Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

By Phillip Reese

The El Niño weather pattern often brings deluges to California, quickly dropping inches of rain in what climatologists liken to turning on a fire hose.

Except when it doesn’t. Except when it brings no extra rain.

El Niño is a hot topic today among water agency managers, farmers and others sick of California’s historic drought. Earlier this month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced El Niño is strengthening, that it will almost certainly continue through next winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and that it will probably last into early spring 2016.

So which El Niño will show up? Will it be the El Niño of 1982-83 that doubled rainfall in Northern California? Or the El Niño in 1976-77 that corresponded with one of the worst droughts in recent memory? Will we see another strong El Niño like the one that hit in 1997-98, dropping about 32 inches of rain on Sacramento? Or will it be the strong El Niño of 1987-88, which brought just 15 inches of rain.

“Unfortunately, even a strong El Niño doesn’t correlate to a particular outcome for California,” state climatologist Michael Anderson said in an interview with The Sacramento Bee this week. “There really is no way to lean on this.”

El Niño occurs when water temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean rise by at least half a degree Celsius above normal for three consecutive months. This warming of the vast Pacific typically alters weather patterns throughout the Western Hemisphere. In the United States, the Northwest usually gets drier and the Southwest wetter. Sacramento and Central California, however, sit between these phenomena, so El Niño effects here can go either way.

During weak or moderate El Niño events, in which Pacific water temperatures rise by a modest amount, it’s hard to find a consistent rain pattern in Sacramento, according to a Bee review of data back to 1950. The average precipitation in those years was 18 inches – about normal for the city – and ranged from 7 inches to 31 inches.

Stronger El Niño years – when ocean temperatures rise by a significant amount – are more encouraging. During those years, rainfall in Sacramento averaged 24 inches, roughly 130 percent of normal. Six of the nine strong El Niño years that have occurred since 1950 resulted in more than 25 inches of rain in Sacramento.

“A weak El Niño is not the same animal as a Godzilla El Niño,” said William Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

El Niños of all stripes are more correlated with higher rainfall in Southern California. That would be nice, several climatologists said, but the rivers of Northern California and the snowpack on top of the Sierra typically provide most of the surface water used throughout the state.

“It seems to take a fairly strong El Niño to increase precipitation in the northern part of the state – and that’s where we need the water,” said Kelly Redmond, deputy director and regional climatologist for the federal government’s Western Regional Climate Center in Reno.

El Niño tends to have its greatest effects in the western United States when the temperature pattern is strong between June and November, Redmond said. Models for that time period this year vary, but, on average, they predict water in the Pacific will settle at 2 to 3 degrees Celsius higher than normal – a very strong El Niño.

The strongest El Niño years were in 1982-83 and 1997-98, with Pacific temperatures peaking at slightly more than 2 degrees higher than normal. During those years, it rained a shocking 37 and 32 inches in Sacramento.

“I think the odds have been slowly rising that it could be a strong one,” Redmond said. “Whether it is among the (largest), time will tell. That’s not out of the question.”

But there are complications. Chief among them is the feared presence of a blob of warm water in the far northeastern Pacific. This warm water and a corresponding “ridiculously resilient ridge” of high pressure has bedeviled forecasters during the drought, pushing rain and snow away from California. Climatologists aren’t sure if the blob will disappear in the face of a strong El Niño or, if not, how the two weather patterns will interact with each other.

“The blob is still there, this blocking ridge,” Patzert said. “Here is the battle: The battle of El Niño and the blob. The blob would tend to keep the Pacific Northwest and Northern California dry.”

One less-than-ideal scenario, Patzert said, would be if El Niño dumped a ton of rain on Southern California while leaving Northern California dry. The result: Southern California would slog through mudslides and flash floods while Northern California remained parched – and most everyone wound up short of water again during summer 2016.

“If you look at its past history, (El Niño) has never been billed as a drought buster,” Patzert said. “Its always been billed as a wrecking ball. It comes at you fast and furious. You are always doing damage control.”

Even if California sees an above average amount of rainfall this winter, it wouldn’t necessarily pull the state out of drought. It’s rained so little for so long that it would take a few sustained years of rainfall to set things right, several climatologists said.

