Who Rules California's Russian River?

Part 1: All Eyes on the Storm

Wednesday is market day in the city of Santa Rosa, California. Jay Jasperse takes a walk through his local farmers market on a summer day and finds baskets and carts filled with juicy tomatoes, knobby roots, and sweet-smelling herbs. Signs propped up on the rows of booths advertise wine tastings. Just down the road, local giants like Kendall Jackson and E&J Gallo compete on an international scale.

When Jasperse browses produce at the market, he sees beyond the spectrum of earthy colors and the familiar faces behind the counters. He sees the complicated workings behind many of the items on the shelves, such as a bottle of wine.

He sees how the region’s climate—warm and dry in the summer, and cool and wet in the winter—makes winegrowing possible here.

How a winegrower fastidiously watches over his vines until the hot summer sun has stressed the grapes to perfection.

How one unexpected, deadly frost could compromise an entire year’s harvest.

Farmers put fresh produce on display at one of region's local markets. NOAA Climate.gov photo by Caitlyn Kennedy.

The wine, the produce, and everything else at this farmers market depend upon the Russian River in some way. As Chief Engineer for the Sonoma County Water Agency, Jasperse always has one finger on the pulse of the river—a 110-mile long artery that winds through California’s Sonoma and Mendocino counties. It’s the water agency’s job to keep the region’s water system in balance so that everyone and everything gets its share, even when drought, floods, or frost strikes the region.

Take this year, for instance. With less than half of its normal rainfall for this water year to date, Sonoma County is currently experiencing its driest period on record. Water levels in Lake Mendocino—the smaller and more vulnerable of the region’s two major reservoirs—have dropped to a near historic low storage level for this time of year. This reservoir provides water to several communities and farmers in Mendocino and Sonoma Counties.

Water engineers Jay Jasperse (left) and Chris Delaney (right) discuss current water conditions at the Sonoma County Water Agency office in Santa Rosa, California. NOAA Climate.gov photo by Caitlyn Kennedy.

As familiar as water agency managers and engineers are with the river and its rhythms, they are less familiar with the invisible river in the sky that has a major impact on the region’s water supply. In mid-February, a large “atmospheric river” brought some much-needed rainfall to the region, although not enough to alleviate the current drought emergency. If relief does not come in the next few months, Californians will face significant cutbacks in water use to prevent the lake from going dry in the fall.

Water shortages during dry years affect the interests of both winegrowers and conservationists in the region, and they leave water managers trying to strike a careful balance. Jasperse and his colleagues at the water agency are turning to science as a way to find compromise when water conflicts arise. It won’t be easy, though. While three protected species of fish may have a lawful claim to the Russian River, the winegrowers and their vines rule the land.

When the Rain Stops

California’s Russian River begins in Mendocino County and ends at the Pacific Ocean in Sonoma County. At many points along its winding curves, miles and miles of grape vines extend out from the riverbank and crawl across the rolling landscape. Heavy fog masks the green and tan hills in the distance.

In Sonoma County, a complex interaction of geology, topography and maritime influences have created a patchwork of microclimates that yield diverse styles of wine. NOAA Climate.gov photo by Caitlyn Kennedy.

Jasperse drives past miles of vineyards every day on his scenic commute to the Sonoma County Water Agency office in Santa Rosa, California. He explains that the local climate is similar to that of Europe's Mediterranean region, which is famous for its winemaking.

“We typically have warm, very dry summers and cool, wet winters. Most of our rainfall occurs from November through May, and it’s very unusual if we get any rainfall in other parts of the year. Because it’s all concentrated during the winter, it takes a lot of planning to make sure we have enough water in storage to last us through the year.”

The Russian River drains a 1,485-square-mile watershed in Mendocino and Sonoma counties in California. There are two major dams in the watershed, creating Lake Mendocino and Lake Sonoma. Map by NOAA Climate.gov.

The water agency’s main job is to provide drinking water to about 600,000 people living and working in California’s Sonoma and Marin counties. Working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency helps operate two dams in the Russian River watershed: the Coyote Valley and Warm Springs dams. The agency also supports local stormwater and wastewater systems that are outside the jurisdiction of local communities, such as the City of Santa Rosa.

