How California could save up its rain to ease future droughts — instead of watching epic atmospheric river rainfall drain into the Pacific

Photo caption: Heavy rain from a series of atmospheric rivers flooded large parts of California from late December 2022 into early January 2023. Photo credit: Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images. Article by Andrew Fisher. The Conversation – January 6, 2023.

California has seen so much rain over the past few weeks that farm fields are inundated and normally dry creeks and drainage ditches have become torrents of water racing toward the ocean. Yet, most of the state remains in drought. All that runoff in the middle of a drought begs the question — why can’t more rainwater be collected and stored for the long, dry spring and summer when it’s needed? As a hydrogeologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, I’m interested in what can be done to collect runoff from storms like this on a large scale. […]

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