Podcasts about San Joaquin River

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Garry Bredefeld, Fresno County Supervisor, discusses the controversial CEMEX blast mine on the San Joaquin River. Please Like, Comment and Follow 'Broeske & Musson' on all platforms: --- The ‘Broeske & Musson Podcast’ is available on the KMJNOW app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever else you listen to podcasts. --- ‘Broeske & Musson' Weekdays 9-11 AM Pacific on News/Talk 580 AM & 105.9 FM KMJ | Facebook | Podcast| X | - Everything KMJ KMJNOW App | Podcasts | Facebook | X | Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, we recap what we did over the wee. We first talk about the Nutria problem in California that has already infested the San Joaquin River. We talk local sports as our Fresno State Men's Basketball team, which will be in action this weekend at the Save Mart Center. We continue to support local music as Ramses and T.A. The Handful as we talk about their latestest project called "Champions." We conclude the pod talking Super Bowl 59 and the new NBA trades. Be sure to support all your local businesses, artists, and podcasts. Have a blazing week!

Dan and Carol. California Wine Country welcomes Carol Shelton, famous for Wild Thing wines with wild yeast, and for much more. CWC has the day off today so for today's podcast edition, this is a replay of the May 31, 2023 episode.  Carol Shelton makes varietals beside Zin, although she is known as the Queen of Zinfandel, and she is back on California Wine Country today, with Steve Jaxon, Dan Berger and Harry Duke. She has been on California Wine Country several times, most recently on this episode of February 15, 2023. Dan Berger introduces Carol Shelton by saying that every time she enters a competition she wins gold medals. She just entered the North of the Gate competition and won 6 double golds and best of classes, best of show red and Carol was named winemaker of the competition. Every grape entered has to have been grown north of the Golden Gate. Dan likes the competition because it's a smaller more local competition and the judges all know each other. What is Wild Thing? They are tasting Carol's 2022 Wild Thing Chardonnay. Wild Thing was originally the name of her Zinfandel, because she adds no yeast to what is there naturally. Dan says that it has good structure due to its acidity. It has tropical fruit in the aroma, but it is tart and will go with food. Carol says that the fruit profile comes from some Viognier and some Roussanne which she blended in. Next tasting is another gold medal, her signature wine called Wild Thing Zinfandel. Mendocino has some of the oldest Zinfandel in California. In the Ukiah area, it is warm but not too hot. This wine has explosive blackberry fruit. It is blended with some Carignane and Petit Syrah that is also grown on the property. Click the logo to visit our sponsor Bottle Barn online for the coolest bargains on wine, beer and spirits. Carol came to California in high school and attended UC Davis. Her mother encouraged her to follow her interest in sciences and to look into food sciences. She took the Introduction to Wine class and found the connections to history, culture, food, sensory data, chemistry, microbiology were everything she loved. Eventually she got her degree in Fermentation Science in 1978. (The degree is called Enology today.) Their tasting room is at 3354 Coffee Lane, they are in the back behind a few others, in the same business park with Moonlight Brewing. They are open daily from 11 am to 4 pm. Mention California Wine Country on The Drive to get a free tasting in Santa Rosa. Barbera d'Oakley They make Barbera d'Alba or Barbera d'Asti, different blends made in different towns in Piedmont. Barbera is a dry red wine popular in northern Italy. The vineyard is in Oakley, California, it is at the edge of the delta, at the San Joaquin River. The vines are over 100 years old. 75% Barbera, 10% Zin, 10% Merlot, and 5% Carignanne. It won a slew of medals. It has a dark color and vibrant aroma. The next tasting is Coquille Rouge, which is all red Rhone varieties, grown at Oakley. Mourvedre, Grenache Noir and Petit Syrah, Carignane and Alicante Bouchet.

Dan Berger and Carol Shelton. Carol Shelton makes varietals beside Zin, although she is known as the Queen of Zinfandel, and she is back on California Wine Country today, with Steve Jaxon, Dan Berger and Harry Duke. She has been on California Wine Country several times, most recently on this episode of February 15, 2023. Dan Berger introduces Carol Shelton by saying that every time she enters a competition she wins gold medals. She just entered the North of the Gate competition and won 6 double golds and best of classes, best of show red and Carol was named winemaker of the competition. Every grape entered has to have been grown north of the Golden Gate. Dan likes the competition because it's a smaller more local competition and the judges all know each other. What is Wild Thing? They are tasting Carol's 2022 Wild Thing Chardonnay. Wild Thing was originally the name of her Zinfandel, because she adds no yeast to what is there naturally. Dan says that it has good structure due to its acidity. It has tropical fruit in the aroma, but it is tart and will go with food. Carol says that the fruit profile comes from some Viognier and some Roussanne which she blended in. Click the logo to visit our sponsor Rodney Strong for the latest on the 2022 Summer Concert series. Next tasting is another gold medal, her signature wine called Wild Thing Zinfandel. Mendocino has some of the oldest Zinfandel in California. In the Ukiah area, it is warm but not too hot. This wine has explosive blackberry fruit. It is blended with some Carignane and Petit Syrah that is also grown on the property. Click the logo to visit our sponsor Bottle Barn online for the coolest bargains on wine, beer and spirits. Carol came to California in high school and attended UC Davis. Her mother encouraged her to follow her interest in sciences and to look into food sciences. She took the Introduction to Wine class and found the connections to history, culture, food, sensory data, chemistry, microbiology were everything she loved. Eventually she got her degree in Fermentation Science in 1978. (The degree is called Enology today.) Their tasting room is at 3354 Coffee Lane, they are in the back behind a few others, in the same business park with Moonlight Brewing. They are open daily from 11 am to 4 pm. Mention California Wine Country on The Drive to get a free tasting in Santa Rosa. Barbera d'Oakley They make Barbera d'Alba or Barbera d'Asti, different blends made in different towns in Piedmont. Barbera is a dry red wine popular in northern Italy. The vineyard is in Oakley, California, it is at the edge of the delta, at the San Joaquin River. The vines are over 100 years old. 75% Barbera, 10% Zin, 10% Merlot, and 5% Carignanne. It won a slew of medals. It has a dark color and vibrant aroma. The next tasting is Coquille Rouge, which is all red Rhone varieties, grown at Oakley. Mourvedre, Grenache Noir and Petit Syrah, Carignane and Alicante Bouchet.

