Category Archives: Boating

Boating, Fire, Fish, Rafting, safety, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Sacramento Rainfall Totals Rising With Good Drenching

The strongest storm of the season flooded Sacramento streets, sent drivers spinning out of control on area highways and dropped about an inch-and-a-half of rain in a 24-hour period.

“This is by far the most rain we have had this season,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Smith.

The steady drumbeat of rain through Wednesday morning was welcome to drought-stricken Northern California.
However, maneuvering a car on surface streets and highways was difficult and simply walking around sometimes meant hopping over rain-and-leaf choked gutters.

Sheets of water formed on roadways. Backed-up drains produced six-inch deep mini-ponds on highway onramps, despite the best efforts of Caltrans crews.

In a 24-hour period ending at 8 a.m. a total of 1.44 inches had fallen in Sacramento, 1.56 in Elk Grove, 1.34 in Orangevale, 1.02 at Folsom Lake, 1.10 in Roseville, 1.58 in Auburn and 1.51 in Walnut Grove. Between 2 a.m. and 8 a.m. Wednesday an inch of rain fell in Sacramento.

More at SacBee.com >>>
Boating, Fish, Rafting, safety, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

A Surprise From Folsom Lake: Conservation Is Helping

Folsom Lake now has slightly more water than it did one year ago, despite the third year of drought conditions across Northern California.

The lake elevation was 390 feet on Thursday.

One year ago, it was 389 feet.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates Folsom Dam, credits extensive regional water conservation for allowing lake levels to remain somewhat steady.

“You’re getting a greater decrease in use, so it’s really saving water on a personal level,” said Luis Moore, of the Bureau of Reclamation. “Through those conservation efforts, we’ve been able to stretch this water supply.”

Water agencies that draw from Folsom are taking less because residential and business demand has fallen.

It’s one of the few positive developments in an otherwise dismal state water picture.

More at KCRA.com >>>

Bike Trail, Boating, Fire, Fish, Rafting, safety, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Winter Rains Not Likely To Ease California Drought

Drought conditions will likely ease in much of the West this winter, but not in most of California, according to a new climate report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The report, released Thursday, indicates that conditions in the Pacific Ocean, which include a developing El Niño weather pattern, may prompt above-average rainfall for the southern third of California over the next three months.

The Bay Area, however, as well as most of the rest of the state, stands only a one-third chance of seeing above-average rain — and equal chances for below-average rain and a normal amount.

“There’s just not a strong enough climate signal to make a prediction,” said Mike Halpert, acting director of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.

The forecast bodes poorly for Northern California, where residents are hoping a wet winter erases some of the costs of the state’s driest three-year period on record, including tight drinking-water supplies, fallowed agricultural fields and damaging wildfires.

But even a wetter-than-average winter would provide only a modicum of drought relief.

“It will take significantly above-average precipitation to fill reservoirs and recharge groundwater,” Halpert said.

The only good news for California, according to federal climate experts, is that the stubborn ridge of high-pressure air that consistently formed off the coast in recent years, blocking storms from making shore, won’t be nearly as prevalent.

The probable El Niño, which forms when the jet stream reacts with warm ocean surface waters, will likely push enough moisture across the high sea to keep the ridge from settling in, Halpert said.

More at SFGate.com >>>

Boating, Fish, safety, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Boat Dwellers Can Be A Problem On Our Rivers

There’s a guy the cops call Mr. Smith who lives on a boat tied to a log in the Sacramento River,just a short skip downriver from the Tower Bridge. He’s rarely seen, but he’s out there, hunkered down in a Bayliner named Takee One that’s barely afloat.

Traci Trapani and Jason Warren have been coming across people like this guy a lot. They’re officers with the Sacramento Police Department’s marine unit, and a big part of their daily routine is monitoring a subculture of boat people living on our rivers.

The cops have pulled about 10 wrecked boats out of the rivers this year alone, many of them from the American River over by Camp Pollock. In just over an hour on a sunny Thursday afternoon last week, Trapani and Warren came across four more old vessels moored in the Sacramento River, plus a makeshift raft of tied-together Styrofoam that someone is living on.

“Some of these boats are about to sink,” Trapani said, skippering a police boat past Old Sac.

More at SacBee.com >>>
Bike Trail, Boating, Fish, Rafting, safety, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Agency Seeks $9.7M From State To Improve Local Water Supplies

Hoping to reduce the Sacramento region’s dependence on Folsom Lake for water, local officials seek $9.7 million in state funds for 17 projects.

Officials with the Regional Water Authoritysaid the money, which could come by the end of October, would pay for groundwater-supply projects that would lessen the reliance on Folsom in dry years.

“Folsom is our biggest risk when it comes to water supply, because it serves statewide water supply and environmental needs in addition to our own,” John Woodling, the authority’s executive director, said in a news release.

