Rivers

SOQUEL, Calif.  —  The parking lot behind JJ’s Saloon was coated in three inches of mud. It was midday Monday and the Santa Cruz County saloon had now flooded three times in 10 days.The latest flooding was all from direct rain, bartender Jeff Ferreira said, but last week Soquel Creek had risen over its banks and gushed into downtown.“Had to be a couple of feet,” the 56-year-old bartender said as he pulled up a video from a few days earlier showing the water-logged lot behind the saloon. On Monday, as huge swaths of…

A “river” more than 100 miles wide is gushing through the air high above California, bringing with it heavy rain, winds, and snow. It’s the third in a series of weather systems known as atmospheric rivers — long, heavy columns of water vapor in the sky — to hit the state in the last two weeks. It’s already proven deadly: Two people have died as a result of the storms, including a toddler; roads have flooded or been hit by mudslides, forcing evacuations; and more than 180,000 Californians lost power. On Wednesday,…

A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 379, Issue 6627.Download PDF This story was produced with support from the Rainforest Journalism Fund in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. Soon after sunrise one warm day in September 2022, 26-year-old Josiel Pereira Juruna boards a small motorboat and sets out on the emerald-green waters of the Xingu River in the Brazilian Amazon. Accompanying him are biologist Cristiane Carneiro and…

Monumental weather conditions are hitting California this week, with heavy rain, strong winds, snow and choppy surf thanks to a set of weather events known as a “bomb cyclone” and a series of atmospheric rivers.Flood advisories are in effect for most of Northern and Central California.Northern California already had seen an earlier deluge due to a storm system that culminated in a wet New Year’s Eve, while other areas, such as the San Joaquin Valley, have seen winter weather advisories due to strong wind, rain and fog. On…

A successive series of powerful atmospheric river storms poses a growing threat to California as the ground becomes more saturated, river levels rise and heavy winds threaten the power infrastructure.This week’s storms are expected to dump intense levels of rain in a fairly short period of time. The greatest potential for disaster is in Northern California, which has already been battered by several destructive storms — including one this weekend that caused a deadly levee breach. But each new storm, including one set to…

This story originally appeared on High Country News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.Dozens of once crystal-clear streams and rivers in Arctic Alaska are now running bright orange and cloudy, and in some cases they are becoming more acidic. This otherwise undeveloped landscape now looks as if an industrial mine has been in operation for decades, and scientists want to know why.Roman Dial, a professor of biology and mathematics at Alaska Pacific University, first noticed the stark water-quality changes while…

After the driest start to any year on record, California will end 2022 with snow-capped mountains, soaked roadways and — in some places — flood warnings.The soggy end to an otherwise bone-dry year came as something of a surprise. Only weeks earlier, officials sounded the alarm about a rare third appearance of La Niña — a climate pattern in the tropical Pacific that is often associated with dry conditions in the state. On Thursday, skiers in Mammoth enjoyed some of the deepest snow in the nation, while in Los Angeles, a…

Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo has been on a Twitter roll this week — sort of. The rocker, who posted sparingly earlier this year, fired off more than 50 tweets Monday morning. Within an hour, he posted about “#FemboyAnthem,” estrogen and the English rock band Arctic Monkeys.His erratic posting continued Tuesday and Wednesday, with dozens of new posts shared in less than an hour. On Twitter, Cuomo seemingly teased a new album and replied to fans — even if they didn’t address him. “Haha yep, I feel ya,” he said in nonreply…

Early tomorrow morning, a new Earth monitoring instrument called the Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission, or SWOT, will launch into space on a SpaceX rocket. The satellite will take the first global survey of Earth’s freshwater systems from space, observing not only the oceans but also lakes, rivers, and coastal regions. It will be able to measure the height of water in these systems for the first time.“It will help us understand where water is, where it’s coming from, and where it’s going,” Katherine Calvin, chief…

Drought, floods and the melting of glaciers affected almost every part of the world in 2021, according to a new WMO report. Climate change is distorting rain patterns across the planet, leading to drought and floods, while rising temperatures are causing glaciers to melt, according to the first ever comprehensive review of water resources by the World Meteorological Organization. The WMO says it aims to publish global water reports annually from now on in response to calls for more accurate data in an era of growing…