It was a remarkable winter in the western United States with phenomenal snow and heavy rain. Now that things have quieted down, UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain joins the meteorologists to discuss what's next. What will happen as all the snow melts? What will this year's wildfire season be like? Will the atmospheric rivers return next winter? It's a deep dive into all things weather and climate across the West on this week's episode. About the Across the Sky podcast The weekly weather podcast is hosted on a rotation by the Lee Weather team: Matt Holiner of Lee Enterprises' Midwest group in Chicago, Kirsten Lang of the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, Joe Martucci of the Press of Atlantic City, N.J., and Sean Sublette of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia. Episode transcript Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically: Hello, once again, everybody. I'm meteorologist Sean Sublette and welcome to Across the Sky, our National Lee Enterprises weather podcast. Lee Enterprises has print and digital news operations in 77 locations across the country, including in my home base in Richmond, Virginia. I'm joined by my meteorologist colleagues from across the sky, Matt Holiner in Chicago and Joe Martucci at the New Jersey Shore. My colleague Kirsten Lang is taking some well-deserved time off in Tulsa for a couple of weeks. And guys, we've got Daniel West on the podcast today. A lot of people know him as Weather West. Why are you shaking your head at me? Daniel Swain. Okay. Daniel Swain. Daniel Swain. He's Weather West. Yes. You all knew where I was going with you? Of course. Of course. Without a doubt. Without an end. And he's great. I mean, I've done some work with him when I was with the Climate Central. He's just got a wonderful, wonderful grip on what the weather and the climate are in the western part of the country. And it's really, really nice. Yeah, well, you know, Shawn, it's a good follow up from last week's episode where we talked with Donnie down at the Placer County Department of Public Works about all the snow that they plowed. So we have the boots on the ground with your last episode with Donnie. This time we're taking it from the academic perspective and the forecasting and a look back perspective with Daniel Swain. So it's a good one two punch as we really exit out of the cool season, and then we promise we'll talk about warmer and more summery things as we go forward over the next couple of. Yeah, this is a real interesting conversation with Daniel because he's just, you know, really focused in on the West. And I think oftentimes, you know, as meteorologists in the central and Eastern part of the country, because it seems like a lot of the time there's not much going on in the West, so it doesn't get discussed much. But, boy, this winter was truly the exception. There was lots of talk on the National level about what's going on out west. And, you know, it kind of like shifted a tinge. It's like, wait a minute, I thought the you know, nothing happened in the West. It's just constant, never ending drought. And wildfires. Well, this is this year was the proof that you can't forget about what's going on our way because it's not going to be drought all the time. It's not going to just be wildfires all the time. They're still going to get big rains. They're still going to get big snows and look at the impacts that it cause. And of course, Daniel is tuned in with the West all the time and is aware that it's not this drought going on out there. So he was the perfect person to bring on and really dive into. This is a fascinating discussion. Yeah, it really was. We're glad to have him. So let's cue it all up and get our discussion started with Daniel Swain there at UCLA. And our guest this week is Daniel Swain, climate scientist at the Institute of Environment and Sustainability at UCLA and author of the popular Weather West blog and YouTube Channel. He has been featured on numerous digital and legacy broadcast outlets talking about weather and climate in the Western U.S. And we are absolutely delighted to have Daniel on the podcast. It has been so busy, I know for you, Daniel. Thank you so much for joining us on the Across the Sky podcast. Thanks again for having me. Glad to be here. I do want to talk about some of the big picture items down the road, but first, let's talk about immediacy. These next, let's say 1 to 3 weeks there in California, of course, with the phenomenal amount of snow. Everybody kind of gets that. But now it's starting to melt and we've got kind of a hot spell actually developing. So what does this kind of portend or kind of lay the groundwork with regarding flooding there in California in the coming, let's say, one, two or three weeks? Well, I think you've nailed most of the key points there. But it's I think it's worth digging into a couple of them because, you know, California, just to review, you had an exceptionally wet winter in the central part of the state, which includes the southern half of the Sierra Nevada mountain range and really phenomenal amount of snow accumulated tens of feet at the higher elevations in these places. And so currently the water stored in that snowpack in the southern Sierra is on the order of 2 to 3 times the average amounts, a 2 to 300% of average, which in some places in the far southern Sierra is the largest amount ever observed at this point in the season. So there is a huge amount of water up there, the vast majority of which is still yet to melt. And all of that melt is eventually going to end up in rivers and streams that drain, mainly down the western slopes of the mountain range into California's Central Valley and the San Joaquin Valley and Tulare Lake Basins in particular. So all of that water that's up there in the mountains right now, a snowpack is eventually going to make its way to lower elevation areas and probably given this heat wave that's going to ramp up later this week. So a lot of that's going to melt sooner rather than later. Can I get you to talk a little bit about to Larry Lake? I've just become aware of this over the last three or four weeks. I did not know that there was an actual lake there decades and decades ago, but there has been a change. So what is that all about there and about what part of California is that? Yeah. To every lake is or was I guess was and perhaps will be a maybe is the best way of putting it given what's going on right now the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi. This is quite a substantial body of water in the southern San Joaquin Valley of California. It was indeed a century or so ago drained mainly, so it could be used for agricultural purposes. But but also a number of people now live within this historic lake bed, which is sort of maintaining itself in most years from becoming a lake again by having lots of levees and dikes and conduits, artificial interventions to keep the water away, essentially. And in recent years, recent drought years, you know, flood risk has been far afield. People haven't really been thinking about it. But now that we've got got a very wet winter in this part of the state, now that we have this enormous snowpack upstream, a lot of that water is accumulating in this basin and there is no outlet to the ocean and to very lake based and of the flooding gets very severe and it spills over the top of the basin into the San Joaquin River. The water that flows into Tillery Lake Basin, it it stays there, it accumulates. And so all of that we're hearing about all this flooding, that water isn't going to by itself just gradually drain out to the ocean. That water is just going to sit there and continue to get deeper as more and more water flows in. You know, so one challenge in addition to all the water that's flowing in from snowmelt and rain this past winter, is that the ground itself has subsided, literally sunk in the Tillery Lake Basin in recent years due to groundwater pumping during severe drought. So we're actually seeing probably flooding that will be deeper and more prolonged here in this wet spell because of the drought conditions that just ended and the human response to that drought being to pump all this water out of the aquifers, the ground has sunk in some places by ten or more feet. So this is not a barely measurable thing. This is you know, I'm I'm six foot four and the ground has sunk by, you know, considerably more than my height in recent years. That's going to affect the flooding in ways that are, I think, hard to predict from the outset. Yeah. Before I turn this over to Joe, I know you want to go next, but can you give us a little more idea of how big this lake is? I'd say compared to someplace like the Great Salt Lake. Is it about that size? Half of that larger just for some kind of frame of reference? Well, I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but, you know, it's it's the challenge is it's, you know, this especially this type of lake doesn't have a fixed size. During the great flood of 1862, for example, much of the Central Valley all the way from the southern San Joaquin up to the northern Sacramento, I mean, that's 250, 300 mile stretch that was contiguous, inundated. It actually become one giant freshwater lake, almost 300 miles long, encompassing areas that are now home to millions of people and most of California's agriculture industry. So, you know, if you measured it, then it would have been, you know, a truly enormous body of water. If you measured it last year, there's zero. It didn't exist. So it's you know, we often think about about bodies of water as these dynamic fix things. And that's that's almost never the case. But it's especially wasn't true even in its natural state for 244 to Larry Lake this was something that waxed and waned greatly from year to year before human intervention. It has done so less since we drained it. But in the big years it's going to come back. And this year, you know, to very Lake is making a big time reappearance. Hey, Daniel, it's Joe here. I want to take a step back and get into your initial interest in weather here and maybe extreme weather. I know you went to, I believe, UC Davis for your bachelors and then got a Ph.D. from Stanford. What drove you to be interested in whether there are any getting into the subset of the field that you're in now? Well, I was always a bit of a weather geek, maybe more than a bit of a weather geek, too, if I'm being totally honest. So actually my initial my undergraduate degree is in atmospheric science. So I actually specifically wanted to to pursue, you know, being a degree program that would give you the credentials to become an, you know, an operational meteorologist day to day weather forecasting. And so I do have that degree. But then at some point in this process, I realized, you know, I'm still really interested in weather, but the big societal and scientific problems that are really interesting these days really seem to be sort about this weather climate nexus. So, you know, I'm really fascinated by the day to day variations in weather. I enjoy cloud watching and watching storms and things like that. But also, you know, and that's where the societal impacts come from, right? Like climate change is affecting all of us. It's affecting ecosystems everywhere. But exactly how is it doing? So usually it's doing so by changing the envelope of extreme weather events, you know, shifting the range of what's possible or what's likely from what it used to be. And so it turns out that this is kind of a niche that's underdeveloped or is certainly have been for for decades, where weather scientists, meteorologists and climate scientists were kind of siloed from each other. They're kind of viewed as different disciplines. But it's always struck me as a little bit odd because it's the same atmosphere and it's the same physics and chemistry. There's this different time scales. And so, yes, you often use different assumptions, but I think that that separation has perhaps been too strict and too rigid. So I live a little dangerously and I mixed my my weather and my climate. They are different things, of course, But you know, what is climate? But the the you know, weather in aggregate, that's something I often like to say, because it's not just the average of weather, but it's also the extremes of weather. It's it's the swings in whether it's the variability, too. So for me, that's sort of that that weather climate nexus is what really I think fascinates me. And now that I'm you know, I'm a climate scientist who has a background in meteorology and really thinks about climate change from a weather weather up perspective, if you will. Hey Daniel, it's Matt. And going off of that, I kind of want to take a step back and look at the bigger picture because there's been a lot of buzz lately, of course, about all of these atmospheric river events and the improvement in the drought situation, even the removal of drought, particularly in California. But when you look at the big picture, I think what's getting lost a little bit is people think that the West is now completely drought free and that's definitely not the case. In fact, in some parts of the West, there's still some extreme drought, not in California anymore, but other parts of the West. And so what can you say about, you know, the longer term trend? Yes, we had this really wet winter and there was improvement in drought across the West, but is this going to continue? Are we going to go back to drought? What can you say about the general western U.S. in general and the outlook for drought? There is an important point because this has been, of course, a good water year in California and actually across much of the lower Colorado basin, which is the area in crisis because of the very low levels of flow on the Colorado River and all the big dams you hear about Lake Powell, Lake Mead, and sort of the the growing crisis there with water scarcity. This, of course, helps in the short term in these places where, you know, there's been a good snowpack in the lower Colorado basin, there'll be better inflows into these reservoirs this spring and summer than there have been in recent years, that's for sure. But it certainly, as you say, it doesn't solve the long term problem because this really took decades on the Colorado Basin to develop. So one good year certainly doesn't erase decades of accumulated water scarcity. And in California, I think the situation is a bit different because a lot of California gets its water for more local watersheds. So the northern two thirds of the state sees water mainly for the form of local reservoirs and then also snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada. And here, you know, the drought, I think it's fair to say, has broken. But there's this broader question of what drought means in a warming climate, I think, which is really actually quite an active topic of research and conversation, because it's not entirely obvious. And a lot of what's happened in the West isn't so much because of lack of rain or precipitation, but it's more just that temperatures have been so much warmer in recent decades than they were in the 20th century that the evaporative demand, literally the thirsty ness of the atmosphere, its propensity to act as a giant sponge and extract water out of the landscape as it increased. This is known as the increasing vapor pressure deficit in technical terms. And what it does is it just extracts more and more water out of the landscape more quickly. And unless you're seeing more precipitation than you used to on average, which were not, then there's going to be an accumulated deficit over time. So it's not just a question of the low precipitation years, but it's also a question of the high evaporative demand years, which increasingly have been almost every year, both the wet precipitation years and the dry precipitation years. So what does it mean in a warming climate to have individual episodic wet periods? Do they completely counterbalance the accumulated, increased atmospheric sponginess, if you will, all the rest of the time? The math really doesn't pencil out because you'd need to get a lot of extra precipitation for that to be true. And we're not seeing a lot of extra precipitation now in California in particular. And that is probably true to somewhat lesser extent in most of the West. We don't just expect to see drying in the future. In fact, in California, the hydro climate signature of climate change really appears to be increased variability. We call it increased precipitation or hydro climate whiplash because of how it kind of feels like to just wildly swing from dry to wet and back and forth. And this again comes from that that sort of that that basic thermodynamics of the atmosphere, that increased atmospheric sponginess, as I mentioned, goes both ways. It both increases the atmosphere's ability to extract water out of the landscape. Think of a you know, a larger and larger dry sponge soaking more and more water up off your counter and you still a glass of water or something. But on the other hand, that progressively larger sponge, once you've soaked up that water, you can wring out more water too, in the form of more intense precipitation. So in California, the signature really seems to be more of both, more of the very dry conditions on the one hand and more of the very wet conditions on the other. And I think this is largely going to be true across much of the southwest. So in the long run, of course, if you only take the average, that might pencil out to be similar. But in practical terms, does it actually feel similar? No, not not at all. This is a radically different regime, You know, with with you know, either you're very wet or you're very dry increasingly, but you're really rarely in the middle. And I think we've seen that a lot this decade where parts of California in particular have seen both record dry conditions and record wet conditions, in some cases more than once in the past decade, where we've broken the century long precipitation records and then also broken a century long non precipitation or dryness records in the same decade in the same place. I want to that point about getting so much precipitation at once. There's also been a lot of discussion about about groundwater, especially in California and in the Central Valley in particular since so much of the wintertime. Vegetables certainly are grown there. When we have a situation like we had this past winter, How much does that help with with groundwater? I mean, obviously we're still we're still very dry in the longer term. But would you say that this also helps the groundwater situation or at least buys us a little time? Well, this is a pretty complicated question, and I'm neither a geologist nor a hydrologist, but the situation is complicated, mainly because it's not just a question of pouring a bunch of water on the ground and hoping and it soaks in. Unfortunately, we've done long term damage to the aquifers themselves by so much pumping and fracturing. I was talking about subsidence earlier, literally the ground sinking. The reason why it's sinking is all of that or space where the the essentially the air bubbles, not only bubbles but the spaces in between soil particles and in between rocks has become compressed over time. And so that compression you've lost the the the the space where the water would have gone aquifers generally, you know, some folks think of them as these huge open caverns where water sits. That's really not what they are. They're they're actually it's just the accumulated effect and that effect of huge amounts of small air pockets that can fill up with water if the soil gets saturated, if you compress those air pockets enough, they don't magically reappear when you dump water on top of the ground. Now, the water just kind of likes to sit there on the top of the ground and cause flooding and then runoff into rivers and into the ocean eventually, rather than soaking in nicely. So unfortunately, there's some long term damage we've done. Geography is in some places it makes it harder for them to recharge when we do get wet. Years like this. And the other reality is that in general, even in a you know, even in an ideal, an undisturbed water system, there are only some places where aquifer recharge happens at a good pace. There are some places where naturally the soil is just too full of clay a rock. To really allow rapid recharge, you need to have you need to have, you know, water sitting there for years, not just for one season. And so for these reasons, I think that the groundwater problem is not remotely going to be solved by even one, maybe not, probably not even by two consecutive very wet winters. It certainly helps, but it mainly helps because what it means is that there's less desire to pump water out of the ground. So it helps mainly in an indirect way because it means that there are fewer straws sucking that water out of the aquifer because there's water available elsewhere. There is some recharge going on. There is movement to actively facilitate that recharge as a groundwater management and flood control strategy in California, which I'm optimistic about moving forward. But it's tricky because just because there's a lot of water doesn't magically mean that you've recharge aquifers and you know, this is going to be an ongoing problem, unfortunately. So. So know that that part of the long term scarcity problem is definitely not solved by one really good year like this one. And it also underscores the need for a cross-disciplinary work between the geologists, the hydrology artists and meteorologists and climate scientists. We're going to take a little bit of a break, then we'll come right back with Daniel Swain and talk about El Nino, talk about some atmospheric rivers. When we come back on the Across the Sky podcast. And we're back with Daniel Swain. Weather West on the Across the Sky podcast talking about the very wild winter and the repercussions for that in the western United States. So, Daniel, we've just come off the third consecutive LA Nina, which oftentimes means that it's drier than average and all signs are are pointing toward going into an El Nino, into this late this summer, into