough and white enough go up,” said John Rice, general manager at Sierra-at-Tahoe. The resort closed two weeks ahead of schedule last winter.

2016 Long Range Weather Forecast for Pacific Southwest

The Old Farmers Almanac

Two-Month Weather Forecast

OCTOBER 2015: temperature 64° (1° below avg.); precipitation 1" (1" above avg. north, 0.5" below south); Oct 1-10: Sunny, cool; Oct 11-16: Showers, mainly north; cool; Oct 17-22: Sunny, cool; Oct 23-26: Showers north, sunny south; Oct 27-31: Rainy north, showers south; mild.

NOVEMBER 2015: temperature 60° (2° above avg.); precipitation 3.5" (2" above avg.); Nov 1-4: Showers north, sunny south; Nov 5-16: Sunny; warm, then seasonable; Nov 17-22: Stormy, heavy rains; Nov 23-30: Rainy periods, mild.

Annual Weather Summary: November 2015 to October 2016

Although the early part of the winter season will feature above-normal rainfall, the drought will continue as rainy periods will diminish in the season?s second half and precipitation will be below normal for the winter season as a whole, with below-normal mountain snows not helping to ease the drought. The stormiest periods will be in mid- to late November, early to mid-December, early January, and early March. Overall, temperatures will be slightly cooler than normal. The coldest period will be in late December, with other cold periods in early and late January and mid-February.

April and May will be cooler and slightly rainier than normal.

Summer will be hotter than normal, with near-normal rainfall. The hottest periods will be in early June, early to mid- and late July, and early and mid- to late August.

September and October will be slightly cooler than normal, with near-normal rainfall.

Temperature and Precipitation November 2015 to October 2016

New forecast says El Niño could help Northern California, ease drought

Sacramento Bee

From left, Dominic Smith, Aiden Shephard and Blake Machado, all age 14 and of El Dorado Hills, wade to shore around rocks exposed by the American River’s low water level near the Rainbow Bridge in Folsom earlier this summer. Paul Kitagaki Jr. pkitagaki@sacbee.com

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article38191380.html#storylink=cpy

El Niño might put a dent in the drought after all.

In a revised forecast Thursday, the National Weather Service said Northern California stands a decent chance of getting significant precipitation from this winter’s El Niño weather pattern, a development that could help ease the state’s four-year drought.

Until now, forecasters have been saying this winter likely would bring heavy rains to Southern California, which is typical for El Niño, but they’ve been less certain about the outlook for the northern half of the state. Because the state’s major reservoirs are in the north, that’s where the rain and snow need to fall to substantially bolster the state’s water supplies.

Michelle Mead, a forecaster in the agency’s Sacramento office, said Sacramento and the Sacramento Valley have at least an 80 percent chance of seeing average precipitation this winter. The chance of above-average precipitation has been pegged at 34 percent to 40 percent, she said.

“Not that it will be a deluge and everybody needs to stop conserving water,” she said. The bulk of the precipitation will fall in December, January and February, she said.

William Patzert, a climate expert at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, was less circumspect, saying he’s convinced El Niño will be felt in Northern California. “At this point – at this particular time – this is too large too fail,” he said. “People like to be conservative. They don’t want to stick their neck out. But this is definitely the real deal.”

If history is a guide, California will see big snow in the northern mountains along with rain in the south, Patzert said. “The last two El Niños that were of this magnitude hosed all of California,” he said. “If you look at the snowpack for those two El Niños, you had double the snowpack, too.”

What’s changed since the weather service’s previous forecasts? Mead said analysts took a fresh look at previous winters and concluded that strong El Niños tend to bring heavy rains in the north. Other forecasters noted the persistence of this year’s El Niño and said temperature anomalies in the South Pacific are favorable to Northern California’s rain outlook.

“Moderate El Niños tend to get Southern California wet, and the strong ones get all of California wet,” said Jeffrey Mount, a water specialist at the Public Policy Institute of California. Mount said he’s encouraged that the so-called “ridiculously resilient ridge,” the high-pressure system that kept rain and snow from falling on California, is breaking down.

But Mount and Jay Lund, an engineer and watershed specialist at UC Davis, noted that the relative scarcity of strong El Niños – just six since 1957 – means it’s difficult to get too comfortable with the latest forecast.

“We have a small sample size,” Lund said. “There’s still a substantial probability that we’re going to be in a drought next year.”

State climatologist Michael Anderson, who has urged caution as El Niño fever has risen in the last few months, said he, too, thinks there’s a better chance of significant precipitation in Northern California. “As we get closer, we are seeing trajectories move in a more favorable outcome,” he said.

