Calif. gets high precipitation, but 'never enough'

Grumpy Editor finds good news often is followed by a sentence starting with "but."  Such was the case Friday with a story reporting El Niño in recent months brought much precipitation to California's Sierra Nevada, where the snow pack reached 87 percent of the long-term average.

Snow serves as a reservoir with slow release over a long period.

The "but" in this case read:  "But the drought is still far from over especially in Southern California."

The writer overlooked that water from the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada is channeled to Southern California via the Los Angeles Aqueduct, completed in 1913.

Other precious water for the Golden State is wasted.  Billions of gallons of water were released from Lake Folsom a few months ago --- to avert flooding.  Other areas released water to protect endangered smelt and salmon.

The dumped water flows to the Pacific Ocean.

In the Los Angeles area, the Los Angeles River almost overflows from major rainstorms as its much-sought contents also ends up in the Pacific rather than into additional reservoirs that should be, but somehow are never built to provide water storage for drought periods.

 

IN CASE YOUR FAVORITE NEWS OUTLETS MISSED THESE...

Don't read this if you believe in global warming:  Mid-April weekend weather in the Denver area brought up to 14 inches of snow and as much as four feet of the frozen white flakes in the mountains.  However, in weather coverage TV news focused on a tornado in Oklahoma...Not much wound up in print or broadcast reports about the microphone in front of  Ted Cruz suddenly cutting off during his speech, and was never fixed by Fox News, at a New York City GOP gala Thursday night.  Viewers then heard his voice "bounced" in the room with clicking of glasses and table chatter mixed in.  Strange...Billionaire hedge-fund manager Steven Cohen, who heads Point72 Asset Management, pledged $275 million to build clinics offering free mental health care to veterans and their families. Plans call for 20 to 25 clinics across the country in the next three to five years, with the first ones opening in July, reported Stars and Stripes...Fortune said Delta Air Lines abruptly stopped charging extra for booking seats offline.  "It is much simpler for our customers to not have to worry if they will pay a fee for ticketing with Delta," Glen Hauenstein, Delta's incoming president, said...General Motors announced it will move production of a new vehicle out of its Orion township assembly plant in Michigan to a factory in Kansas...Donald Trump said he will not go to this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on April 30.  The GOP presidential front runner attended the affair in 2011 and was the butt of many of President Obama's jokes in the president’s speech, and again last year...Notice that TV news editors are fascinated with protesters shouting and waving signs outside political rallies, especially when Trump is speaking inside?...The swing away from using coal pushed St. Louis-based Peabody Energy Corp., largest U.S. miner, to declare bankruptcy...The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority approved paying $42 million to implode the Riviera Hotel/Casino in two phases, June and August.  The Strip attraction opened in 1955 at a cost of  $8.5 million…Matthew Keys, a former social media editor at Reuters, was sentenced to two years in prison for helping hackers break into the Los Angeles Times website in 2010.

Really?

The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted drivers will pay an average of $2.04 per gallon this summer for regular gasoline.

But look for much higher prices at the pump in California and Nevada.