perhaps this coming winter, which oftentimes means wetter than average, not always, but oftentimes. How do you kind of reconcile those things? I mean, we know that it's not 1 to 1, but but how do you kind of reconcile those things to do the public? Yeah, this is become actually a really major and consequential weather and climate science communication challenge in California because the it's probably helpful to think a little bit to review the history actually of El Nino in California in pop culture first, because really the first El Nino event of prominent public dialog was back in the early eighties and this was the 1982 83 event, which was a very exceptionally wet year in California. There was a lot of flooding and there were a lot of problems. And, you know, folks in the media really linked that event to the very wet conditions that occurred at that point. And with good scientific reason. The scientists agreed. Then there was another big El Nino event in 97, 98 of similar magnitude, which was again a very wet winter in California with lots of flood related impacts. And so that really reinforced this public idea that major El Nino events were were wet years in California. Then in 2015, 2016, there was another strong El Nino event and everyone got excited about how it was going to break the drought. And then it didn't. It was not an exceptionally wet winter in California, did not experience, you know, significant drought relief as a result that year. Now, you know, we're heading into another year where indeed, as you say, it does look quite likely, I would say probably 80 or 90% chance at this point that an El Nino of some magnitude will emerge later this year. But interestingly, the public dialog is now centered, including in the local media, around how El Nino is so uncertain that it doesn't matter. And I think we've swung too far back in that direction. It is absolutely true that El Nino is not everything, and there are other influences that in some areas can completely override its influence and produce an opposite outcome even. But on the other hand, there are a lot of pretty basic physical science reasons why especially strong El Ninos in particular, really should and do influence the hydro climate of the American Southwest pretty profoundly and know, as you say, it's not a perfect relationship. But I think the challenge is a lot of folks go and try and do a literal linear correlation between the the El Nino surface ocean and surface temperatures anomalies and average annual precipitation. And of course, that signal is pretty weak in a lot of places. But if you focus only on the strong events and you focus specifically on El Nino, which is a bit asymmetric from its counterpart, La Nina, we'll talk about that a bit in a minute. But there still is a pretty strong signal. So, yes, if El Nino is strong, despite the failure in 1516, I would still put my money on a wider than average winter, perhaps a greatly wetter than average winter, especially in central and southern California and in some parts of the lower Colorado basin. So there's usually a dividing line in El Nino and La Nina years separating the Pacific Northwest from the rest of the West. And usually it's the opposite sign. So when the Pacific Northwest is dry, the rest of the West is often wet and vice versa. And usually in El Nino, the wet conditions occur in California and the Southwest and in the Pacific Northwest is dry and long on any of the opposite is true. We're lining as wet in the Pacific Northwest and dry in the in the Pacific southwest. Of course, that's subject to some some variability. But but, you know, I think that that's a pattern that in the long run still holds true for reasons that physically make sense. But let's back up for a moment and think, okay, so what what is El Nino and La Nina? What is this in the first place? Well, technically, it doesn't directly have anything to do with the western United States. It's a tropical ocean temperature oscillation that is strongly coupled with the tropical atmosphere. So El Nino simply means that that ocean surface temperatures in the eastern part of the tropical Pacific Ocean have been warmer than average for a sufficiently long period and long. Nunez and which means that ocean surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific have been cooler than average for a sufficiently long period. So there need not necessarily be any specific conditions in California or the American West for an El Nino or a La Nina to occur. And it's worth noting that even in 2015, 2016, where the rains did not come in great volume to California, the prediction for a strong El Nino event was correct. The strong El Nino event occurred in the tropical Pacific Ocean. It just didn't produce the results that some folks had anticipated. And, you know, there's been lots of research on why that is is probably been in the weeds for this conversation. But I think in the long run, I would still put my money on a particularly for a strong El Nino event. And it looks like there's a decent chance that's where we're headed this year, although it's still a little bit early to talk. The intensity that we might end up seeing back to back unusually wet winters in California and parts of the lower Colorado, which we have not seen in quite some time. Okay. Got me thinking back to now. You know, this recent winter that we had here, what were predictions for snow and precipitation and atmospheric river events going into this past winter? And then I believe and I've saw some reports of there were 31 atmospheric river events or is actually a river is a is a small is a relatively narrow but intense moisture plume that comes in. But where were the forecasts versus reality going into this winter? Yeah, I will emphasize that there were more like 15 or 16 atmospheric rivers in California. I think the 31 numbers for all of the West Coast that's out of Denver for California. Yeah, my fault in that one. Sorry. Not no worries. Well, so the seasonal prediction for California this past season was, as has been the topic of discussion was where a slight tilt in the odds towards drier than average conditions because of the moderate to almost strong and and persistent third year persistence of La Nina. Now obviously that didn't happen. But if you look if you look at the large scale atmospheric pattern, though, it's kind of interesting. So the reason why there's a slight tilt in the odds towards drier than average conditions during a significant linear event is because it tends to favor a strong ridge of high pressure somewhere over the Gulf of Alaska, as it turned out, that did actually happen. There was a seasonally persistent ridge in the Gulf of Alaska. But the problem or maybe the the the saving grace for California was that it was slightly farther to the west and the typical position of the La Nina Ridge. And so instead of blocking storms from making it to California and dropping rainfall and snowfall, it actually was far enough to the west that the return southward flow on the eastern flank of that high pressure system injected a bunch of cold air and atmospheric instability into the mix and helped juice up these subtropical moisture plumes, producing a bunch of atmospheric river storms and a persistent stream of significant storminess all winter long. So physically, you know, the high pressure system that's connected with cool temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific essentially happened. But something else occurred that shifted it a little further west than had been initially anticipated. And that resulted in an enormous difference for California, an exceptionally wet winter in some places instead of a drier than average winter. This was something I actually talked about in a blog post back in the autumn last year, which is that, you know, the problem with La Nina and the reason why this linear correlation is not so great is because if you tried to linear correlate La Nina with the ridge in the Gulf of Alaska, there'd be a very strong correlation. But the problem is the relationship between that ridge in California, precipitation is very tenuous. We're kind of on the razor's edge. If it's far enough to the east. We we are warm and dry in the winter, but if it's far enough west, it's literally the opposite surface condition that's cold and wet because of the direction that the winds end up coming from. So that's the hard part, is getting the exact longitude of that big ridge correct months in advance. So you can't just say there'll be a big red blob somewhere in the Gulf of Alaska. You need to be able to say exactly where it is, because if you're off by even 500 or 800 miles, which is not a very big margin on the global planetary climate, seasonal prediction scale, you get the completely wrong outcome for California. And I think that's what happened this year where that ridge was just too far west and we were on the other side of that razor's edge in California on the cool and one side. This year, as is true with much of meteorology, little differences add up and can we do some big changes in the ultimate outcome? One thing I want to look ahead to, you know what has been again until this winter and all the snow and the atmospheric river events, you know, besides the drought in the west. The other thing that got a lot of attention in the West was wildfire season. How these wildfire seasons seem to be keep getting worse with very little fluctuation. So I kind of want to look ahead to this wildfire season as we get through the summer and things quiet down and get into the fall. What are you thinking as far as wildfires go in the West? This year is a complicated picture this year because there's as you mentioned earlier, there are actually patches of drought that have gotten worse this winter, despite the rapid improvement in the California Colorado basin. The Pacific Northwest, for example, is headed for a significant drought right now. So we might actually see a were a relatively worse fire season in the Pacific Northwest later this year than than in some other places. The other thing is that even within California, for example, there's great complexity. So we have such a large snowpack that I think the high elevation fire season this year in California and throughout most of the West, fortunately will be pretty mild because literally there is snow on the ground. It's impossible to have wildfires of any real magnitude right now. And that might still be the case for a few more months. So by the time August gets around, the snowpack is finally melting away. Well, you don't have snow on the ground anymore, but now you have all this residual soil moisture. So everything is going to be pretty damp up at high elevations. I don't think we're going to see and this has been a real, really big problem in recent years. We have seen very high elevation, high intensity wildfires which were historically rare and have recently become much more common. I don't think we'll see that this year in places that have a really exceptional snowpack. So that's some good news, a place where I think there will be a mitigated fire season up above seven, eight, 9000 feet. Of course, there's a lot of territory in the West. In fact, the vast majority of the West is below that elevation. So what happens there? Well, it depends a bit on the ecosystem type. It's actually the case in a lot of the West. The wet years tend to be worse. Fire years historically, because what it means is you have a lot of extra growth of brush and grass. So if you're in the desert, if you're in grasslands or in sort of mixed trees and brush and grass woodland kind of regimes, you usually get worse for areas after wet winters because you have so much more fuel to burn. That's because these these are regimes that are actually known as fuel limited, meaning that the reason why you don't have more and more widespread and more intense fires is usually because there isn't enough vegetation to burn on average. Well, these are the years where there is enough vegetation to burn because you've grown extra because there's so much more water than usual. So all of that greenery you're seeing now, lower elevations will become eventually fuel for fires later in the season. And so there's also this interesting dynamic where in places like California, where there were severe windstorms and snowstorms and these no middle elevation zones this winter, there's a lot of trees and branches that came down which are going to end up essentially forming additional fuel for fires later this season as well, along with all that extra brush and grass growth. So this could be a year where if we do get significant wind or heat or events at the end of the season, we could see a pretty serious failure in certain lower elevation zones, but a really mild failure at higher elevations. And so I think there's both geographic variation where the Pacific Northwest is actually pretty dry right now, but the Pacific Southwest is pretty wet. And there's also a elevational dependance for places that had a big snowpack right now probably aren't going to have much of a fire season this year, but the lower elevations might see potentially a elevated fire season in some places, depending on how things go. Yeah, that's really the irony of the whole bit, to be sure. Before we let you go, I do want to talk a little bit more about atmospheric rivers. I think that term has really jumped into the lexicon over the last 5 to 10 years, especially in the West. What do we know about atmospheric rivers and and the warming climate in general? Yeah, So there's a strong consensus at this point in the scientific literature that the strongest atmospheric rivers will become considerably stronger moisture and produce more intense precipitation than a warming climate. Interestingly, there's less consensus about what happens on average to the frequency of atmospheric rivers overall. So really the strongest argument that we can say is that really throughout western North America, where our rivers are relevant, that the most extreme atmospheric rivers in a warming climate will be significantly wetter and will pose significantly greater flood risks. But doesn't necessarily mean we're going to see more atmospheric rivers overall. In fact, we may even see in some places like California, more variable city of atmospheric rivers from year to year. Rather, the wet years are really wet, increasingly so. And as I mentioned earlier, the dry years or perhaps even drier, you know, this really comes down once again to basic thermodynamics. As you mentioned, atmospheric rivers are at their core. These concentrated plumes of atmospheric water vapor, long but narrow, pushed by strong winds over your head. They can they can carry volumes of water that are many times that of the Mississippi River in flood, but in the form of vapor over your head. So these are huge amounts of water volume that we're talking about. And you can imagine that in a warming climate where the water vapor holding capacity of the atmosphere increases exponentially for each linear increment of warming. So in other words, this is about 7%, four centigrade degree centigrade or about 4% per degree Fahrenheit of warming, that atmospheric sponginess increases by either 4% per Fahrenheit or 7% per degrees Celsius. You know, that would be a pretty darn good interest compound interest rate in a bank. If you get a47 percent guaranteed return. I think anybody would be excited about that. But it's a little bit scary you we talk about it in the context of the ceiling on extreme precipitation, which by our best estimates does increased by about 4 to 7% or Fahrenheit or Celsius degree of warming. And globally, we're already at 1.2 or so degrees Celsius of warming, getting close to two degrees Fahrenheit of warming locally in California during, you know, in some places we're already higher than that because, you know, the land is warming faster than the ocean. So this is not an insignificant change. Yeah, for sure. And I think that's one of the things that I think all of us as scientists and media that's meteorology or climate science, I think a lot of people understand outside of the scientific disciplines that, yeah, if it's warmer, you can evaporate more. I think a lot of that's intuitive, but I'm with you. I don't think people understand that it's not linear. It goes up dramatically as you get warmer so that when we do have these higher end events, they are so much worse. Daniel, we're going to cut you loose. We appreciate you joining us. An addition to the Twitter and YouTube. Where else can people find out about the work you do? Well, I do also write the weather blog. You can find that at Weather West Tor.com. As you mentioned, you know, I try and spread my my public facing science communication across these platforms, Twitter, YouTube and my own weather. WESTCOTT So and, you know, I like to join other people's podcasts on a pretty regular basis, too, So you can find me here, there and everywhere, I guess. DANIEL Terrific. Thanks again so much. I know you're busy. It has been a wild, wild winter and early spring and now mid-spring. There in the western United States. So we hope to talk to you again real soon. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks again for having me. I'll be right back with a few closing thoughts on the across the podcast. And we're back with some closing thoughts on the Across the Sky podcast. And meteorologist Sean Sublette of the Richmond Times Dispatch, along with Matt Hollander in Chicago and Joe Martucci at the Jersey Shore, the press of Atlantic City. And Daniel, guys, he is just he has such a deep understanding of the weather patterns there. We kind of forget about how volatile it can be in the western United States. We've all kind of, you know, got locked into this idea, well, it's dry and it rains on occasion and they're in trouble. They're running out of water. And then you have a winter like they just had. They're in the western United States. And it really reminds you just how volatile can be. You know, they don't have tornadoes and like we have east of the Rockies, but they had their own entire set of issues, that is for sure. Yeah. And he did explain all the intricacies of water and making sure there's enough water for everybody. I mean, one thing that stuck out was how much So that land has been sinking in the valley just through pumping out the aquifers. I think I've even seen a couple of photos online of like these huge rollers. If you guys ever seen these, like these huge rulers of like tens of feet about how much actually the land has sunk over the past couple of decades. So and the other thing is to, you know, one of these really wet winters is good, still a long way to go to being really on top of it there. And we get throw in the climate change factor. And I like to say it's a lot of time the people do. It's not so much you're just over one. We're more variable in our weather events. And when it comes to Western water management, that's something that. It's just getting, I believe, harder for our water managers to, you know, taking control in terms of these forecasts because we do have, you know, hey, we had a extremely wet winter this past winter, is it? Daniel said he's trending towards having another one of these kind of winters as we go into next winter. Good news. In the short term, we have to see what it means. Well, the other thing that stands out to me is just how the atmosphere is becoming more extreme. You know, we were dealing with the extreme drought and then quickly switched and remarkably, how quickly we switched to extreme rain and flooding. And that's just what we're seeing with climate change is how the extreme nature of these events, these extreme events are happening more frequently. I mean, you can talk about, you know, it goes with other areas, too. You know, when you're looking at, you know, the intensity of hurricanes, for example, there's some uncertainty in the exact number of hurricanes and how that's going to change with climate change. But what there is a clear trend towards is an increase in intense hurricanes and increase, as Daniel referred to. You know, it's still uncertain exactly the number of atmospheric rivers that we're going to see. But when there is an atmospheric river, it's more likely to be an extreme atmospheric river. When we have a drought, it's more likely to be an extreme drought. So there's going to be fluctuations. It doesn't mean like the West is always going to have droughts or it's always going to flood. You know, it's more complex than that. But what we are clearly seeing is a trend in these more extreme events, which is the most high impact from an economic standpoint, you know, and the toll that it takes on people. So, gosh, just, you know, that's that's what really stands out to me is just how many extreme events and not just in the West but across the planet. Yeah. I mean, we've always known that that part of the United States has very highly variable weather to begin with, and they're kind of susceptible to dry and wet periods. But I think that Daniel's point is that we're really seeing that ratcheted up even further. And, you know, we try to remind people it doesn't all just balance out because the evaporation rates are so much higher in a warming climate so that the ground dries out faster. And if you have heavy rain on dry ground, there's more running off than it would be if the ground was a little bit moist, kind of like, you know, you turn the spigot on on top of a wet sponge versus a dry sponge, you get two very, very different impacts from that. So it is going to be quite a quite a challenge for water management, certainly in the western United States for decades and decades to come. With that, we're going to close it up for this week. We do have a few more things kind of percolating in the weeks to come. We've had the aurora borealis show up, so we're kind of working on a couple of things there. We hope to have some news on that coming up soon. But right now for Matt Holiner in Chicago, Joe Martucci, Atlantic City and Kira Saline and Tulsa, our meteorologist Sean Sublette. And we will see you next time on the Across the Sky podcast.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