Anderson nonetheless encouraged Sacramento residents to continue to conserve water. He and others noted that the drought is so severe that even a huge rainfall year will not fully erase its effects. Plus, he said, “We want to wait until we actually see it.”

Mead said Sacramento received 13.8 inches of rain last winter, about 68 percent of average.

El Niño is a phenomenon linked to above-average water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean. Mead said the temperature is expected to peak at 2.5 degrees Celsius above normal this winter, ranking this among the strongest El Niños on record.

The latest forecast put the chance of El Niño striking at 95 percent, the same as a month ago.

State’s water savings hit 27%

Fresno Bee

Californians beat the state’s mandates for water conservation in August – barely.

Urban water use fell by 26.9 percent compared with August 2013, a conservation rate that was lower than July’s but still higher than the 25 percent requirement set by Gov. Jerry Brown, the State Water Resources Control Board announced Thursday.

The results mean Californians have beaten the statewide mandate during each of the first three months of mandatory cutbacks ordered by the governor. Savings have averaged 28.7 percent since the cutbacks went into effect June 1.

Drought regulators said they were generally pleased with the results, although the savings rate for August wasn’t as impressive as the 31.4 percent in July. Board Chair Felicia Marcus said a spell of rainy weather in Southern California in July made it easier to conserve water that month, and she thinks water users aren’t backsliding.

“People get it,” she said on a conference call with reporters. “In a crisis, people pull together and they hang in there.”

Most central San Joaquin Valley water agencies fell short of their state conservation goals in August, officials said, though Selma, Kingsburg, Merced and Bakman Water Co., which serves an area southeast of Fresno, achieved their goals.

Fresno came close, reducing water consumption by 27.5 percent compared with August 2013 –half a percent short of its 28 percent goal.

Some water providers, however, fell far short of the state-mandated conservation standard.

At 15.6 percent, Lemoore’s reduction was less than half of what the state sought – 32 percent. Hanford was even worse – just 5.7 percent vs. a goal of 28 percent.

Hanford, which is among the lowest-performing communities in water conservation under the state’s rules, was the only Central Valley city issued a compliance order by the State Water Resources Control Board. Hanford was one of eight cities statewide to receive a compliance order.

Lou Camara, the city’s public works director, said Hanford was expecting it.

The city will improve conservation by raising rates to encourage conservation, update bills to make them easier for customers to understand and improve public awareness and outreach by adding booths at local shopping malls to make residents more aware of conservation.

For about 25 years, Camara said, the city has made efforts to reduce water consumption, which means Hanford was starting at a lower consumption level than other cities that only recently began conserving. Since 2013, the city’s water consumption has increased because of new commercial projects and the addition of three subdivisions and a school outside the city limits into the city’s water system.

In Sacramento, where residents woke up to wet pavement, Marcus warned Californians against becoming complacent about water use. She was particularly worried about residents overreacting to forecasts of a significant El Niño winter. She noted forecasters have said the storms could fall mainly in Southern California, bypassing the north state.

September Update

Dear Member:

September temperatures were close to normal with a couple of rainy days at mid-month which brought us exactly the average rain fall for the month of .12 inches. 

It seems everyone as heard the many predictions of an El Nino year with plenty of rain throughout the state. A few climatologists are less than enthusiastic about a coming El Nino because recent climate change disrupts the long range models making predictions with any degree of confidence more difficult.  

As of October 1, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the six key Central Valley Project (CVP) reservoirs – Shasta, Trinity, Folsom, New Melones, Millerton, and the federal share of San Luis Reservoir – hold 24 percent of their total carrying capacity and just 47 percent of the 6.12 million acre feet the lakes should have in them at this time of the year.  Storage on Oct. 1 was 200,000 acre feet less than what the CVP began the 2014-15 water year with.  Lower releases for the coming year will mean more ground water pumping.

Water Usage

Usage in September was better compared to August.  September usage was 1% behind the target and 7% better than last September. Year to date, we are still 10% better than last year and only 3% behind the target usage.  If you have a seasonal adjustment on your lawn sprinkler controller, you should be dialing it back to 60-70% of normal. 

The water depth of our well was checked in mid-September. The level dropped 3 feet from the check in May.  It is also 3 feet lower than the same time last year.

Cost Comparison

Henderson Nevada draws water from Lake Mead.  Backed up by the Hoover Dam, it supplies water to Southern Nevada, Arizona, and Southern California.  Southern Nevada,along with the surrounding area including the Colorado River watershed, is in the midst of a multi year drought which has forced water savings by all means including increased water rates.  Henderson rates are now tiered with heavy users paying much higher rates.  As you can see in the following graph, monthly household usage costs would be dramatically higher there than here.  Also included in the graph is an estimate of the monthly cost if we were purchasing water from the City of Fresno, also much higher than the BWC current rates.