El Niño Storms Gain Strength As California Scrambles To Prepare For More Stormwater
The dangerous fluctuations for drinking water and stormwater systems caused by climate change — vacillating between drought conditions and high-volume rain — seem to be coming to a head as an infamous storm builds its strength and heads toward the nation’s thirstiest state.
“On the heels of a record-setting wet and warm August, forecasters … announced that El Niño is gaining strength and will almost certainly persist into 2024,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “That could result in a soggy January, February and March in Central and Southern California.”
El Niño is an infamous part of a southern oscillation in ocean water temperatures that can impact weather patterns around the world. It is a key phenomenon for predicting precipitation, something that is more scrutinized than ever as water supplies dry up across the country, particularly in California.
“The frequency of storms and uptick in precipitation across California and portions of the Southwest may depend on the overall strength of El Niño,” according to CNN. “A stronger El Niño may lead to more storms, low elevation rain and high elevation snow, while a weaker version could hang the Southwest out to dry.”
And while it might seem like the more water, the better for California, extreme winter storms can pose different problems than drought does for the state, which actually has had enough water for the first time since 2006. At the beginning of the year, massive storms inundated California with more snow and water than it could handle. That has led the state’s governor to explore new ways of capturing this stormwater, but it seems unlikely any new infrastructure projects will be online by the time these forthcoming storms might hit.
“The implications of having another [wet winter] consecutively are greater,” a climate scientist with UCLA told the Times. “Right now we’re not so worried about water scarcity in California, but we’re probably more concerned about the potential for faster and more intense runoff from winter storms because things never fully dried out from last year.”
As El Niño gains momentum, the old saying may be more true than ever for California: when it rains, it pours.
To read more about how water systems manage inundations of rain and snow, visit Water Online’s Stormwater Management Solutions Center.