California depends on snowfall in the mountains for much of its water. But the latest snow survey recorded a statewide “snow water equivalent” of just 15 inches, or about 54% of average for April 1, when the state’s snowpack is the deepest. The state had a similarly dry winter last year. What followed was a record-setting wildfire season where more than 4% of the state’s land burned, destroying nearly 10,500 buildings and killing 33 people.

Tuesday, Newsom said he was using his emergency authority to spend $80.74 million to hire 1,399 additional firefighters at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, better known as Cal Fire. More than 19,000 firefighters battled blazes in California last year.

“We aren’t just waiting for the next crisis to hit — this funding will support our heroic firefighters to save lives as they work to prevent and tackle destructive wildfires,” Newsom said in a news release.

Most of the new firefighters will be seasonal through June 30. Newsom said Cal Fire will assign 1,256 firefighters to eight understaffed fire crews.

Another 24 firefighters will join the California National Guard hand crews who work to get rid of dead trees and other brush that fuel fires. Newsom said 119 firefighters will join crews trained to drop in wildfire zones via helicopter.

While Newsom’s moves will bolster the state’s seasonal firefighting crews, the state’s two U.S. senators and nearly two dozen of its Congressional representatives asked the Biden administration on Monday to establish a year-round wildland firefighting force.

California’s peak wildfire season typically runs from the summer through late fall. But wildfires can happen anytime, especially in dry weather conditions. A fire in Siskiyou County near the Oregon border that started on Saturday burned 1.3 square miles before it was contained, according to Cal Fire.

Adam Beam • Associated Press

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — California will likely face a critically dry year with much less runoff from the Sierra Nevada snowpack than normal and reservoirs that already are showing the impact of winter precipitation that is well below average, state water authorities said Tuesday.

The state Department of Water Resources’ latest survey from a network of electronic stations found that the water content of the overall snowpack was 61% of the historical March 2 average and 54 percent of the average on April 1, when it is historically at its maximum.

Surveys of the Sierra snowpack, which normally supplies about 30% of California’s water, are a key element of the department’s water supply forecast. December, January and February are typically the wettest part of the so-called “water year,” which starts on Oct. 1 each year.

“As California closes out the fifth consecutive dry month of our water year, absent a series of strong storms in March or April we are going to end with a critically dry year on the heels of last year’s dry conditions,” Karla Nemeth, the department’s director, said in a statement.

She added: “With back-to-back dry years, water efficiency and drought preparedness are more important than ever for communities, agriculture and the environment.”=

The snowpack was doing better in the northern and central Sierra than in the southern end of the range, said Sean de Guzman, the department’s chief of snow surveys and water supply forecasting.

De Guzman manually surveyed an area at Phillips Station, south of Lake Tahoe, where measurements date to 1941. He found a snow depth of 56 inches (142.2 centimeters) and a “snow water content” of 21 inches (53.3 centimeters), translating to a water content 86% of average to date and 83% of the April 1 average.

De Guzman said the impact of a second consecutive dry year were starting to be seen at the state’s largest reservoirs, which are currently storing between 38% and 68% of their capacity.

Lake Shasta, the state’s largest surface water reservoir, was at 50% of capacity, he said.

“This year has been similar to water year 2014, which was the third year of California’s most recent severe drought, which lasted from 2012 to 2016,” de Guzman said in a webcast from the Sierra site.

De Guzman noted that during that drought, 2014 and 2015 were California’s warmest two years on record and that the calendar year of 2020 was the third warmest on record.

“Although we can’t predict how much precipitation California will receive for the remainder of the year, without any series of storms on the horizon it’s safe to say that we’ll end this year dry so it’s important that we’ll have to plan accordingly,” he said.

De Guzman said a change in the weather pattern would begin this week “but still it’s nothing too significant of a storm to write home about quite yet.”

The long-term forecast did not raise any expectation of a return to a normal water year, he said.

While the snow survey focuses on water supply, the department noted that precipitation helps stem wildfires. The latest U.S. Drought Monitor report showed more than 99% of California has indicators of drought or abnormal dryness.

The next snowpack survey will be conducted on April 1.

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Earth sweltered to a record hot September last month, with U.S. climate officials saying there’s nearly a two-to-one chance that 2020 will end up as the globe’s hottest year on record.