“A wet year would definitely ameliorate some conditions,” Anderson said. It would especially help replenish the state’s reservoirs, he said. But, he added, “groundwater recovery is a much slower process. It takes more sustained wet years to see that turnaround.”

Patzert said El Niño weather patterns are often followed by La Niña weather patterns, and La Niña is correlated with dry years in California. The state has seen mostly dry years interspersed with a few wet periods for much of the past 15 years, he said.

“It was dry, it was wet,” he said. “We thought we were out of it, then we were back in it. It’s like the Godfather: I think I’m out and they keep pulling me back in.”

Despite the uncertainties, climatologists are still keeping a close watch on El Niño. They uniformly say that it’s our best chance of beating the drought, now in its fourth year. Several climatologists are more optimistic today than at other points during the drought.

“El Niño is the great wet hope,” Patzert said. “We are really on our knees about ready to go to our bellies with this drought.”

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By Tim Hearden

SACRAMENTO — Water-saving tips to weather the drought are key features at this year’s California State Fair, which runs through July 26.

The state Department of Water Resources’ award-winning “Californians Don’t Waste — Save Water in Your Home” exhibit in the Counties Building offers hands-on demonstrations of ways to conserve water in kitchens, laundry rooms and bathrooms.

The agency also has an outdoor booth at the fair’s farm at which experts such as landscape specialist Julie Saare-Edmonds give tips on landscape irrigation efficiency.

“We’re pleased by the turnout at the State Fair and the interest fairgoers show in our exhibits,” DWR spokeswoman Elizabeth Scott said in an email. “We’re also finding that the drought seems to be on everybody’s mind. Not only are folks interested in hearing from us about new ways to conserve, but they want to share with us what they’ve been doing at home to save water. That’s encouraging.”

The 162nd state exposition opened on a cool morning July 10 with the theme, “The Best is Back.” The Golden State’s abundance of crops and farm animals always take center stage at the fair, as its 32-year-old farm is one of the most popular destinations for attendees.

The farm’s attractions include a daily farmers’ market, an outdoor kitchen grill, an aquaculture exhibit, an insect pavilion and talks by the University of California’s Master Gardeners. A local supermarket chain also sponsors a “passport” program in which families can learn about crops and healthy eating while they visit the farm and eat a snack at the end.

Nearby, the fair’s livestock building and adjacent shaded stalls feature some 4,500 entries during the course of the festival, as livestock exhibits are shown in shifts. Entrants compete in youth and open divisions.

The DWR’s water-saving tips come as urban areas are under a state mandate to reduce their water use by at least 25 percent from 2013 levels, with some areas facing targets of up to 36 percent. Farms statewide have had their surface water allocations drastically reduced or shut off completely.

The department’s outdoor exhibit includes a low-water garden maintained with a water-efficient irrigation system. The exhibit offers drought-tolerant plant ideas and tips for conserving water with compost and mulch, according to a news release.

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CDFA Secretary Karen Ross (left) helps to unveil the new “Summer Harvest” stamp series. California State Fair CEO Rick Pickering is on the far left.

CDFA secretary Karen Ross joined California State Fair CEO Rick Pickering and US Postal Service officials to introduce a new series of postage stamps,  “Summer Harvest,” during the fair’s current run at Cal Expo.

The stamps depict watermelon, corn, cantaloupe and tomatoes, all of which are among the 400-plus commodities produced in California, the nation’s leader in food production

The event was held at The Farm at the State Fair, a living, growing three-acre exhibit that demonstrates the importance of agriculture and food production in California. It includes a farmers’ market stand that symbolizes California’s role as a pioneer in Certified Farmers’ Markets. Governor Brown signed legislation creating them during his very first term in office, back in the 70s.

The art for the four stamps was inspired by vintage produce advertising, including 19th and 20th century shipping crate labels, seed packets and catalogs. Though not all produce was shipped in wooden crates, the stamps are especially reminiscent of vintage labels of that era.

The stamps may be purchased in booklets of 20 at usps.com/stamps, at the Postal Store, at 800-STAMP24 (800-782-6724) and at Post Offices nationwide.

By Alice Daniel

Rancher Gary Tarbell stands in the sale barn at the Tulare County Stockyard watching as cattle pass through a gate, into a ring and, one by one, are sold to the highest bidder.

