California will provide 100% of the water requested by cities and farms for the first time in years thanks to winter storms that filled reservoirs and runoff from a record snowpack, regulators announced Thursday. The State Water Project will provide full allocations to 29 water agencies supplying about 27 million customers and 750,000 acres of farmland, the Department of Water Resources said. As late as March, the agency was only expecting to provide 75% of requested water supplies.
California's reservoirs swell in the wake of winter storms
Water levels fell so low in key reservoirs during the depth of California's drought that boat docks sat on dry, cracked land and cars drove into the centre of what should have been Folsom Lake. Those scenes are no more after a series of powerful storms dumped record amounts of rain and snow across California, replenishing reservoirs and bringing an end — mostly — to the state's three-year drought.
Why atmospheric rivers, derechos and bomb cyclones are on insurers’ radar
Wild and wacky weather events like atmospheric rivers, derechos and bomb cyclones may seem new because of recent media coverage, but they’ve been known and named phenomena for quite some time in the history of meteorology and atmospheric science, speakers said Tuesday at the CatIQ Connect conference. What’s new is that they appear to be getting worse and more frequent as the climate changes. That means increasingly higher insured damage payouts for Canada’s P&C insurance industry.