Tahoe Truckee Region Environment Digest

A California Republican’s bill would exempt low and middle income wildfire victims from solar panels requirements on rebuilt homes that didn’t have them when they burned down.

California's reservoirs are brimming with water, and even Shasta Lake could fill up.

Highway 1 is closed indefinitely from Palo Colorado Road to Rocky Creek Bridge, the California Department of Transportation said on social media after a new landslide eroded part of the roadway.

Captains of fishing boats on the California coast are bracing for salmon fishing to be severely restricted — or possibly canceled for a second year.

The goal is to eliminate habitat competition between "invasive" owls and native owls.

Sieroty, of Beverly Hills, served as a state Assembly member and senator, championing disability rights and efforts to protect California's coast.

California will miss its goals unless it can increase emission reductions threefold, according to a new study.

Ecologists estimate that up to 14,000 sequoias have been killed in recent wildfires. The National Park Service for the first time has begun replanting some severely burned areas.

The state’s environmental tool skews which communities are designated as disadvantaged, researchers say. Some immigrant neighborhoods could be left out, while other groups are overrepresented.

A temporary lake in Death Valley National Park doubled after recent rains and is now deep enough to launch a kayak. Prior to August, ghostly Lake Manly hadn’t appeared in 19 years.

Gary Ellrod, retired NOAA Meteorologist and current senior meteorologist at Weather Extreme, explains the basics of frost, and how it forms.

A handful of super powerful tropical storms in the last decade and the prospect of more to come has a couple of experts proposing a new category of whopper hurricanes: Category 6.

The storm fed off of unusually warm waters as it grew. It also reached “bomb cyclone” status as it neared California.

Monarch butterflies have a long way to go before reaching stable population numbers.

As an underground fire burns deep within Chiquita Canyon Landfill, air regulators are raising alarms over the possible spread of toxic vapors.

What is an ARkStorm and why is everyone talking about it on social media right now?

Take a period of limited rainfall. Add heat. And you have what scientists call a “hot drought”—dry conditions made more intense by the evaporative power of hotter temperatures.

The Bay Area’s fog is iconic. But the latest episode of KQED podcast “Bay Curious” looks at how climate change could reduce the number of foggy days in the area.

Munition boxes, depth charges and smoke floats have been found 3,000 feet underwater off the coast of Los Angeles. More than 100 square miles of ocean might be contaminated.

Heavy snow is projected in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Previously, warmer storms had been bringing precipitation mainly to higher elevations in the Sierras.

Research shows that a mountain chickadee facing deep snow is like a canary in a coal mine—its survivability tells us about the challenges ahead.

Bright blue waves have been spotted in Long Beach, Newport Beach, Huntington Beach and Seal Beach. The bioluminescence is caused by organisms known as dinoflagellates and can impact fish populations.

The California Department of Water Resources has found that the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains is at just 25% of normal levels for this time of year. This could potentially impact water supply and wildfire protection.

A dark-sky movement to save birds from window strikes is sweeping the San Francisco Bay Area. Several cities have passed or are drafting laws restricting light pollution while making windows easier for birds to see.

Sarah Grimes investigates reports of dead marine mammals up and down the coast. So when she began finding the decapitated bodies of harbor seal pups just a few miles north of Fort Bragg in 2016, she was on the case. Grimes wasn’t able to pin down the culprit until last year, with the help of a UCSC student.

The Hoopa Valley Tribe announced it is acquiring about 10,000 acres of land in Northern California for $14.1 million. As part of this, the tribe will remove dams along the Klamath River and restore salmon runs.

The California Department of Water Resources has approved building a tunnel between the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The approval could signal a new wave of legal challenges to the long-running and controversial project.

Farmland is being rezoned for industrial use, and massive warehouses are being built on spec near communities like Buttonwillow and Shafter, so goods coming through the Southern California ports can be shipped quickly throughout the western United States.

Salmon populations in the Scott and Shasta rivers have crashed, so state officials are about to restrict irrigation again. And the controversial rules may even become permanent.

Officials in Kern County are proposing to build a carbon management facility that would be twice the size of Manhattan. By doing this, they would leverage federal tax credits to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Birds are affected by the mass use of fireworks on New Year’s Eve up to a distance of 10 km away, reports an international team of researchers.

Judson Jones, a meteorologist and reporter for The New York Times, gave a Q&A about California’s year of intense weather. This included the state’s largest snowpack in 40 years and a “pretty astonishing” amount of precipitation.