Hot … er, cold … on the heels of the rainiest October on record, at our Lee Vining weather station, the Mono Lake Committee measured 21.3 inches of snow—the most snowfall in November since 1994! Almost all the snow fell between the Saturday before and the Sunday after Thanksgiving. This resulted in lots of traffic accidents due to the slippery roads combined with holiday traffic.

The total precipitation for October and November was (more…)

Thursday was my last day in the field before a well-advertised storm was to drop 1–3 feet of snow in the Mono Basin. As I drove down to Rush Creek, the winds were picking up, snow was blowing off Sierra peaks, and lenticular clouds graced the late-afternoon skies.

Rush Creek bottomlands, a day before the storm hit.

The Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (DWP) had just lowered the flows in Rush Creek and Lee Vining Creek, and I was checking to see if certain side channels were still flowing, as well as checking on a few other things before the expected deep snow made travel to the streams difficult. (more…)

On July 28th, the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power submitted to the State Water Resources Control Board a feasibility report in response to the stream scientists’ Synthesis of Instream Flow Recommendations. The feasibility report primarily focuses on meeting the flow recommendations using the existing aqueduct infrastructure and defers additional analysis to the future.

Not surprisingly, an aqueduct system that was built 70 years ago for the purpose of maximizing water diversions presents some challenges in delivering precise flows to the creeks. The feasibility of retooling this infrastructure to meet today’s needs is a central question as this process moves forward.

To consider public comments on these matters, the State Water Board will hold an informal public workshop on Tuesday October 12, 2010, at 10:00 am at the Community Presbyterian Church at the corner of Mono Lake Avenue and Third Street in Lee Vining.

Click here to return to the Streamflow Center.

Students and leaders from Beyer High School along with OE staff were glad to help pick up trash along Lee Vining Creek.

This past Saturday, 18 staff and volunteers spent the morning along Lee Vining Creek and Silver Lake picking up trash as part of the Sierra Nevada Conservancy‘s Great Sierra River Cleanup. Thirty-eight pounds of trash might not sound like a lot, but our efforts were worthwhile, since as in many places along waterways in the Eastern Sierra, the trash includes a lot of fishing line. Fishing line (more…)

Join in on a statewide effort to clean up California on September 25! The Mono Lake Committee and friends will tackle a stretch of Lee Vining Creek as part of the Great Sierra River Cleanup.

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Weather stations have been collecting weather data in the Mono Basin since the 1980s, some even as far back as 1931. This long-term data can be helpful in understanding the basin’s present and future climate.

Recently analyzed data, collected between 1986 and 2006 at the Lee Vining Pumice Plant, just a little over a mile from Mono Lake, show that low air temperatures are increasing at a rate of 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit every ten years. Even more interestingly, annual winter air temperatures seem to be moderating, meaning that the extremes between the low and high air temperatures are decreasing. Is this just a fluke of the data, or are there more complex climate variables at play? Perhaps there is a simple explanation for these trends?

A couple possibilities: (more…)

It’s hard to believe summer’s almost over. The air is cooler, the days are shorter, and leaves are beginning to turn brown along the streams of the Mono Basin—but sweet clover and woolly mullein are still flourishing near Mill Creek. This coming Wednesday is your last chance to help make a dent in this season’s population of weeds, and we need all the help we can get.

The fourth and final pulling party of the summer will be held at the Mill Creek culvert on Cemetery Road from 9am to 12pm on Wednesday, September 1st. If you have an hour or two to spare, please drop by to chat, eat snacks, and take down non-native plants.

Over the past two months 56 volunteers have (more…)

Weeding is a remarkably therapeutic activity. It’s easy to fall into a rhythm, letting your mind drift along with the current as you tug at clover roots in a shady nook along Mill Creek’s bank. Every now and then you take a break, settling back with some fresh fruit and cookies (courtesy of the Mono Lake Committee) to admire the view of Gilcrest and Dunderberg flanking Lundy Canyon to the west. After a couple of hours your work is done, and you load the weeds into garbage bags and drive back to the Committee for the most exciting part of the morning: (more…)

Researcher Sacha Heath looks for insects on a "control" cottonwood.

Last week, I followed Sacha Heath down the Lee Vining Creek trail (and across the frigid stream, in my sneakers) to help count Lilliputians that live in trees. Sacha directed the Point Reyes Bird Observatory research in the MonoBasin for many years, but this season, for her Master’s thesis at Humboldt State University, she’s studying the impact foraging birds have on populations of herbivorous arthropods—i.e. plant-munching bugs—in cottonwoods. Bugs affect the growth of trees, of course, and Sacha picked the Mono Basin as her research location not only because she has an unparalleled knowledge of its riparian communities, but also because it’s a restoration setting—here, new growth is at a premium. The goal of the study is to assess ‘”the ecological service” birds likely provide. (more…)

After I finished my day’s data collections of stream flows for Mill Creek, I took the time to explore the Mill Creek bottomlands and the Black Point Marsh at the lakeshore. I eagerly hiked down the stream, bushwhacking through sagebrush, stopping to closely observe wildflowers, and frequently crossing the creek to observe curious Killdeer through my borrowed binoculars. Suddenly, completely out of the blue, I stepped onto the pumice sand of the beach and I was in a new world.

Where Mill Creek's water meets Mono Lake.

Not only had I had never seen Mono Lake from this angle, but following the trickle of Mill Creek water into the lake gave my weekly flow measurements and data collections new meaning. I am monitoring (more…)