President Biden said Thursday he has “no regrets” about keeping the discovery of mishandled classified documents dating to his vice presidency under wraps until after last year's midterms. After a month of more-than-abundant rainfall and years of drought in Fresno and the central San Joaquin Valley, the city of Fresno hopes to have an opportunity to buy discounted water from Millerton Lake that would otherwise flow down the San Joaquin River and be lost to the Pacific Ocean. Fresno City Councilman Garry Bredefeld found himself with an unusual ally against the council's emergency conditions that allow council members to join the meetings online: Miguel Arias. Save for the single member of the general public who spoke on the matter, the staff of, stakeholders in, and board of California's Water Resource Control Board Wednesday heaped praise on the State Water Resources Control Board's (SWCRB) first ever Racial Equity Action Plan.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Photo: No known restrictions on publication. Queensland 1927 @Batchelorshow #PacificWatch:  Fresno sees San Joaquin River near flood as the Eighth Atmospheric River sweeps over CA.  @JCBliss https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article271197812.html

Welcome to the summer feature podcast miniseries—EWN On The Road. As we teased in Episode 5, in this special series, Todd Bridges, Senior Research Scientist for Environmental Science with the US Army Corps of Engineers and the National Lead of the Engineering With Nature® Program, is sharing some highlights of his travels across the country over the past 2 years visiting people, places, and projects relevant to EWN.    The miniseries includes 4 episodes and will post August 3, 10, 17 and 24:    Episode 1—The San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge: A Natural Landscape Revived Episode 2—The San Joaquin Valley: Past, Present, Future and from the Air  Episode 3—The Heartland Tour: Five Rivers in One Day  Episode 4—Rivers as Resources to be Valued    We hope you'll find these special podcast episodes enlightening and easy listening for your summer travels. You can read more about Todd's travels and see additional pictures in the EWN On The Road blog on the EWN Website.  In this epsiode, Todd Bridges talks about his visit to the San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge where he observed the effects of restoration efforts and ongoing management of the area by the US Fish and Wildlife Service; the California Department of Water Resources; the US Army Corps of Engineers; and River Partners, a nonprofit engaged in river and riparian restoration in the region. Over the last 15 years, 600,000 native trees have been planted as a part of the restorations. As Todd describes it, “The landscape that is emerging from these efforts is getting close to what I imagine Pedro Fages and his companions saw as they became the first Europeans to venture into the San Joaquin Valley in 1772.” Aligning natural and engineering processes produces a host of environmental, social, and economic benefits for flood risk management. “My visit to the Refuge has inspired me to think about how Engineering With Nature could support scaling-up restoration and nature-based solutions across the San Joaquin Valley and the nation to achieve a balance between humans and nature on our shared landscapes.” Related Links EWN Website ERDC Website Todd Bridges at EWN Todd Bridges at LinkedIn EWN On The Road EWN On The Road: The California Swing San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge San Joaquin River Restoration Program USFWS San Joaquin River Restoration Program River Partners San Joaquin River NWR CA DFW San Joaquin River Restoration Program EWN Podcast S2E7: EWN Collaboration with the California Department of Water Resources USACE Lower San Joaquin River Project