“They’re going out of state, all these cattle,” Tarbell says. “There’s no water here.”

Just as farmers in the Central Valley are fallowing thousands of acres because of the drought, cattle ranchers are also cutting production. In fact, herd numbers nationwide are at their lowest since the 1950s, due in part to the Texas and California droughts.

“We had to cut way back,” Tarbell says. “I sold over half of my herd already because there’s no water on the ranch.”

hat’s not atypical, says Jon Dolieslager, owner of the Tulare County Stockyard.  “Everybody here is selling, you know, probably double of what they would normally do just because they’re out of feed.”

Dolieslager is also the auctioneer. He takes a quick break from doing his auction cry — or, as some say, “cattle rattle” — and points to the pen behind him.

“We’ve probably got close to a thousand head of feeder cattle out there today that we have to sell,” he says. Those are drought numbers. On a sale day in a wet year, he would be selling anywhere from 300 to 500 feeder cattle — steers and heifers destined to go to feedlots.

Dolieslager says about a quarter of his customers, who come mostly from the San Joaquin Valley and the Central Coast, have quit ranching for now because their springs and wells have dried up and there’s no forage.

“They’re all completely out of feed and do not want to have to buy alfalfa because of the high cost of alfalfa, because of the high cost of water” to grow alfalfa, he says.

Outside the barn, Kyle Loveall is waiting his turn to sell off some yearling cattle. He’s the ranch manager for Elliott Land and Cattle.

“Typically, we wean our calves in early summer, run them over another year and sell them as yearlings,” he says. “Last year, we weaned them right away and sold them instead of keeping them because we didn’t have enough feed and water.”

He’s been a cowboy for 44 years, since the age of 14, and he’s never seen a drought like this.

“Last year, we fed almost all year-round,” he says. “It was a huge expense.”  Just buying hay cost the ranch around $140,000, he says.

So far, he says, the water is holding on the ranch he manages. But he bought a water truck just in case the creek beds and wells go dry and he needs to haul in water. But that would be pricy. Cows drink a lot.

“Twenty-five to 35, 40 gallons a day,” he says. “Yeah, that’s a lot of water, times 400, that’s a lot of water.”

The ranch has reduced its breeding herd in the past three years by 60 percent, down to about 440 cows. And that means Loveall brought fewer calves to the auction this time.

“This is it,” he says. “This is basically our income for the year. Instead of 600 calves, we’re gonna sell 120 calves.”

Fortunately, beef prices are high.

“These cattle will bring a lot of money but it’d be nice if we had a thousand cows and the market was like this,” Loveall says.

Ranchers who are forced to sell will at least get a good price on their cattle, says Justin Oldfield, vice president of government affairs for the California Cattlemen’s Association. But, he adds, there’s a lot more to running a ranch than just buying and selling cattle.

It takes a lot of time to build up a herd, Oldfield says. Ranchers look for certain traits, including disposition.

“A lot of that work that you’ve put in, to putting together a cow herd that works for your ranch, goes out the window,” says Oldfield.

bout 30 minutes east of the Tulare County Stockyard, Sally Baker looks out at her ranch in the Sierra foothills directly below Sequoia National Park. She points to an empty streambed where her cattle used to drink. It’s not the only place on the ranch that’s dry, she says.

“Our springs have all dried up on the west side of our ranch, and we had a well on the north end of the ranch also go dry,” says Baker, a fourth-generation rancher.

When Baker’s dad died 20 years ago, she and her mom took over the ranch. Last year was particularly tough.

“We unfortunately had to sell about 50 cows, which broke my heart,” she says.

And they had to buy hay twice. But Baker says her mom grew up in the Depression, so she knows how to plan for the future.

“And so we were fortunate,” she says. “We had the means to do that. Unfortunately, a lot of ranchers didn’t have a reserve and had to sell off a lot of their stock.”

Her mom, Sally Dudley, can see their cattle from her living-room window. Dudley has lived on the ranch for more than 60 years and is worried about the drought.

“If it continues it’s really going to be disastrous, because you know the water table is dropping and that’s going to affect all of us,” she says.

She doesn’t do much of the physical labor anymore, but she still keeps the ranch’s books.

“You try to be frugal,” she says. “You know, you just save for a rainy day.”