The projects include upgrading or installing 13 wells, building four pump stations for lifting water to higher elevations and increasing access to water from the Sacramento and American rivers even when they’re running particularly low.

More at BizJournals.com >>>

Bike Trail, Boating, Events, Fish, Rafting, safety, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Great American River Clean Up Is This Saturday

This Saturday, September 20, offers opportunities to help the community as well as have fun.
During the hours of 9 am to noon the annual Great American River Clean Up will be held. To volunteer and enjoy the outdoors while helping to keep the American River Parkway clean; details and more information can be obtained at the American River Parkway Foundation website.

Boating, Fish, safety, Water

Slow Down At Folsom Lake: Rocks Ahead

Put away those water skis because the speed limit on Folsom Lake is now 5 mph.

Beginning Tuesday, state parks officials lowered the speed limit to 5 mph because the drought has caused the reservoir to be so low that a fast-moving vessel or a skier could hit rocks.

The low water level has also left most boat ramps dry. Rattlesnake Bar, Granite Bay, Folsom Point and Peninsula boat ramps are all out of the water and closed to boat launching.

More at SacBee.com>>>
Boating, Fish, Rafting, safety, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

California Drought: El Niño Chances Fall Again

Hopes of an almighty El Niño bringing rain to a drought-stricken California – with its fallow fields, depleted streams and parched lawns – were further dashed Thursday. The National Weather Service, in its monthly El Niño report, again downgraded the chances of the influential weather pattern occurring in the fall or winter.

The odds were 80 percent in May, but were placed between 60 and 65 percent this week.

Meanwhile, the agency also announced that the much-needed weather event is likely to be weak instead of moderate in strength – another retreat from the more robust projections made earlier this year that fueled speculation that California’s three-year dry spell might be snapped.

El Niños, defined by warming Pacific Ocean waters that release enough energy to shape worldwide weather, have been associated with wet winters in the Golden State. The strong 1997-98 event correlated with San Francisco’s biggest recorded rain year: a whopping 47.2 inches of rain.

But the correlation doesn’t always hold up. While El Niños carry the potential to bring quenching showers, this week’s climate report doesn’t necessarily doom the state to another year of drought.

More at SFGate.com >>>

Boating, Fish, Rafting, safety, Salmon, Water, Wildlife

Folsom Lake Spillway Keeps To Schedule, Budget

The approximately $900 million auxiliary spillway for Folsom Dam, which will increase the dam’s release capacity and reduce flood risk downstream, is “on time and on budget” for its scheduled October 2017 completion.

 Also on schedule are the first phase of the project’s control structure, scheduled to wrap up in the summer of 2015, and the second phase, set for completion in May 2017, said Katie Huff, a senior project manager with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“Site restoration will begin in 2016-17,” she said.

The auxiliary spillway’s completion target is four years sooner than the original planned completion date of 2021 — and nearly $416 million below original cost projections.

Construction on the new dam, the control structure, began in May 2012. Crews have been working nearly around the clock, six days a week, to meet the completion deadline of mid-2015.

The third year of California drought hasn’t had an impact on construction of the auxiliary spillway. It’s essentially a second dam that will allow water to be released earlier and more safely from Folsom Lake during large storms.

Rather, with the extended dry conditions, “We’ve been able to do work in the ‘dry,’ instead of the ‘wet,’” said Huff, who lives in El Dorado Hills.

The Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, California’s Central Valley Flood Protection Board and the Sacramento Flood Control Agency are working together to build the auxiliary spillway to increase its release capacity and reduce flood risk downstream.

More at AuburnJournal.com >>>

Boating, safety, Water

Folsom Lake High Enough To Fend Off 5 MPH Speed Limit

Folsom Lake levels are high enough to fend off a 5 mph speed limit for Labor Day weekend — and boaters are pleasantly surprised, considering the statewide drought.

“We get to still use the lake. Summer is not over for us,” said Tim Vas Dias, a boater who uses Folsom Lake often. “We thought it would be closed by July 4 with the shortage of water and the drought situation we have here in California.”

Park officials told KCRA 3 on Thursday they will hold off on the 5 mph speed limit until after the holiday weekend.

The 5 mph speed limit is often imposed when the level of the lake is so low that there are many obstructions, like exposed rocks or old tree stumps.

The limit is often seen as the end of the season for boaters. The trigger for imposing the 5 mph speed limit is a lake level of about 400 feet.

Currently, Folsom Lake stands at about 400.54 inches.

People who use the lake frequently thought the drought would have dropped the lake levels much faster.

“Honestly, I thought they were going to have 5 mph in place a long time ago the way the lake was dropping,” said Mark Lerch, who uses the lake almost every day after work by taking out his personal watercraft. “It was dropping so quick, it seemed like a foot or two a day at the start of summer.”

State water officials said the reason the lake level on Folsom has not dropped faster is that this year, they have managed the water systems, upriver and down, even more meticulously than ever.

More at KCRA.com >>>