But since water is vital for many facets of life in Sonoma County, the agency is involved in a range of projects all closely tied to maintaining a healthy and sustainable river: carbon mitigation and clean energy generation projects aimed at improving the water system’s energy efficiency; water conservation initiatives; fisheries research and monitoring activities; and serving the needs of the region’s water-dependent industries, such as farmers, winegrowers, and other business owners.

If the water managers do their job right, none of these interests have to suffer a lack of water. During the dry period of the year, the agency turns to two major reservoirs: Lake Mendocino and Lake Sonoma.

The agency releases water from the reservoirs throughout the summer to ensure that they meet the minimum streamflow in the river that is mandated by the California State Water Resources Control Board. Engineers also inflate a giant rubber barrier in the river that slows down the water, allowing more of it to be diverted at the agency’s collection system located along the river bank.

The Sonoma County Water Agency operates an inflatable dam on the Russian River to increase production capacity during peak demand months. Permanent fish ladders on the side of the river allow fish swim past the barrier when it is inflated. NOAA Climate.gov photo by Caitlyn Kennedy.

A secure water supply is critical for people living in Sonoma County during the summer when the only other relief from the hot sun is a dip in the river itself. During the winter, however, the Pacific goes into overdrive, churning up giant storms off the coast. Then, the agency’s focus turns to safeguarding the river against too much water.

New Year, Big Flood

March 2011 was a stressful time for the Sonoma County Water Agency to be planning and hosting a workshop. Water agency managers, including senior engineer Chris Delaney, were painfully aware that things weren’t looking good in the Russian River watershed—the river’s water levels were too low, and there was talk of declaring a drought warning.

Still, the conditions emphasized the need for a workshop in the first place. The water agency was getting together with a group of agencies and organizations at the federal, state, and local levels to discuss how they could work together to help people better prepare for extreme events, like droughts and floods, in the future.

As the workshop approached, the forecast got interesting. A storm popped up on the forecast quite suddenly. Not just your average rainstorm—an unrelenting, whopper of a storm that helped ease fears of drought in the upcoming year.

“We had kind of a miracle March that year,” Jasperse says. “We had two storms back to back that allowed the system to rebound entirely in a period of two weeks. We basically went from one extreme—drought—to another very acute extreme where we had some urban flooding.” He snaps his fingers. “Just like that.”

“It’s amazing how fast that can happen,” Delaney agrees. “We’ll get the bulk of our precipitation from these extreme storms. ”

Moderate to severe drought dominated California as of January 19 (image left). Then two atmospheric river events hit the Californian coast in the same week—one in the northern half and one in the southern half (middle). By the end of the week (image right), drought had significantly abated. NOAA Climate.gov maps based on U.S. Drought Monitor data and PRISM precipitation data.

These storms provided Marty Ralph—then a researcher at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado—with the perfect opening act for his workshop presentation. Ralph has his eye constantly fixed on the state of California because he is investigating the processes behind the powerful storms that hit the region. Ralph is now a little closer to the action at the UCSD/Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.

“More than a decade ago, we started building out a network of observation sites so we could look at the storms that hit the coast of California in more detail,” Ralph says. “What we wanted to know in particular was: what are the conditions that create these certain types of storms that bring extreme rainfall and flooding? We also knew that these findings would be relevant along the rest of the U.S. West Coast.”

Ralph and his colleagues have learned a lot about these extreme storms. They’re just like traditional winter storms in terms of being extratropical cyclones. But trailing along behind and south of the heart of the cyclones, just ahead of the storm’s cold front, a narrow ribbon of moisture forms. This ribbon can grow into a river 400 or more kilometers wide and 2,000 or more kilometers long. The winds winding along this pathway can reach hurricane strength at low altitudes and transport huge amounts of water vapor from the tropics toward the poles.

In mid-February 2014, an intense extratopical storm merged with an atmospheric river and hit the California coast. This three-part animation shows a satellite view of the storm clouds, then a color-coded animation of moisture flowing out of the tropics, and finally, how the atmospheric river banked up against the storm's cold front and moved inland with it. Animation by Dan Pisut, NOAA Environmental Visualization Lab, based on GOES IR imagery from CLASS and total precipitable water data provided by the University of Wisconsin/SSEC MIMIC.

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