Or, in her case, a really long drought.

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USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack

The School Nutrition Association is hosting its annual national conference this week in Salt Lake City. 

As parents, you trust your family pediatrician to help you make informed choices about your children’s health — not politicians or special interests. That’s why when developing the first meaningful improvements to school meals in 30 years, we turned to the people who care the most for kids, including pediatricians and other respected health, nutrition and school meal professionals.

For the past three years, kids have eaten healthier breakfasts, lunches and snacks at school thanks to the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which improved the nutrition of foods and beverages served in cafeterias and sold in vending machines. Our kids are getting healthier as a result. Parents and pediatricians approve. But some politicians in Congress aren’t so happy. Now that the Act is up for reauthorization in Congress, opponents are straining to roll back the progress we’ve made, putting your children’s potential in the hands of Washington interests. This, despite the fact that our national obesity crisis costs the country $190.2 billion per year to treat.

Opponents would have you believe that kids won’t eat the healthier meals, that they’re too burdensome on schools. But we’ve talked to the dedicated school meal professionals working in school cafeterias, as well as the students, and the negative rhetoric does not match reality.

We have listened carefully to schools and provided time, flexibility, guidance, and hundreds of millions of dollars in financial support. As a result, more than 95 percent of schools across the country are now meeting the standards.

These changes haven’t happened overnight. USDA continues to work with schools that are having difficulty preparing healthier meals. We recently launched a program called Team Up for School Nutrition Success that allows the schools still working to meet the standards to pair up and learn best practices from schools that are already successfully serving healthier meals. The program has provided training for 3,029 individuals and has been enthusiastically received by schools and school officials.

The fact is, most schools support the new standards. A recent survey by the Kids’ Safe and Healthful Foods Project found that 70 percent of food service staff and school administrators at the elementary and middle school levels say that kids like the healthier meals. Another study from the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Public Health found that nearly 90 percent of surveyed students liked at least some school meal options.

A recent Harvard study shows the standards are working, as evidenced by the fact that kids are now eating 16 percent more vegetables and 23 percent more fruit at lunch — astounding progress in three years. Some predicted kids would reject healthy food and throw more food away, but the same study showed the critics were wrong.

There was bipartisan support for healthier school meals when the Act passed in 2010, and that remains true today. A recent survey found that 87 percent of Democrats, 70 percent of independents and more than half of registered voters with kids in public schools surveyed were supportive of the new meals.

This is not only a question of what’s right or wrong for kids. It’s also a national security and an economic issue. One in five young adults is too overweight to serve in the military. The cost of treating obesity-related illnesses drags down our economy and increases budget deficits. If we don’t continue to invest in our children, this generation will be the first to live shorter lives than their parents.

Today, we are on a path to change that thanks to parents, teachers, doctors and kids who cared enough to fight for higher standards. Because of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, our children have more energy to learn and grow, greater opportunity to thrive, and better overall health. Our children have healthier school meals than we ever did.

What Congress is really considering now is whether kids deserve a healthier future. The answer is yes, and the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act ensures it.

Link to story in Salt Lake Tribune

By Jeanne Kuang

Abby Garrett took some of her first steps as a baby in a sheep’s pen.

After that time, the 14-year-old said, “sheep became my life.”

Garrett, whose family has raised livestock for generations, is showing sheep at the California State Fair’s livestock competition for the fifth year in a row. She’s one of many young people at the fair showing livestock, and over the years, she said, she’s seen more kids participating.

The fair has boasted a focus on technology this year, debuting a drone race and an exhibit on science and popular culture. But for California teenagers competing in livestock shows through the youth development groups 4-H and FFA, the fair has always revolved around a love of animals and the family tradition of raising them.

Garrett said she wants to be a veterinarian or an agriculture teacher, and hopes to travel the world educating people about animals.

Samantha Mello, 14, of the Hanford 4-H, explained that her family has raised livestock since her grandfather’s generation.

“Farming is important in society, and I’d like to be a part of it,” Mello said. “People don’t really know where their food comes from; they think they just get it at the grocery store.”

Thirteen-year-old Sarah Leeman of the Citrus Heights 4-H brought her four pigs to the show. She raised them on her family’s land, drawing the envy of friends.