Boosted by human-caused climate change, global temperatures averaged 60.75 degrees (15.97 Celsius) last month, edging out 2015 and 2016 for the hottest September in 141 years of recordkeeping, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Wednesday. That’s 1.75 degrees (0.97 degrees Celsius) above the 20th century average.

This record was driven by high heat in Europe, Northern Asia, Russia and much of the Southern Hemisphere, said NOAA climatologist Ahira Sanchez-Lugo. California and Oregon had their hottest Septembers on record.

Earth has had 44 straight Septembers where it has been warmer than the 20th century average and 429 straight months without a cooler than normal month, according to NOAA. The hottest seven Septembers on record have been the last seven.

That means “that no millennial or even parts of Gen-X has lived through a cooler than normal September,” said North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello, herself a millennial.

What’s happening is a combination of global warming from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas and natural variability, Sanchez-Lugo said. But the biggest factor is the human-caused warming, she and Dello said.

The globe set this record despite a La Nina, which is a cooling of parts of the central Pacific that changes weather patterns and usually slightly lowers temperatures.

“A La Nina is no match for how much we’re warming the planet,” Dello said.

The first nine months of 2020 are the second warmest on record, a shade behind 2016 when there was a strong warming El Nino. But Sanchez-Lugo said her office’s calculations show that there’s a 64.7% chance that 2020 will pass 2016 in the last three months to take the title as the warmest year on record. And if it doesn’t make it, she said it’ll easily be in the top three, probably top two.

“We’re catching up” to 2016, Sanchez-Lugo said. “It’s a very tight race.”

With the climate trend, heat records that looked like it would take many years to break get passed quicker, said Colorado University weather data scientist Sam Lillo.

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Poor planning coupled with extreme weather caused rolling blackouts that affected hundreds of thousands of people during an August heat wave, energy regulators said Tuesday.

A 121-page preliminary analysis concluded that the state wasn’t prepared to deal with a “heat storm” that sent temperatures soaring into triple digits on Aug. 14 and Aug. 15 which were, respectively, the third-hottest and the hottest August days in 35 years.

The state’s power grid ordered utilities to cut electricity to customers on a rotating basis for around an hour at a time, affecting more than 800,000 homes and businesses over two days. It was the first such order since 2001.

Gov. Gavin Newsom demanded an investigation after the outages.

“These blackouts, which occurred without prior warning or enough time for preparation, are unacceptable and unbefitting of the nation’s largest and most innovative state,” Newsom wrote in a letter to California’s three major energy agencies.

In its response, the agencies said there wasn’t an single root cause of the outages but rather a series of contributing factors.

California, which has increased its reliance on solar power as it moves towards total reliance on renewable energy, didn’t properly plan for more supplies to cover evening hours when air conditioning demand remained high but solar power production began to fall, according to the study.

In addition, the heat wave blanketed the West, making it harder to import extra electricity from other states, the report said.

“Also due to the effects of heat and drought over time, the availability of hydroelectric power in California in 2020 was below normal. In addition, high clouds from a storm were covering parts of California during the same period, reducing available generation from all types of solar generation facilities,” the report said.

Some issues in the energy market also contributed to supply challenges, such as failing to schedule enough energy ahead of time, the report said.

“The combination of these factors was an extraordinary event,” said a letter to Newsom included in the report. “But it is our responsibility and intent to plan for such events, which are becoming increasingly common in a world rapidly being impacted by climate change.”

It recommended updating planning to account for extreme events and work to move forward with projects that can help provide resources by next year.

The report was prepared by the Public Utilities Commission, the Energy Commission and the California Independent System Operator, which manages the state’s power grid. A final analysis is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

“We will absolutely adjust our planning, procurement, and market policies to meet these changing circumstances and ensure our energy future is clean, reliable, and affordable for all Californians,” PUC President Marybel Batjer said in a statement.

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Ugly Side of Snow

Recent weather brought snowcapped mountains as part of our landscape. Look to the north or look to the east, we see white, shining, glorious mountain tops, glistening in the sunlight, holding us in awe of the Almighty, who created such magnificent visual effect. Everyone who sees all that snow, spontaneously exclaims, “Oh, how beautiful!” How beautiful, indeed!

But let me show you the ugly side of this beauty.

This Thanksgiving was marred with rain and snow throughout California. My business was closed, so I decided to enjoy my day with some light travelling, with some leisurely breakfast at a local restaurant, and a quick run to Apple Valley with part of my family to finish some paperwork and then join the rest of the family for a wonderful Turkey dinner.

