The latest on powerful California storm

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Here is the latest on the storm hitting California gathered by AP reporters across the state:
6:59 a.m. PST:

Amtrak suspended service from Los Angeles north to the central coast city of San Luis Obispo but continued to operate service between LA and San Diego.

6:59 a.m. PST:

Glendora police Lt. Matt Williams says five people are using an evacuation center after debris flows sent rocks the size of golf ball and bricks down the street. He says it's unclear how many people have left their homes, but no injuries or damage to homes have been reported in the area charred by the Colby Fire in January in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.

6:59 a.m. PST:
Red Cross spokesman Tom Horan says 40 people displaced by the mudflow in Camarillo Springs, about 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles in Ventura County, have come to an evacuation center. Two were taken to the hospital, but Horan said their injuries weren't serious.

FULL story at link.



A surfer on the Huntington Beach pier waits for the large waves to show themselves on Thursday morning Dec. 11, 2014. A powerful storm churned down the West Coast on Thursday, bringing strong gales and much-needed rain and snow that caused widespread blackouts in Northern California and whiteouts in the Sierra Nevada. (AP Photo/The Orange County Register, Michael Goulding)

Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20141212/us-california-storms-the-latest-ed3d8576f5.html

[BlueCaliDem]

1. Yet don't be surprised to read in the "news" in a month of two that CA is still in a drought

and we haven't had much rain to change that.

[GGJohn]

2. It's going to take several years of good snow packs in the various mountain ranges

to alleviate the drought conditions in CA, NV, AZ, hopefully, this is the beginning of it.

[FLPanhandle]

3. California is still in a drought even with this one storm.

One storm won't replenish the water table. Most of this rain came down too fast and will just run off vs. being absorbed.

[SpankMe]

4. I don't know if this is sarcasm or not.

But, it'll take years of multiple storms like this to get us out of the drought status we're in. We need ground water / aquifer replenishment, lots of muti-year, sustained snow pack, and the return of lakes and reservoirs to healthy levels. The lake near me, where most of our town's water comes from, is at 17% of capacity. The recent storms have brought that up to 19-20%. When you look at a 2-5% increase per major storm, and accounting for the evaporation and consumption of water from that lake in between storms, it would take something like 20 to 25 such storms to restore the lake to full, non-drought status. We've had 2 such storms this year. We may have 1 or 2 more by next spring. At that rate, we're looking at 5 years minimum of healthy rainfall to get us out of drought.

And, each year that we have less than that healthy rainfall puts us back further and further.

[cosmicone]

5. I'd be more afraid of news that we are out of drought

after just a couple of heavy storms.

That will accelerate consumption and we'll be back in a worse drought by May 2015.

[deurbano]

6. Still have a long way to go, but this is definitely helping.

http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_27120528/california-drought-winter-storms-finally-starting-boost-storage?source=most_viewed

“California drought: Winter storms finally starting to boost storage levels in key reservoirs”
By Paul Rogers
[e-mail]
POSTED: 12/11/2014 07:23:16 PM PST

<<After three years of relentlessly bad news about California's historic drought, the drenching storm that barreled in Thursday from Hawaii finally delivered the state some desperately needed good news.

One storm does not end a drought as severe as this one, meteorologists and water managers emphasized again Thursday. But this storm and last week's milder one have done something very important: They have saturated the parched ground across Northern California so much that rainfall is finally starting to fill up the state's dangerously low reservoirs as it runs down streams, rivers and hillsides….

…Now, with a near-perfect start to the 2014-15 rainy season, the state needs to repeat the pattern over and over again until March or April, scientists said Thursday…

….After three years of drought, Shasta Lake on Wednesday night was just 26 percent full. Oroville was only 29 percent full. With the water from this storm, Shasta will be 34 percent full, Oroville 33 percent full. And that's still below the historic average of where they normally are in mid-December.

By one Department of Water Resources estimate, California will need eight major storm systems this winter like last week's and this week's to fill the reservoirs and end the drought. With two down, six more are needed by April…..>>