Following a wet October and a dry November, there were only 3 days in December with a trace of precipitation in Lee Vining. Going into January, the season was at only 33% of average when measured at the NOAA rain gauge at the Mono Lake Committee Information Center & Bookstore. 1989, 1990, 1993, 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000 were all years with similar or drier autumns, adding up to almost 1/3 of the 24 years on record at our weather station. But it was the first half of January that threw this season into the remarkable category.

On January 17, 2012, Tioga Pass finally closed for the winter as storm clouds gathered on the horizon. The only other time in history—going back to 1933—when it closed in January was when it closed on New Year’s Day 2000.

On January 21st, 2012 (more…)

At about 12:40pm on Thursday, December 1 the power went out in Lee Vining. At 2:00pm it appeared that the power in Mono County from Bridgeport south might be out the rest of the day and possibly into tomorrow. With frozen pipes, no heat, no electricity, and no Internet, the Mono Lake Committee Information Center & Bookstore will be closed for the rest of today and until power is restored.

As of 2:15pm our phone system was still running on battery backup, so if you call you can still leave our staff voicemails, but soon the battery should run out and the phone system in the office will stop working. Emails to our office will be held by our spam filtering service until our server is back up and running after power is restored.

The rest of the Eastern Sierra region is dealing with this outage as well, so if you are traveling to the area today, be aware that gas stations, restaurants, markets, and motels in Mono County will be without power and may be closed today and possibly into tomorrow.

At 5:55pm on Monday, July 4th, distant lightning fried the Mill Creek WebCam‘s Ethernet port and the router that connected it to the Internet. The camera still works, but the Ethernet port no longer works. While the camera is out for repairs, we’ve ordered a new one to replace it. That means the Mill Creek WebCam should return by the end of August!

A portion of the Mill Creek Cam's view on July 4, 2011, right before distant lightning damaged the camera.

We managed to get a really good deal and bought two WebCams, so we will replace the Mono Lake WebCam at the Scenic Area Visitor Center as well during the next couple of months. This should dramatically improve the quality of that image as well.

Now available to download from the Mono Basin Clearinghouse is the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power’s May 2011 Mono Basin compliance report. This annual report discusses previous year and current year operations and monitoring for the State Water Board-ordered requirements of the city of Los Angeles’ water rights licenses. Highlights are (more…)

The Mono Basin and Eastern Sierra were hit by intense thunderstorms last weekend, especially on Saturday. Rainfall rates of up to seven inches per hour were recorded in the Sierra! Debris flows closed both Highway 395 and Highway 120 West for short periods of time—in Walker Canyon, Highway 395 was buried under five feet of mud in places. Rush Creek above Grant Lake Reservoir reached the highest flow so far this season, around 400 cubic feet per second (preliminary data) as rainfall combined with snowmelt from the still-extensive unmelted snowfields in the upper watershed to spill through the full reservoirs.

Lee Vining WebCam view of Saturday's thunderstorm that closed Highways 395 and 120 for short periods of time.

At the Mono Lake Committee Information Center & Bookstore in Lee Vining, we recorded (more…)

The Sierra Club recently released a scorecard comparing the water conservation efforts of cities in Los Angeles and Orange Counties. The City of Los Angeles was the only city to meet all 19 criteria and receive a perfect score!

The criteria included (more…)

As of late last week, Mono Lake’s elevation was 6383.48 feet above sea level. It has risen 1.2 feet since April 1st, and 2 feet since its winter low point in December. It rose 0.3 feet just in the last week!

Mono Lake has risen 8.6 feet since the September 1994 State Water Resources Control Board decision ordering the lake to rise to 6392 feet above sea level.

The 0.7-foot rise in June was the largest rise during a single calendar month since June 2006 and before that July 1995, and then three times in 1983: February, June, and December.

Mono Lake is now the highest it has been since September 2007. That year it dropped two feet during the second-driest year on record.

Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve staff and volunteers are moving signs and boardwalk sections out of the way as the shoreline moves uphill. It is about a foot-and-a-half away from 6385.1, the high point it reached in 2006 and 1999 and the highest levels since 1972.

Lee Vining Creek continued to flow Thursday at exceptional levels following a July 5th peak at 535 cubic feet per second (cfs), resulting in a ten-foot section of the Lee Vining Creek Trail being washed out. It is on a steep hillside with a big drop from the trail to the creek. There is a short but steep detour above the washed out section.

(more…)

Last week, Lee Vining Creek peaked on Thursday night, June 23, at approximately 536 cubic feet per second (cfs), according to preliminary data from the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (DWP). Southern California Edison is releasing additional water from Saddlebag Lake Reservoir and almost the  entire natural flow from Tioga Lake Reservoir, which resulted in a very high peak flow on Lee Vining Creek. This peak flow was about the same as last year’s average daily peak flow, which had only been exceeded (more…)

Tioga overlook parking lot, Memorial Day 2011.

It was a cold and blustery Memorial Day at Tioga Pass, but that didn’t stop adventure- and photo-seekers from filling the Saddlebag Lake Road and Tioga overlook parking areas. About two inches of new snow sat on top of the older snowpack, with deeper drifts in places. Evidence of numerous recent wet avalanches was visible as cornices failed under the intense late-May sun. Gaylor Bowl was (more…)