Newscasters were talking about freeway closures and the need for water, food, and blankets if one were to travel through the snow-covered roads, in case one was caught in such a situation. I scoffed at the suggestion. Who in Southern California needs to take such precautions?! We have everything in control.

As we traveled through the Cajon Pass, we saw heavy snow falling on our car. It was an amazing experience to be in a snowstorm for the first time in our lives. My kids were full of excitement as we marveled at the cotton candy like texture, at the size of snow pieces that were falling, there were no snowflakes like we see in the fairy tale stories. We tried to capture them as we drove up the mountain, grabbed all the snow that collected on the windshield and mirrors, even ate some as a special treat. It tasted like water, to our amazement, and gave a bite to our tongues. People were stopping on the side of the freeway to play with the snow, make snowballs, and run through the piles and piles of snow that were falling from the sky.

Great fun was being had by all!

We even stopped at a Starbucks, bought hot chocolate and coffee, and sat in the snowstorm for a while, just enjoying yards and yards of Global Warming falling down all around us.

After finishing my paperwork, we headed back to Hemet. I swear to you, I heard ominous music playing in the air. There was heavy traffic, as was expected. I mean, traffic is our life. We live in traffic jams, so that was no big deal. We were moving at a slow speed, but we were moving, nevertheless. I knew that as soon as we made our way down the mountain, it will be back to flying speed.

Boy, was I wrong this time! Snow covered so much of the road that they had to use snowplows to clear the lanes. Snowplows meant we had to pause until they were done. There were periods of rain that followed snow, which turned the snow into slush. Roads were obviously slippery, which lead to jackknifing of big rigs and cars running into other cars. As we know, there are some people who don’t have the necessary patience to deal with such situations, so they try to push their way through. Well, you can all guess the result.

(Ugly Side of Snow)

Freeway was completely closed, and we were at a standstill. We couldn’t back out, or exit anywhere, because we were surrounded by the mountains. We had only one way to go and that was closed. Emergency crews, police, firemen, they all worked diligently to clear the freeway, but they weren’t miracle workers. They could only do so much.

We crawled at a glacial speed. We moved 50 feet and then waited 40 minutes. Moved another 40 feet and waited another 30 minutes. We were practically sitting in a parking lot. People would turn their cars off, get outside and walk around, some were even walking their dogs. One guy was playing baseball with the snowballs he was making from ice collected on top of his car. We were practically being buried in the snow; there was so much of it coming down.

What started out a miracle dream, turned into a huge nightmare. Hours and hours passed. I cursed myself for not listening to the advice of those newscasters about having water and food. Kids were getting hungry, then very hungry, then starving—ON THANKSGIVING—while the rest of the family was feasting like there is no tomorrow. Then the inevitable happened: the dreaded call to nature.

With thousands and thousand of cars around us, with lights shining directly on us, with knee deep snow making it impossible to walk even five feet away from the car, we had to go. Other people were in the same dilemma. When we reached a bursting point, we just had no choice but to relent. We used the front of the car in one instance, shielded my son with an umbrella in another instance, and used the two doors of the car as a makeshift outhouse for myself. We marked the territory, we created the legendary yellow snow, but we also broke the ice for other people as well. Soon, we could see others coming out and enjoying the go. Everyone had to go after ten long hours of sitting in that pile of…(the s-word).

The road was so slippery that my car started moving even though my breaks were fully engaged. I had to take drastic measures to keep myself from running into the car in front of me.

Inch by inch, we moved forward. First one lane, then the next one, and so on. We moved slowly, covering one-tenth of a mile every hour. Five lanes became four, four became three, three became two, until there was only one lane. Then we started moving steadily, but we could only drive at a very low speed, with the fear of our car careening out of control.

It took us close to twelve hours to go from one end of Cajon Pass to the other. We made it home only after midnight, when a truly Black Friday had started for us. We missed our Thanksgiving Dinner, missed the whole family gathering, missed any chance to even eating Turkey. We had to settle for the only fast food we found open at that hour, the McDonald’s in Beaumont. I am telling you, a Big Mac has never tasted so good as the one I ate at the end of our ordeal.

I hate snow. There is nothing beautiful about snow. As far as I am concerned, if I never see snow again in my life, I’ll be so happy.

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