Over 4th of July weekend, Gov. Newsom ran $105k worth of reelection campaign ads in Florida. A Florida man was charged with posing as a Disney World resort security guard in order to steal an R2-D2 valued at $10k. In an interview with ABC News over the weekend, Rep. Liz Cheney did not rule out a run for the White House in 2024. A search is underway along the San Joaquin River, west of the 99, after the driver of a stolen vehicle led police on a high-speed chase before jumping into the river to evade authorities.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Over 4th of July weekend, Gov. Newsom ran $105k worth of reelection campaign ads in Florida. A Florida man was charged with posing as a Disney World resort security guard in order to steal an R2-D2 valued at $10k. In an interview with ABC News over the weekend, Rep. Liz Cheney did not rule out a run for the White House in 2024. A search is underway along the San Joaquin River, west of the 99, after the driver of a stolen vehicle led police on a high-speed chase before jumping into the river to evade authorities. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For all of the high-tech advancements California is famous for, one part of the state's infrastructure – providing enough water for its environment, cities and farms – is lacking. It has been more than four decades since the last major water storage facility was built in the Golden State, and our total population has nearly doubled since that time. Proposed for the west side of the Sacramento Valley, Sites Reservoir provides an opportunity to dramatically boost water storage capability, which would help safeguard the state during drought, like what we are currently enduring. Sites would provide up to 1.5 million acre-feet of additional water storage, with a dedicated supply of water for environmental uses,  including a significant amount of water for our state's wildlife refuges, particularly in dry years, to support the ducks, geese and other wildlife who greatly rely on our system of refuges to survive and thrive. The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) is not taking a position on Sites. They do have an interesting concept to help the environment, should the project be completed – an environmental water budget. “This approach to water for the environment would have really big advantages,” said PPIC Senior Fellow Jeff Mount. “Right now, the way we manage everything, it's all set on minimum in-stream flow and water quality standards. It's kind of like a hydrologic flatline- it doesn't change enough.  We're suggesting that the most efficient and effective use of water has to have some flexibility in that use – especially if you want to mete it up with investments in physical habitat.  That's why we're promoting an ecosystem water budget managed by a trustee of some kind –a restoration administrator like on the San Joaquin River. This is probably the best way to go. It's nimble. It sets the environment as a partner, working with the people who are managing the operations of storage all the time. And there's certainty. The key bottom line is the flexibility this would bring.” Sites would also provide more water for urban needs, something very appealing to many, including General Manager Valerie Pryor of Zone 7 Water Agency, which serves the East Bay Area. “Our community places a lot of value on increasing water storage and especially the Sites Reservoir,” Pryor remarked. “Our board and community are excited about this prospect. Seventy percent of our water comes from the State Water Project, and that supply is increasingly less reliable. Also, we are not all the way to build out, so we do expect to add population over the next 30 years, so we need additional water supply – both to make up for decreasing reliability and also for growth. The Sites Reservoir really helps with that equation.” This enthusiastic support, plus increased momentum from favorable state and federal reviews of the project, are welcome developments for those trying to get this reservoir built – including the top person tasked for this job. “I am 100 percent confident that Sites Reservoir will be built,” remarked Jerry Brown, General Manager of the Sites Project Authority. “It must be built. The thing that we are striving for, and I believe is a need in order to proceed, is that we must do this together.” Episode Transcript Kai Tawa: We had a really good start to the water year with that atmospheric river event in late October. A lot of the valley got somewhere between 4 to 8 inches of rain. Quite historic, really. Jim Morris: Meteorologist Kai Tawa of Western Weather Group in Chico commenting on the positive start of the water year, building hope that the drought might be broken. Kai Tawa: From there our luck really continued going into December with some more atmospheric river storms with things looking good. Jim Morris: Unfortunately, 2022 has been underwhelming for rain and snow. Kai Tawa: We know it was certainly one of the driest January's recorded throughout northern California, and now we're going into February here. The medium to long-range models are pretty confident that we're going to remain quite dry. Jim Morris: Today, we take a look at California's water shortage and how long-term planning can help the state survive and thrive. Jim Morris: Welcome to Ingrained, the California rice podcast. I'm your host, Jim Morris. Proud to have worked with California farmers and ranchers for the past 32 years to help tell their stories. As if the pandemic wasn't enough, this year has started with little rain and snow fueling concerns that once winter is all over we may be in another dry year. That would be painful for our environment, cities, and farms. It's been more than 40 years since the last major water storage facility has been built in our state and our population nearly doubled over that time. Many are eyeing Sites Reservoir as a big part of a more stable water future. Proposed for the west of the Sacramento Valley in Colusa and Glenn counties, Sites would provide a major boost to the amount of water that can be stored during wet years to help during the dry ones. Jerry Brown is general manager of the Sites project authority, and Jerry, it would be good to get caught up on how the project is proceeding. I understand there's important news from the California Water Commission, so can you tell us a little bit about some of the latest developments with the Sites project. Jerry Brown: Just last month, the state made a feasibility determination for the project, which they went through a very extensive review process of several elements of the project and came to the determination that the project continues to be feasible and investible from the state's perspective under the Prop 1 storage program. That compliments the earlier decision by the federal government for a similar feasibility determination, and between those two that represents anywhere from 30 to 40% of the project. Beyond those investors, there's the local agencies, and they are going through a process right now to evaluate their continued participation in the project, and we're getting really good and positive responses from the local agencies. Collectively we're looking really strong as far as where we are, and the funding levels to proceed with the project, and have a lot of momentum to move forward with some great work in the coming years. Jim Morris: Those who are unfamiliar with Sites, this would be an off stream reservoir fed by excess water from rainstorms. Is that right? Jerry Brown: That's right, Jim. Sites is not your old dam. It is a reservoir that is set off the Sacramento River, but does receive water diverted out of the river, but only taken during the highest flow periods in the river, pretty much the very wet times like 2017, 2019 would be the timeframes, that would store the water in the reservoir during those periods until we need it in the drier times when we would release it back into the river for meeting demands of our participants or directly serving demands within the area of the reservoir. It's really an insurance policy for those drier times which we're seeing more often and more severely. It's something that we need in order to prepare ourselves for our future. Jim Morris: Past years, we've certainly seen, we've had tremendous amounts of rainfall and we haven't been fully able to capture all of it. Is it feasible to think if we have an incredibly wet year, that Sites can fill rather rapidly? Jerry Brown: If you look at averages and the analysis that we've done, we're expecting that we could fill the reservoir in anywhere from five to seven years. But from my experience in my prior life as the general manager of Contra Costa, we were able to fill Los Vaqueros on first spill in one year, and we had originally anticipated a five to seven year fill period as well. That's a question that a lot of people ask me is how long is it going to take to fill, and it couldn't be anywhere from one year to, on average, five to seven years. Jim Morris: The environment is talked about a lot in California and for good reason, it's vital, of course. The diminished salmon runs come up a lot, and at the rice commission, we're working with UC Davis on a pilot project raising salmon and rice fields. There's also promising work where fish food is being produced in rice fields and then returned to the river to help salmon. Jerry, what would Sites do to help this area? Jerry Brown: There's two aspects to Sites that I think need to be understood. First, the state is an investor in the project, and as such, they are receiving benefits for the environment. There will be a dedicated storage space and amount of water that is provided for the state to manage for the benefit of the environment, including the salmon, and including the delta smell, for example, is another species that could be helped with the project. What they will be able to do is storing this water in the wet years for use in the dry years. In these dry times like we've been seeing and the effects that we're seeing on the salmon, this water could help the salmon survive these periods, so that's number one. Number two, being where we are on the Sacramento River and where we are located relative to Shasta and Orville and Folsom Lake, there are opportunities to coordinate the site's operations in a manner that could provide for greater cold water in those reservoirs. Cold water can, especially in the dryer years, can enhance our ability to help the salmon survive in the river. Jim Morris: Yeah, keeping that water temperature at a certain level is critical for the survival of the salmon. Projects like this take time. What is a realistic timeframe to get Sites completed? Jerry Brown: Our current working estimate of our schedule is that we will be operational and complete by 2030, so within this decade, the project will be built. Jim Morris: To help that process, I think it sounds like good news that you have now an engineering and construction manager starting soon as well. Can you comment on that? Jerry Brown: A very important component of our upcoming work is to advance the engineering to a level that will give us more confidence in the cost estimate for the project. That's something the investors really need in order to proceed. With that ramp up of work, we need some additional oversight and some additional capabilities, and so we've hired a gentleman by the name of JP Robinette, who has actually worked on the project for a couple years and has a lot of experience and great capabilities to help us advance this part of the work. One of the other aspects of JP's background is that he grew up in an area in southern Oregon similar to where we're trying to build the project, so he has a real sense of the local community's needs and will be able to bring that to the project. Jim Morris: I could speak with you a hundred times, and I have to ask you this every time out. Sites is a very polarizing topic for many people. Some people love it and they understand the value of it, other people are negative and they feel it would never get done. What level of confidence do you have, Jerry, that Sites is going to be built? Jerry Brown: I am 100% confident that Sites Reservoir will be built. It must be built. The thing that we are striving for, and I believe is a need in order to proceed, is that we must do this together. There is, as you said, polarizing effects from surface storage project of this nature, but I think we've reached a point in our development of the project where we've been able to address many of the areas of concern that people have had. We've reached a point where we are at a spot where it makes sense. We can do this safely and protective of the species and all of the other concerns and considerations that go into building something like this, but we must do this and we must do it together. Jim Morris: Speaking of that, can you comment a little bit about the level of support that you're seeing locally, broader terms as well? We have very different sections of water in California environment, urban, agriculture. What level of support are you seeing for the project? Jerry Brown: Probably the one area that stands out most for me is the local support. We would not be able to do this project without that support. We're seeing that in other big projects across the state where local support just doesn't exist, and there's a lot of difficulty moving forward. It's because of that local support that we're able to move forward, recognizing that our board is made up of the local community leaders. That is important to everyone on the project, not just the folks that are in this area, but other folks that are to be served by the project that are located outside of this area. I think that aspect of it makes it unique and also makes it possible. Jim Morris: An important part of the water supply equation is meeting urban needs. Climate change and several other factors have put pressure on that supply. Valerie Prior is general manager of Zone 7 Water Agency, and Valerie, can you tell me a little bit about your agency, the region you cover, and who you serve? Valerie Prior: We are largely a water supply wholesaler, and we serve the East Bay area. We serve the cities of Dublin, Livermore, Pleasanton and portions of San Ramon. We are a state water project contractor, and we deliver state water project water through four retail agencies. Those agencies are the ones that serve water to homes and businesses. In zone seven, we actually also serve 10 to 15% of our water supply directly to agriculture. Those water supplies go to largely to the Livermore valley wine growing region, which is an important economic center for our community. Our local water supplies include some local groundwater, some local runoff, and then the retailers provide recycled water as well. I'd also like to mention that we are the groundwater sustainability agency for the region, and we recharge a groundwater basin with that state water project water that I mentioned, and we've been sustainably managing the basin for several decades now. Jim Morris: You have a lot of different clientele, a lot of different ways to get the water. As we're in another dry period unfortunately, there are short-term ways to make that water go farther, conservation, innovation included, but still long-term answers needed in California. How much value do you put on increasing water storage specifically with the Sites Reservoir? Valerie Prior: Our community places a lot of value on increasing water storage and especially the Sites Reservoir about which our board and our community's very excited. I mentioned that 70% of our water comes from the state water project and that water supply is increasingly less reliable. Also, we are not all the way to build out, so we do expect to add population over the next 30 years, and so we need additional water supply both to make for decreasing reliability and also for growth. The Sites Reservoir really helps us with that part of the equation. It compliments the state water project, so our thought process is in wet years we take state water project water, and in wet years we could store water in Sites Reservoir. Then in dry years, we'd be calling on the storage and the Sites Reservoir to meet our community's needs. Jim Morris: Sites Reservoir is proposed for a very agricultural area and the Sacramento valley, but just to be clear, this project would help urban areas as well. Valerie Prior: Very much. We are an urban area, and we're very interested in this project. One of the many things that's very exciting about the Sites Reservoir is that it meets environmental needs, agricultural needs, and urban needs. It's very nice to be participating in a project where all those needs come together to work on the project. Jim Morris: Any in-depth discussion of water in California would benefit from covering the environmental side of things. Jeff Mount is senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California's Water Policy Center. He's an emeritus professor of earth and planetary sciences. I also understand you're a geomorphologist. Never heard that before. Can you tell me what that is Jeff? Jeff Mount: It's the people who study the surface of the earth and the processes that shape it. Jim Morris: Very good. I learned something already, so that's awesome. You also were founding director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis, and that has been critical for the rice commission and rice growers and a lot of interesting environmental work. I'd like to start by asking you about that. What are your thoughts about rice farming in California? How it's changed, how birds and now salmon are being aided by those rice fields. Jeff Mount: Yeah, this is one of the classic examples of multi benefit uses. Twenty years ago rice was vilified as this big water hog, and then we started to discover it was extremely important for wildlife, the Pacific flyway being the classic example. Then in these last 10, 15 years, we really have caught on to the value of those rice fields as food production factories for salmon. This is actually pretty exciting. I don't know of another crop that you can point to that has anything quite like that. Jim Morris: One of the major priorities in the state is making sure the environment is protected. I believe your institute is reviewing a concept that may help and may involve the site's project. Can you explain what that might look like? Jeff Mount: For some years now we've been saying the problem is we treat the environment like a constraint all the time, rather than a priority or better yet a partner. What we're proposing is we think about the environment as a partner in managing water. One of the ideas we've been promoting is the notion of setting aside a block of water for the environment that can be managed, kind of like a water right. Flexibly it can be managed that way. The advantage such an approach is it's great for the people on the other end who are looking for certainty, how much waters go into the environment, and it's a guarantee that the environment will get a certain amount of water. Now, the novel idea is how to do it with reservoirs. An environmental water budget in a reservoir, that's a set aside of water that can be flexibly managed for the environment. Jeff Mount: If the Sites project is built, it is my understanding there's a proposal to do just such a thing, to set aside a portion of that storage for the environment. This has really big advantages. Right now, the way we manage everything, it's all set on minimum instream flow and water quality standards. It's like what you'd call a hydrologic flat line. It doesn't change enough, yet the biota that evolved here all depended on a lot of variability. We're suggesting that the most efficient and effective use of water has to have some flexibility in that use, especially if you want to mate it up with investments in physical habitat. That's why we're promoting this idea of an ecosystem water budget managed by a trustee of some kind, a restoration administrator like on the San Joaquin River, is probably the best way to go because it's nimble. Jeff Mount: It sets the environment as a partner, that is the environment's in there working with the people who are managing the operations of storage all the time, and there's certainty, and a key bottom line, I can't stress this enough, is flexibility. Hey, a storm is coming next week. Maybe we should hold onto our environmental water, and when the storm comes, we should let some of it go to move salmon farther down the system, or put salmon out onto the flood plain, for example, or, hey, the spring, we really need a little extra flow, a little boost in the river this spring so that water that we've stored, that belongs to the environment, can be released to help push the salmon out to sea, or we need a pulse flow to help bring cues for salmon to come up. Jeff Mount: Those are examples. The problem is the way we do it now it's just, you got to let out this set amount of water and have this quality all the time. The argument would be give some flexibility so we can be adaptive and responsive and nimble just like somebody who has a water right or somebody who owns water. Jim Morris: When you look at water, it's incredibly contentious in California. We never seem to have enough. How important is it to have divergent interest coming together for a common goal? Jeff Mount: At PPIC, we have been crystal clear on this for seven years now. Almost every year we say the same thing. Litigation is not the solution. It's expensive. It takes forever, decades to resolve. Meanwhile, nothing gets done for the environment. There's no benefit for the environment. The real progress comes through negotiated solutions. We call them comprehensive solutions. People call them voluntary agreements, whatever you want to call it. But when you have multiple people at the table, multiple interests at the table, so that they're interests are represented, and they're people of goodwill and good faith who are willing to give something up to get something. That something that they get is durable instead of every five years you're back in court trying to deal with these things. We strongly advocate for people negotiating solutions to water problems rather than the usual approach, which is litigation. Jim Morris: It seems like that there is a little more cooperation in this region than perhaps some other areas of the state. What are your thoughts about that? Jeff Mount: At PPIC we've been saying for sometimes perhaps the most environmentally progressive groups in the farm community are in the Sacramento Valley. It helps that you have lots more water in the Sacramento Valley, one can't ignore that, and you have crops in the Sacramento Valley, which are ideal for working with the environment. I mean, in particular, the fall wet up for the Pacific flyway and the ability to start thinking about using these agricultural fields for raising fish and restoring that most essential element of access to the flood plain. What's been particular is that I don't know how to put it. I'll put it simply, people are a little more friendly to these ideas in the Sacramento Valley than they are in other places and that's great. That's the first step, by the way, to getting toward those negotiated solutions where people of goodwill are willing to give up something in order to get to where they want to be. Jeff Mount: I've just been impressed over the years, the evolution in the Sacramento Valley and the willingness of landowners to be involved. The fact of the matter is let's be direct on this. Most farmers are stewards of the land, and so they consider themselves stewards of the environment also. For some reason, they seem more stewardish in the Sacramento Valley, and I have no explanation for that, but they just are. Jim Morris: That will wrap up this episode, although we will, of course, have updates as the year progresses about the water outlook and impacts to our region and state. Thank you to Kai Tawa, Jerry Brown, Valerie Prior, and Jeff Mount for their time and expertise. You can go to podcast.calrice.org to find out more and listen to other episodes and subscribe. Thanks for listening.