“It makes me feel proud about our land,” she said of the shows.

By Tim Hearden

A continued lack of water availability is causing field crop acreages in California to dip even lower than expected, government and industry representatives say.

Rice acreage in California is now expected to top out at 385,000, a steep drop from the 431,000 acres of rice harvested last year, according to a USDA field crop report.

The actual acreage may end up being lower, cautions Charley Mathews, a Marysville, Calif., grower and member of the USA Rice Federation’s executive committee.

“The industry number we’ve been using is between 350,000 and 375,000,” Mathews said. “I think they (the USDA) started off kind of high.”

Early this spring, farmers told the National Agricultural Statistics Service they intended to seed rice on 408,000 acres, or 6 percent below the acreage seeded in 2014. However, NASS now expects medium- and short-grain rice acreage in California to decrease by 11 percent and 9 percent, respectively, from 2014, its updated field crop report states.

Nationwide, areas planted to rice in 2015 are estimated at 2.77 million acres, down 6 percent from last year, because of lower price expectations this year, according to NASS.

Water uncertainties amid a fourth straight year of drought have continued to fluster growers, particularly along the Sacramento River in Northern California. With regulators wanting to keep enough water in the river for migrating fish, many growers had to wait for deliveries before they could start planting in late April.

Recently, the federal government’s need to keep cold water in Shasta Lake for fish has further complicated the timing and quantity of remaining deliveries to settlement contractors along the river.

“There’s kind of a worry that it’ll decrease their diversions,” Mathews said.

Rice is one of several field crops in California showing sharp acreage declines this year, according to the report. Among others:

• Corn acreage in the Golden State is estimated at 430,000 acres, down from 520,000 acres a year ago. Corn planted nationwide totals 88.9 million acres, down 2 percent from last year.

• California’s 51,000 acres of cotton are down from the 56,000 acres harvested in the state last year.

• Growers have planted 35,000 acres of sunflower in California this year, down from 44,000 acres last year.

The declines come as growers with limited water have sacrificed some annual plantings to concentrate on perennial crops, such as nut orchards, they have said.

For the area survey, NASS officials visited randomly selected tracts of land and interviewed growers in early June, according to a news release.

NASS crop acreage report: http://www.usda.gov/nass/PUBS/TODAYRPT/acrg0615.pdf

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By Lesley McClurg

As the drought continues and the weather heats up, California farmers are grappling with how to allocate dwindling water supplies.

Patrick Dosier, an independent agronomist and agriculture tech consultant, says smartphone or tablet apps can help with water efficiency.

“If you can think of your irrigation water supply as your savings account and checking account, you’re basically running at a deficit right now,” says Dosier. “An app can do the accounting for you, and help you to spend your limited resource more wisely.”

Dosier says there are a growing number of apps that can help farmers monitor equipment, track labor and manage farms remotely.

Anne Burkholder is a soil scientist. She’s standing in an alfalfa field in Davis that has an unusual large dead patch in the middle of it.

“Basically the alfalfa is maybe five inches tall, and it’s really yellow and crunchy right here where we’re walking,” says Burkholder.

She pulls out her smartphone and clicks on an app called SoilWeb to see what’s going on. She clicks on ‘Get my location.’ The app tells her she’s standing on soil that’s very salty and alkaline called the Pescadero series.

She walks about 100 yards forward to a bright green lush section of the field.

Standing hip deep in flowering alfalfa she pulls out her phone again to check her location on the SoilWeb app.

“It pops up that we are on the Yolo series,” says Burkholder. “And, it gives me a picture as well. It’s called a ‘pedon,’ which is a 3-D representation of the soil under the ground.”

Burkholder says the Yolo series soil type is much better for growing crops.

The app has identified why one section of the field is producing well, and another not all.

Back in the office, Burkholder clicks through reams of digital data, graphs and maps to learn more about the two types of soil.

At the iPhone app store, there are nearly 900 apps related to agriculture.

“The current generation of young farmers that are going to inherit the operations all have smartphones, they all have tablets,” says Patrick Dosier. “And, they’re scanning for the new product that’s coming their way that’s going to help them be more efficient.”

Dosier organizes a hackathon called Apps for Ag. This year’s event is in Davis in the fall.

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