Hopes rise for a strong El Niño to ease California drought

l a times ^ | Rong-Gong Lin II and Rosanna Xia

[BenLurkin]

This month's weather suggests how El Niño's building strength is already affecting the United States. It's giving weather scientists reason to be cautiously optimistic that it has the stamina to see it through California's rainy season, which typically begins in October and ends in April.

"Can one big year ease the drought conditions? Yes, it can," said Michael Anderson, state climatologist with the California Department of Water Resources. "It can definitely replenish the surface storage and can have some benefit to starting to replenish some of the groundwater."

...

El Niño is the warming of Pacific Ocean waters along the equator, from Peru to the International Date Line, that causes changes to the atmosphere and can influence weather globally.

Last year, scientists thought El Niño was forming in the Pacific, only to watch it fade out.

There's reason to believe this coming winter could be different, as El Niño appears to enforce its will elsewhere in the country — offering a possible preview of what California could see.

[CA Conservative]

Drought is the normal condition for most of California, and has been for thousands of years. Most of the state is considered to be wither semi-arid or desert. It has only been in the past 200-300 years that the weather pattern most of us grew up with was the norm. So it is not that surprising that California is returning to its historic weather patterns - and almost certainly has nothing to do with "man-made" global warming!

However, even with the dire warnings of more frequent and longer droughts (whatever the cause), you are still not hearing anything from state officials about increasing the water storage capacity (dams and reservoirs) or developing additional sources of water (pipelines or desalination plants). So I have a hard time believing that they really see this as anything other than an opportunity to impose more regulations and restriction on the citizens, gain more power and increase taxes and public spending.

[notdownwidems]

El Nino will allow Sacramento to continue to dump billions of gallon of water directly into the Pacific Ocean

(they had to open up all five spill gates at Folsom Dam east of Sacramento, CA in early February 2011).

Is that what this freeper was talking about? I've never heard of those nitwits (not that I would put it past them) dumping so much fresh water offshore. Is it really so?

[GreyFriar]

go to Joe Bastardi’s weatherbell.com and listen to his Saturday report for 2 weeks ago. California will be getting rain in the next few months. Perhaps not as much as it needs, but more than it has been getting the past couple of years.

http://www.weatherbell.com/

[discostu]

Shark Nino!

[West Texas Chuck]

Hey, it’s workin’ here. We are above normal pool on all the local lakes now, finally. Hell, even Lake Travis is getting there, came up 30’ in the last month.