We follow up with hereditary Chief Caleen Sisk about the expansive watershed of the Sacramento River from the headwaters of the Winnemem Waywayket all the way to the Bay-Delta and the Pacific Ocean. We learn about the history of this once epic fishery and what it will take to bring the Salmon back home over the Shasta rim dam, and how New Zealand can help.The management of California's Bay Delta and its tributaries is complicated. The Sacramento and San Joaquin River watersheds and Delta have a complicated series of dams and diversions that feed the state and federal Central Valley Irrigation projects. The Shasta and Trinity dams are federal dams, while many of the other dams in the watersheds such as the Feather, Pit, and American Rivers are either primarily part of the state water project or private PGE dams. The state of California and the Federal Bureau of Reclamation manage flows, irrigation water deliveries, and operations from their dams and diversions, through water operations plans and a complicated water rights system. These operations are subject to Endangered Species Act Biological Opinions for endangered species such as winter and spring-run salmon and Delta smelt.  Recent Biological Opinions have not only estimated how much water can be diverted,  without species in rivers below the diversions going extinct, but they also have called for the return of winter-run salmon to their traditional habitats upstream of these dams, such as the McCloud River. This is because spring run and winter-run salmon traditionally used the upper reaches of the cold tributaries of the Delta watersheds. Almost all of their spawning habitat has been blocked by dams. Unfortunately, these Biological Opinions have been subject to political interference by several presidents and many of the runs of endangered salmon have been killed over the last ten years and fish passage efforts have not moved forward. Get InvolvedWinnemem Wintu Tribe Run 4 SalmonPetition to help the McCloud RiverRestore the Delta Save California SalmonMaven's NotebookCalifornia State Water Resources Control BoardPetition to Stop Salmon Fish Kills  Instagram  Facebook 

Dry rivers and deserts full of irrigated nut trees. Jacob Morrisons new film, “The River's End: California's New Water War” leans into the questions about agriculture and how rivers can be maintained. In this interview, we delve into some of the topics in the film.RIVER'S END FILMwww.riversendfilm.comInstagramTwitterFacebook RIVER RADIUS PODCAST EPISODES ON CALIFORNIA WATEREp. 27  "Southern California's Water, Yesterday & Tomorrow"Ep. 26  "Recycling (river) Water in Southern California"Ep. 16  "Mile 0 Sacramento River Source to Sea"Ep. 18  "Mile 153 Sacramento Source to Sea"Ep. 20  "Pacific Ocean takeout for SacSource2Sea" 

Fresno Councilmember Mike Karbassi sits in for John Broeske; We are close to two years away from gaining public access to the San Joaquin River Parkway and now an Assemblyman wants prolong the process See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today we have Sharon Weaver on the show. Sharon is the executive director of the San Joaquin River Parkway & Conservation Trust, which works to protect the 22-mile stretch of the river between Friant Dam and Highway 99. This was a wonderful conversation about environmental protection, water rights, the politics of development, and much more. Please support our podcast by leaving a rating and review or consider contributing financially at Patreon Page. Books The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers and Foodies are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet by Kristin Ohlson The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan

Chris Leonard has been guiding and teaching fly fishing in the Mammoth Lakes, California area since 2005. Mammoth Lakes is well known for its ski area but it also hosts some great fisheries. Hot Creek, the Owens River, the San Joaquin River, Rock Creek, Rush Creek and Crowley Lake are some of Chris's favorites. Listen in and learn about these eastern Sierra fisheries and how to best fish these waters.

Chris Leonard has been guiding and teaching fly fishing in the Mammoth Lakes, California area since 2005. Mammoth Lakes is well known for its ski area but it also hosts some great fisheries. Hot Creek, the Owens River, the San Joaquin River, Rock Creek, Rush Creek and Crowley Lake are some of Chris's favorites. Listen in and learn about these eastern Sierra fisheries and how to best fish these waters.

In this episode, we hear from Monty Schmitt, senior project director of The Nature Conservancy’s Water Program. Monty’s years of creek hopping and frog chasing in his youth led him into a career as a water resources scientist and well-known specialist in salmon ecology. We’ll hear how his experience and expertise is translating into successful strategies for increasing flows and wild salmon populations in our California coastal watersheds. Monty began his career in river reforestation projects and these experiences fostered his deep interest in river science, which in turn led him to earn his Masters of Science in Watershed Management from Humboldt State University. Then from 2000 to 2016, Monty was a water resources scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council and a key member of a team leading successful efforts to put water and salmon back into the San Joaquin River. Monty’s work is now focused on California’s coastal watersheds and we learn why The Nature Conservancy is prioritizing its work on the Navarro River. Salmon and steelhead are fundamental to the health of the Navarro’s watershed, but their falling numbers tell a troubling story. We’ll hear from Monty about what’s being done to reverse this unacceptable trend by developing solutions that preserve water for salmon and people. Plans are in place to take proven strategies that work for the Navarro and implement them in other river systems as well. Our episode concludes by taking a road trip with the Schmitt family to waterways in the Pacific Northwest and we’ll gain a little insight into the ripple effect of river lovers. We're excited to bring Monty’s story to you and discover the Navarro River. To learn more about his work, go to The Nature Conservancy’s website and see their feature story on “Protecting Salmon and Steelhead in the Navarro River.”Visit RiverSpeak Podcast for photographs and other news and information related to our episodes.All rivers have stories that ripple. I'm Dave Koehler. Be well, and do good work.

In this episode, we hear the story of Sharon Weaver, executive director of the San Joaquin River Parkway and Conservation Trust. Sharon’s story gets started with writing a term paper for an environmental politics class at U.C. Davis and evolves into her career leading an organization that is the catalyst for creating a regional treasure of protected lands, education programs, and recreational trails on the San Joaquin River near Fresno. Discovering the San Joaquin River Parkway includes learning about the river and citizens' efforts in the San Joaquin Valley to unite around protecting its floodplain, restoring wildlife habitat, and creating access and programs for people to live, learn and play on its banks. Sharon takes us on a tour of the programs her land trust offers to the community and we’ll get to plant trees, go on a school field trip, paddle the river and have big fun at River Camp. Sharon also helps us discover the Coke Hallowell Center for River Studies, an 1890‘s ranch complex restored and repurposed to an interpretive landscape. There, visitors can step into the river’s rich history and experience what the San Joaquin River Parkway has to offer. The San Joaquin River Parkway is located in the Valley’s Fresno-Madera metropolitan area. The City of Fresno, with more than half a million people, is one of the most racially diverse cities in the United States. We’ll hear from Sharon how her team is serving the community and steps her board of directors has taken toward creating leadership representative of the people they serve. One of the programs Sharon is most passionate about is her team’s role in ecological restoration of the river system and we hear about wildlife she sees returning to the area. We're excited to bring Sharon’s story to you and discover the San Joaquin River Parkway. To learn more about her work, River Center, and organization, check out the River Parkway Trust. Visit RiverSpeak Podcast for photographs and other news and information related to our episodes.All rivers have stories that ripple. I'm Dave Koehler. Be well, and do good work.

In this episode, we hear the story of Julie Rentner, president of River Partners and discover her work of bringing life back to rivers in California. Through projects like Three Amigos on the San Joaquin River, we’ll hear how her work with rivers’ natural systems is restoring floodplains and regenerating riparian forests.Julie’s story starts in the forest along Marsh Creek on Mount Diablo and evolves into leading fundamental redesign of California’s approach to water management. Her passion for forests early in life set her on a pathway to groundbreaking large-scale wildlife habitat restoration. We’ll step inside her approach and learn the details of uniting cutting-edge science and agricultural practices to undertake massive restoration projects in a way that nourishes ecosystems and communities of California. Riparian forests are powerful protection at the front lines of climate change. Intrinsic to Julie’s nature, and to the culture of River Partners, is to do this work alongside a wide-range of interests and organizations. She exemplifies collaboration and puts the word “partner” in River Partners. We're excited to bring Julie’s story to you, discover some of the rivers she works on and share her trips to forests, pick-up rides and swimming holes. To learn more about her work and organization, please check out River Partners website. Visit RiverSpeak Podcast for photographs and other fun news and information related to our episodes.All rivers have stories that ripple. I'm Dave Koehler. Be well, and do good work.

Dr. Peter Moyle was recognized by Fly Fisherman Magazine as the 2020 Conservationist of the Year for his lifetime of conservation work in California and in watersheds across the West. Peter's forward-thinking and get it done attitude has saved and restored fisheries across California including McCloud River, Putah Creek, the San Joaquin River and the Klamath River. Listen in to find out how Peter identifies and works through the issues associated with saving and restoring these fine fisheries.

Dr. Peter Moyle was recognized by Fly Fisherman Magazine as the 2020 Conservationist of the Year for his lifetime of conservation work in California and in watersheds across the West. Peter's forward-thinking and get it done attitude has saved and restored fisheries across California including McCloud River, Putah Creek, the San Joaquin River and the Klamath River. Listen in to find out how Peter identifies and works through the issues associated with saving and restoring these fine fisheries.

