Because San Diego County gets so little natural rainfall, most residents must artificially irrigate their landscaping. Rainfall becomes a welcome sight when it occurs. The County of San Diego’s Watershed Protection Program in the Department of Public Works has created a webpage with useful information and photos to educate the public and assist in preventing watershed damage.
Because San Diego County gets so little natural rainfall, most residents must artificially irrigate their landscaping. Rainfall becomes a welcome sight when it occurs.
But rainfall turns into an unwelcome problem when it enters the storm drain system. After the first heavy rain in several months, stormwater runoff gathers pollutants building up on surfaces like rooftops, parking lots, sidewalks, and streets. This polluted water gets carried into street drains that dump out directly into the Pacific Ocean. Pollutants harm waterways and affect sea animals, plants, and the people who surf, swim, or dive in the ocean.
Residents may be contributing to this problem between rainstorms without realizing it. Your yard drainage system including French drains, weeping tiles, and sub-surface drains should not be used for non-stormwater water runoff. They are intended only to prevent flooding by diverting rainwater from your property to the road or street.
If your irrigation system overflows from landscaping, runoff water may carry pollutants like pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers into the storm drain system. Photo: Wikimedia
If your irrigation system overflows from landscaping, or wash water runs off hardscapes or sidewalks, these non-stormwater activities may carry pollutants like pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers into the storm drain system and cause the same negative effects as runoff from rainfall.
The County of San Diego’s Watershed Protection Program in the Department of Public Works has created a webpage with useful information and photos to educate the public and assist in preventing watershed damage. Program Coordinator Christine A. Tolchin, QSD, QISP, CPESC says new information is added monthly.
The County of San Diego’s Watershed Protection Program in the Department of Public Works has created a webpage with useful information and photos to educate the public and assist in preventing watershed damage. Program Coordinator Christine A. Tolchin, QSD, QISP, CPESC, says new information is added monthly. Photo: SDCounty.gov
The website shares these tips to prevent non-stormwater runoff from carrying pollutants into our waterways.
Your property should also integrate best practices to slow down and divert natural stormwater runoff after heavy rains. Three common methods include:
Yard drains and diversion methods should regularly be cleared of debris so they operate properly and are ready for a storm event. It’s a good time to do it now while the sun is shining in San Diego.
California may see a 54 percent increase in rainfall variability by the end of this century, according to new research from the lab of Assistant Professor Da Yang, a 2019 Packard Fellow and atmospheric scientist with the University of California, Davis. Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, Yang and his co-authors predict the entire West Coast will experience greater month-to-month fluctuations in extremely dry and wet weather, especially in California. The lead author is Wenyu Zhou, a postdoctoral researcher in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where Yang has a dual appointment.
The study explores the Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO), an atmospheric phenomenon that influences rainfall in the tropics and can trigger everything from cyclones over the Indian Ocean to heatwaves, droughts and flooding in the United States.
Last Tuesday marked the end of the 2019 rain year, which runs from July 1 through June 30. Wednesday was the start of the 2020 rain year.
The 2018 rainfall season that occurred from July 1, 2018, through June 30, 2019, produced 15.68 inches of rain at the Santa Maria Public Airport, or about 121% of normal.
New research showing how global warming intensifies extreme rainfall at the regional level could help communities better prepare for storms that in the decades ahead threaten to swamp cities and farms.
The likelihood of intense storms is rising rapidly in North America, and the study, published Monday in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, projects big increases in such deluges.
“The longer you have the warming, the stronger the signal gets, and the more you can separate it from random natural variability,” said co-author Megan Kirchmeier-Young, a climate scientist with Environment Canada.
In an unusual move necessitated by last week’s prodigious record-setting rainfall, Lake Hodges Reservoir this week opens its valves sending millions of gallons of water down the San Dieguito Riverbed towards the Pacific Ocean.
To hear that the weather is producing average results prompts thoughts of a metronome, plain brown wrappers and the smell of vanilla. But that certainly is not how Los Angeles’s rain intake for the water year has reached its historical average.
An Alaska storm that dropped unusually far south, drawing moisture from the subtropics, put San Diego over its annual rainfall mark.
At the start of March, things were looking bleak for California’s rain and snow totals after a pathetic January and one of the driest Februaries on record.
Much needed rain will finally return to California and will likely end a month-plus dry streak in San Francisco and Sacramento. Dry conditions have prevailed across most of California since late January due to the upper-level pattern. A strong area of high pressure aloft near California has pushed the jet stream and storm track northward into the Pacific Northwest.
The persistence of this pattern has resulted in drought conditions during the wet season. Nearly 70% of the Golden State is abnormally dry, and about a third of the state is in moderate drought, according to the latest report from the U.S. Drought Monitor.