This week in Drone News. Rumors of a Parrot Anafi Thermal rugged version. A DJI Mavic Pro was shot in the air by a riffle and survived the encounter. An update on the 2018 alleged Gatwick Drone incident. And finally, a drone helps rescue a father and daughter from drowning. Timeline 0:00 Intro 0:45 Parrot Anafi Thermal rugged version rumored 2:07 Mavic Pro shot and kept flying 3:45 Update on the Gatwick Incident 5:39 Drone helps with father/daughter river rescue - Get your own Pilot Institute T-shirt or Long Sleeve T: https://amzn.to/30CLtBw - Part 107 Made Easy: the most comprehensive ground school online. https://bit.ly/2AkRWq0 - Drone Business Made Easy: start your drone business with a solid foundation. https://bit.ly/3dVT55T - Drone Flying 101: the perfect course for beginners. https://bit.ly/2XUy3Pc - Drone Maneuvers Mastery: become a better pilot with these 50 maneuvers designed to improve your flying skills. https://bit.ly/3hkWkG3 - Cinematic FPV Drone From Scratch: build your own cinematic machine with this course. https://bit.ly/37oOfeG Anafi Thermal Rumors Images surfaced on DroneXL this week of a rugged version of the Parrot Anafi Thermal drone. The current model is popular with first responders so an outdoor tactical version would make sense. It shows larger motors with serrated blades, a built-in bright screen. It is equipped with a triple camera setup with a FLIR thermal cam and a 32x optical zoom. Parrot, a french company, is expected to build the drone in the US and will not include any Chinese-made part. Mavic Pro shot Instagram user @vandy007 posted images of his Mavic Pro after it was shot at with a rifle. The user reported that he was flying close to 400 feet and adjusting the settings on his camera and he heard a shot. He didn't think anything of it and just landed only to see the damage. The damage was mostly to the battery but it's amazing that the drone survived. Yes, it is a federal crime to shoot at an aircraft, including a drone… Update on the Gatwick incident Remember the Gatwick alleged drone incident in 2018? A couple had been falsely arrested in conjunction with the alleged incident. Their house was assaulted by police and they were held for 36 hours in December 2018. They sued and just settled $250,000 There was never any confirmed drone sighting and with hundreds of journalists and government official, no proof has been provided to date. Gatwick did however spend $6 million to install Anti-UAV Defense system. Over a $1 million has been spent investigating the supposed incident. Drone helps father/daughter in the river A drone was used to locate a father and his daughter whose canoe had capsized in the San Joaquin River in California. The drone followed a citizen who rescued the daughter and brought her back to land. The drone helped the fire department located the father who had stayed behind. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rick-smith-298376199_antiochpd-apd-uas-activity-6677326574427238400-s4Oh/

In this episode, Chad and Nick discuss NOAA's San Joaquin River Restoration Program with Hillary Glenn, who works on the San Joaquin River Branch and is Outreach Coordinator for NOAA's California Central Valley Office. CalTrout is hosting its annual Gala & Auction on May 1st at 7:00 pm and this year, you're all invited! Given the current shelter-in-place, they've shifted to a live-stream event where they'll be creating the same excitement, sense of community, and celebration with an online auction, raffle, and updates on their work across the state to ensure healthy fish thrive in healthy waters for future generations.  Visit caltrout.org/troutcamp2020 to register today and for more details. Support the show: https://gear.barbless.co See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mike McKnight, Nugget the Dog, Michael Jurad Mountain Man Outfitters In this episode I do some podcasting from the boat. Doing some Striper scouting with my dog on the San Joaquin River. WTF actually happened at the Fish and Game Commission meeting? Why are all of our commissioners politicians and environmentalists with no skin in the game? I got called a trophy hunter on social media. Michael Jurad joins me to talk about the Nevada game tag system. Advantages of applying with a guide. Distribution of game in Nevada. Illegal ATV use. Stay connected on FB & IG @bnboutdoors

On this weeks episode we recap what we did over the weekend. The first topic we discuss is the murder of a 24 year old Brandyn Harris at the Milburn and Alluvial viewpoint on the San Joaquin River. Then we talk about the Locksmith show and also present you some shout outs we got from that evening. Then we continue our support for our Men's and Women's Bulldog Basketball teams,and also our baseball team the Diamond Dog's. Then the podcast rips the band aid off a new wound as our Fresno Foxes are no more for this upcoming USL soccer season which begins this week. Then we talk about the XFL, NBA, and Beer of the Week. Make sure to stay active with the podcast and stay ahead of each episode. Have a great week! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theblazepodcast/message

Welcome to the Global Thread! Your libertarian eye over the internet. 1) MSNBC Flips Out After Bernie Sanders Adviser Calls Bloomberg an ‘Oligarch’ 2) Man dies after making 300-foot-jump over San Joaquin River in a Mercedes. Podcast/Startup tip jar: https://www.paypal.me/masondevereuxsmith Harvard References: Baragona, J. (2020). MSNBC Flips Out After Bernie Sanders Adviser Calls Bloomberg an ‘Oligarch’. [online] The Daily Beast. Available at: https://www.thedailybeast.com/msnbc-panel-flips-out-after-bernie-sanders-adviser-nina-turner-calls-bloomberg-an-oligarch [Accessed 4 Feb. 2020]. Graff, A. (2020). Man dies after making 300-foot-jump over San Joaquin River in a Mercedes. [online] SFGate. Available at: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/David-Callahan-San-Joaquin-River-police-chase-14994943.php [Accessed 4 Feb. 2020].

Is Duji sick now? Man dies after making 300-foot-jump over San Joaquin River in a Mercedes. California elementary teachers sue Delta after plane dumps jet fuel over school. U.S. plan would ban all service animals from planes except dogs. The guys are going to see if they can taste stuff with their balls. Rover is eating chia seed bowls. Woman convicted of manslaughter after texting teen boyfriend to kill himself is leaving jail.

Checking back in from the long holiday weekend with dramatic facial hair changes and a fell good story from Ellen with one deserving Fresno State Marching Band Bulldog. A man tries, and fails, to clear the San Joaquin River. Tue 1/21: Hour 1 Image Credit: twitter.com/Tboogss

0:08 – Behind the restoration work of the San Joaquin River, and the return of the Chinook salmon Scientists are celebrating the return of Chinook Salmon to the San Joaquin River for the first time in seventy years. It's the result of the restoration program mandated by a landmark legal settlement between environmental groups and water users. The goal is to have a naturally self-sustaining population of the southern-most run of Chinook Salmon on the Pacific Coast. This audio documentary produced by KPFA and KPFK News reporter Vic Bedoian (@VicBedoian) captures the fish biologists as they do restoration work on the river.  1:08 – Eric Holt-Gimenez – for the hour – the Executive Director of the Institute for Food and Development Policy, also known as Food First. He's the author of A Foodie's Guide to Capitalism: Understanding the Political Economy of What We Eat. Photo: Sunset view from Eastside Bypass on the San Joaquin River, March 6, 2017 / Flickr The post ‘Miraculous' Chinook salmon return to the San Joaquin Delta after 70 years; Plus: Eric Holt-Gimenez on the ‘Foodie's Guide to Capitalism' appeared first on KPFA.

In person, as on the page, Mark Arax is a captivating storyteller with a rich tone to his voice. If you think you don't care about water, listen anyway. Our live audience was mesmerized by what he had to say and how he said it. To the East of Silicon Valley is another low-lying region that is just as innovative, although the product feeds our bodies rather than our minds. For more than 100 years, the Central Valley has reflected the world's changing tastes in fruits, vegetables and nuts. Much of the Valley is naturally arid, and ranchers count on the relocation of water for their crop. Author Mark Arax traces the fascinating flow of water on its natural and unnatural paths in "The Dreamt Land." Interview Highlights: You're a resident, you're also a native of the Valley. When did you first understand that what we do with water might be a little different than what everybody else does with water? My grandparents, after we sold the last ranch along the San Joaquin River, moved to a suburb in Fresno called Fig Garden, and three houses down was this huge irrigation canal, and my grandmother made me promise I would never go near it. She said, “It's got a magical power to it. It will lure you up and into the waters, and you will drown.” She said, “And no one will come to save your body.” I said, “Why not, Grandma?” She said, “Because the flow of one irrigation canal is much more important to the Valley than the body of one silly boy.” To recover would mean to shut down that flow. So I had a sense that something was strange but I never bothered to ask where that water was coming from, where it was going, and to whom and by what right. So that's when I had a sense. One of your influences was Saroyan, and you come from the land of Saroyan. What was it about his writing? Saroyan was a very earthy writer. I knew him. He was a friend of my grandfather. He said, “I have 300 words in my vocabulary. Count them.” I never actually counted them, but I got what he was saying. You don't need a thesaurus to write beautifully, and he took those 300 words and they were magic. So I learned from him. You put into print the perfect description of a smell or the flow of water. Are you aware of how poetic it is? If someone is writing, and they're being honest with you, they're writing from insecurity. You always think that thing is going to leave you. It visits, and then sometimes it doesn't visit, and you can't articulate anything. The work involved in capturing something like that takes a lot. Saroyan might have been a genius and just tossed off these incredible lines. That doesn't happen for me. It's going in and polishing and polishing and polishing. Sometimes something comes out full blossom, but mostly it's work. Hard work. CapRadio's Donna Apidone interviewed Mark Arax on May 23, 2019.  Water Music; George Frideric Handel. Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin.

Paul and Craig had a wonderful time talking with Sharon Weaver, the Executive Director of the San Joaquin River Parkway and Conservation Trust. The San Joaquin River and the bluffs are the most dramatic geographic feature in the City of Fresno. Cities around the world love their rivers. We chat about our relationship with our river, its nature and its future. As always, we hope you enjoy this with an open and curious mind.  Share like, comment and even consider supporting though our Patreon page.  Thanks to Terry's House...our Title Sponsosr!!!

Feather River stripers, Scott Leysath - wild fish & game recipes, Folsom Lake trout, San Joaquin River stripers, Pardee trout, Fish & wildlife regulations mistakes

Rob Reimers - Bullards Bar kokanee, Scott Leysath - wild fish & game recipes, San Pablo Bay sturgeon, Delta conditions for sturgeon, Clear Lake bass & crappie, Sacramento & San Joaquin River conditions

Show outline, Delta stripers & sturgeon, Area waterfowl hunting, Delta tunnels update, San Joaquin River flow guarantees

Ocean crab & rockfish, Scott Leysath - wild fish & game recipes, Klamath River steelhead, San Joaquin River stripers, American River steelhead, Upper Sacramento River salmon & steelhead

Show outline, Ft. Bragg salmon, Ft. Bragg albacore, Golden Gate salmon, Golden Gate rockfish & lingcod, San Joaquin River flow meeting next week

On September 2, 1989, 41-year-old Ronald Sallee set out with some friends to spend Labor Day weekend camping in the Sierra National Forest. The men planned to hike through the Ansel Adams Wilderness on the Cassidy Trail to the San Joaquin River and fish. According to Ron's friends, during the hike, Ronald slipped and when he got back up he was acting strangely. Over the last mile of the hike to the river campsite, Ron became separated from the others. He never made it to the campsite. They shot rounds into the air in an attempt to let him know where they were but he never showed. Ronald Sallee was never seen or heard from again.Several days later, he was reported missing and the search began. No trace of Ron or the belongings he had with him have ever been found. Ron has now been missing for almost 29 years. His daughter, Meghan, was just 6-years-old when he disappeared and she's still looking for answers.If you have any information regarding the disappearance of Ronald Sallee, please contact the Madera County Sheriff’s Office at (559) 675-7770.The episode was co-researched and written by Marissa Jones and Anna Priestland.This episode was sponsored by:Betabrand- Get 20% off Betabrand's dress pant yoga pants by visiting betabrand.com and using code VANISHED.Ritual- Visit Ritual.com/Vanished to try their Essential for Women vitamins.Lantana Hummus- Visit LanataFoods.com to use their product locator to find Lantana Hummus at a grocery store near you.

Feather River stripers, Scott Leysath - Wildgame recipes, Stripers near Tisdale boat ramp, Striper trolling - San Joaquin River, Whiskeytown Kokanee, Shasta Trout & Salmon

Jim Franklin fills in for Ray Appleton - Fresno County Supervisor Andreas Borgeas joins Jim via phone to discuss the approval of public access to the San Joaquin River. A federal judge in Washington DC denied the catholic church's request to display Christmas ads on city buses. Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer joins Jim to discuss legalizing pot sales, the high murder rate and his new program "Bar Watch". California is moving closer to charging drivers for every mile they drive. Brooke Ashjian joins Jim in studio to discuss his choice to step down as Fresno School Board President.

It's been a while since the last Outdoorsy episode. A lot has happened. Kerry got married, put together a big series of health stories, and Ezra has some big news of his own.

It’s been a while since the last Outdoorsy episode. A lot has happened. Kerry got married, put together a big series of health stories, and Ezra has some big news of his own. This is his last episode with Outdoorsy. He’s leaving Valley Public Radio for an environment reporter job with Capital Public Radio in Sacramento. He says he’ll miss this area, but he’s psyched to explore the outdoors in places like Lake Tahoe. We’ll miss Ezra a lot, but we’re excited for him. And before he goes, we had to get him into the outdoors one more time for us. In this episode we visit a place that we’ve actually been to before in another podcast about caves. But we explore it in a new way--new at least for us. We’re going mountain biking! We’ll take you out on the trail, help you figure out how to get started, and reveal some of the history behind one of the Fresno area’s most popular mountain biking areas. Guests: Craig Bowden, President of Central California Off-Road Cyclists John McCracken , co-owner

This summer we've been on the river a lot. Floating, some kayaking and well a lot of sunbathing. R ivers in Central California have been amazing this summer. They’ve been really high the past few months because of the record snowfall in the Sierra this winter. That’s generally a good thing, but it has made for some dangerous conditions. Earlier in the season, local authorities closed rivers like the Kings River to swimmers and boaters. A number of people in the Valley drowned because fast moving water can be so dangerous. This caution took a toll on rental industries like whitewater rafting. But now that flows have slowed, and the season is looking to be extra long this year, this episode will focus on two sports: whitewater rafting and kayaking. In this episode we’ll travel deep into the Kern River Valley and learn how to whitewater raft on what’s known to be a mean set of rapids. P lus we’ll go on a group kayaking trip on the San Joaquin River and learn what kind of gear you’ll need

In our last episode we took you to this mountain oasis called Mineral King in Sequoia National Park. This time, we go 100 miles north of there to a place called Mono Hot Springs. Mono (pronounced “MOE-no”) Hot Springs is tucked away in the Sierra Nevada south of Yosemite National Park and Mammoth Lakes, and it’s about halfway from the Valley to the East Side. The hot springs sit in a mountain valley next to a fork in the San Joaquin River. Like Mineral King , the springs are at the end of a long, winding road. To get there from Fresno, you drive up Highway 168 East past places like Shaver Lake and China Peak Ski Resort. Before reaching Huntington Lake, turn onto Kaiser Pass Road, which quickly becomes only one lane. At some points it’s worse than the drive to Mineral King. It’s narrow and bumpy and at a few points, the side of the road drops off literally over a cliff. We don’t recommend driving it at night. As you climb Kaiser Pass, the highest point of the drive, you briefly venture

River restoration affects more than just the natural environment. On today’s episode of What Doesn’t Kill You, learn about one of the most essential restoration projects in the country right now, The San Joaquin River Restoration Program, as host Katy Keiffer chats with Monty Schmitt, Senior Scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council and the San Joaquin River Restoration Project Manager, Water Program. The SJRRP is a direct result of a Settlement reached in September 2006 on an 18-year lawsuit to provide sufficient fish habitat in the San Joaquin River below Friant Dam near Fresno, California, by the U.S. Departments of the Interior and Commerce, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and the Friant Water Users Authority (FWUA). The Settlement received Federal court approval in October 2006. Federal legislation was passed in March 2009 authorizing Federal agencies to implement the Settlement. Learn more about the project, the river and all of the issues that surround it. This program was brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery. “Two thirds of all Californians get their water from the Bay Delta.” [09:00] “The San Joaquin River is arguably one of the most degraded large rivers in the country. It’s also one of the hardest working because of how much of the water is diverted for various purposes.” [24:00] “We have to do a much better job managing our limited resource and be prepared for droughts and have better adaptation methods.” [31:00] –Monty Schmitt on What Doesn’t Kill You

River restoration affects more than just the natural environment. On today’s episode of What Doesn’t Kill You, learn about one of the most essential restoration projects in the country right now, The San Joaquin River Restoration Program, as host Katy Keiffer chats with Monty Schmitt, Senior Scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council and the San Joaquin River Restoration Project Manager, Water Program. The SJRRP is a direct result of a Settlement reached in September 2006 on an 18-year lawsuit to provide sufficient fish habitat in the San Joaquin River below Friant Dam near Fresno, California, by the U.S. Departments of the Interior and Commerce, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and the Friant Water Users Authority (FWUA). The Settlement received Federal court approval in October 2006. Federal legislation was passed in March 2009 authorizing Federal agencies to implement the Settlement. Learn more about the project, the river and all of the issues that surround it. This program was brought to you by Cain Vineyard & Winery. “Two thirds of all Californians get their water from the Bay Delta.” [09:00] “The San Joaquin River is arguably one of the most degraded large rivers in the country. It’s also one of the hardest working because of how much of the water is diverted for various purposes.” [24:00] “We have to do a much better job managing our limited resource and be prepared for droughts and have better adaptation methods.” [31:00] –Monty Schmitt on What Doesn’t Kill You

On February 5, the House of Representatives passed a bill that takes away California's right to divide its dwindling water supply. The bill forces California to take water away from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta and give it to Agribusiness in the San Joaquin Valley, voiding a bunch of State and environmental laws in the process. Summary of the Bill HR 3964: "Sacramento- San Joaquin Valley Emergency Water Delivery Act" This is the second time the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has passed this bill. A similar bill was passed during the 112th Congress. TITLE I: Eff The Fish [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="360"] Water would be diverted away from this delta and given to Big Agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley[/caption] Section 101: Makes sure that water currently dedicated to fish and wildlife is given Central Valley Project contractors by December 31, 2018. Most Central Valley Project contractors are agricultural in the San Joaquin Valley. Section 102: New terms for water contracts: Eliminates a provision that makes sure the EPA approves new contracts for water delivery. Extends the renewal length of existing contracts from 25 years to 40 years and eliminates requirements for environmental reviews Adds a provision that contracts must only charge water customers for the water actually delivered Section 105: Water usage will be prioritized to go towards agricultural, municipal, and industrial purposes Section 107: Private for-profit organizations would be eligible for water storage and delivery contracts paid for with taxpayer money, which is not currently allowed. If by September 30, 2018, the Central Valley doesn't get an additional 800,000 acre-feet of water, all non-mandatory water uses will be cut off until the Central Valley gets their water. Section 108: Rules will revert back to the law as of 1994. [caption id="" align="alignright" width="314"] The delta smelt, the "stupid little fish" the House GOP is pretending is the only species affected by drying up the delta[/caption] Operations of this new water plan "shall proceed without regard to the Endangered Species Act" Prohibits the Federal government and any agency of the State of California from enforcing a State law that restricts water usage for the Central Valley Project or State Water Project (which gives water to Southern California) to protect any species affected by this new water diversion. Prohibits the State of California from enforcing any of their laws that restricts Central Valley "water rights" "under the Public Trust Doctrine. No costs associated with diverting water to Central Valley contractors will be paid by Central Valley contractors "California law is preempted" from restricting the size of a fish allowed to be taken out of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers or the Sacramento-San Joaquin Rivers Delta. Section 111: Federal agencies can not be forced to change their actions by a National Environmental Protection Act determination. *New to the 113th Congress version* Section 112 & 113: Gives 10 year water contracts to the Oakdale, South San Joaquin, and Calaveras County water districts if it doesn't take water away from the Central Valley *New to the 113th Congress version* Section 114: A pilot program to remove "non-native" bass species from the Stanislaus River. The districts will pay 100% of the costs The government "shall issue" permits for the program under the Endangered Species Act within 180 days; if it's not done in 180 days, the permits "shall be deemed approved" Permitting can be outsourced to "any qualified private contractor' National Environmental Protection Act "shall not apply" to permitting for the program. "Any restriction imposed under California law" on catching fish in the Stanislaus River "is herby void and is preempted" Pilot fish-murdering program will sunset in seven years. TITLE II: Overturns a Court Settlement The Settlement ruled in 2004 that the Bureau of Reclamation illegally dried the San Joaquin River and ruled that they will have to release water from the Friant Dam for the first time in 55 years in order to allow the fish - specifically salmon- in the river to survive. The lawsuit was first filed in 1998 and was one of California's longest running water disputes. It also restores water supplies to farmers near Stockton Section 201: Repeals the settlement and enacts a whole new plan. The new plan "preempts and supersedes any State law" that imposes stricter requirements. Central Valley water contractors are allowed to sue the Federal government if it fails to enact the new plan. Section 211: Repeals a requirement that salmon be reintroduced to the San Joaquin River TITLE III: Payments to Central Valley water contractors Section 301: Federal government has to reimburse water contractors for construction costs already accrued by January 31, 2018; future costs need to be reimbursed by the government within five years. Power revenues can't be used towards construction cost reimbursement TITLE IV: Water Allocations Section 403: Agricultural water contractors in the Central Valley will get 100% of their promised water in Wet - Below Normal years, 75% in a "dry" year, and "50% in a "Critically dry" year Section 404: The Federal government must make sure that the Endangered Species Act and goals of "addressing environmental needs" do not cause any "adverse water supply or fiscal impacts" to Central Valley water contractors. TITLE V: Precedent Section 501: The coordination of water rights "require assertion of Federal supremacy to protect existing water rights", says "these circumstances are unique to California", and therefore "nothing in this Act shall serve as precedent in any other State." Section 502: "Nothing in this Act shall affect in any way the Proclamation of State of Emergency and associated Executive Order issued by Gov. Edmund G. Brown, Jr. on January 17, 2014." Representatives Quoted in This Episode (In Order of Appearance) Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California Rep. Tom McClintock of California Rep. Devin Nunes of California Rep. Mike Thompson of California Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah Rep. John Garamendi of California Rep. Anna Eshoo of California Rep. Jared Huffman of California Rep. Grace Napolitano of California Additional Information Water War Boils Down to Farmers vs. Fisherman by George Skelton, Los Angeles Times, February 19, 2014. Jennifer Briney's appearance on Start Talking and Recording Today with Nick Seuberling YouTube video of Congressional Dish supporter David's 12 year old son, Sam Levin, and his impressive musical talents Music in this Episode Intro and Exit Music: Tired of Being Lied To by David Ippolito (found on Music Alley by mevio) Are You Thristy? by Mighty Men of Faith (found on Music Alley by mevio) Get Out of Our House by David Ippolito (found on Music Alley by mevio)

Lecture 3: A guest from the California Audubon discusses restoring the San Joaquin River.

A companion guide to "Restoration of the San Joaquin River."

Flowing 330 miles from the Sierras to the delta, the San Joaquin River is California’s second longest river. It once boasted one of the state's great salmon runs. But since the construction of Friant Dam near Fresno in the 1940s, most of the San Joaquin's water has been siphoned off to farmland in the Central Valley. Now, after years of lawsuits, a new effort to restore the river is offering hope that fish and farmers can co-exist.

Flowing 330 miles from the Sierras to the delta, the San Joaquin River is California’s second longest river. It once boasted one of the state's great salmon runs. But since the construction of Friant Dam near Fresno in the 1940s, most of the San Joaquin's water has been siphoned off to farmland in the Central Valley. Now, after years of lawsuits, a new effort to restore the river is offering hope that fish and farmers can co-exist.