October 2010, the Mono Basin’s warmest October since 2005, set a new record for precipitation in Lee Vining: 3.74 inches! With data going back to 1988, last month beat the old record of 2.41 inches set in 1992 by 1.33 inches! It also beat the 1950-1988 October precipitation record from the Mono Inn, the previous home of our weather instruments (5 miles north). Median October precipitation in Lee Vining is 0.23 inches, usually our third driest month after June and July.

At Cain Ranch, just five miles south but slightly drier, 3.11 inches of rain set a new record going all the way back to 1931! (more…)

October 1, 2010 was the first day of the 2011 Water Year—Happy New Year! A Water Year in the Mono Basin runs from October 1 to September 30th. This lumps the winter’s precipitation into the same year as the following summer’s runoff, as well as the next year’s growing season.

The 2010 Water Year (October 1, 2009 — September 30, 2010) was near-normal (more…)

Now available on the Mono Basin Clearinghouse are documents pertaining to the construction of the Mono Basin extension of the Los Angeles Aqueduct:

Map of the LA Aqueduct facilities from Lee Vining Intake to West Portal
A 4.3 megabyte download, this high-resolution JPG file shows the control stationing and original names of most of the features of the Mono Basin portion of the LA Aqueduct. Click on the image at right to enlarge, or click on the link above to download the full map.

1933 Map of Mono Basin property ownership, hydrographic stations, wells, test holes, gages, and streams
A 2.4 megabyte download, this high-resolution PDF file shows the Mono Basin as of 1933. Included on the map are (more…)

We’re excited to announce the launch of The Mono Lake Effect, news and information about Mono Lake, delivered directly to your inbox each month.

The name was inspired by lake effect snow which occurs when cold, humid air blows across Mono Lake’s warmer waters, triggering snowfall in the areas downwind of the lake. It is also a nod to the fact that the wild and natural beauty of Mono Lake and the inspirational story of what has and continues to happen here, have a profound effect on many people.

In that spirit, The Mono Lake Effect will (more…)

Mono Lake Committee founder David Gaines toured tirelessly around California with carousel of slides and a call to help a dying lake–talking to anyone who would listen. The Mono Lake Committee has continued this tradition by showing The Mono Lake Story slideshow at our headquarters in Lee Vining every year to thousands of visitors and Mono Lake enthusiasts. This old tradition will now continue in a new media format.

We are excited to announce that we are creating a 20-minute film (more…)

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power submits annual compliance reports in May to the State Water Resources Control Board. The May 2010 report was recently distributed and we’ve posted each section on the Mono Basin Clearinghouse. You can download the cover letter, the status of compliance report, the operations plan, the fisheries report, the tributaries report (geomorphology, hydrology, and vegetation), and the waterfowl report.

This is the first big update that we’ve had a chance to do since October 2008.  We’ve got quite a backlog of updates to get through, and in this update we’ve gone back  as far as October 2009. One major change since our last update is that the internet has so many more resources on it now. We used to be able to keep a pretty good handle on what Mono Basin resources were out there on the internet, but now every time we do a Google search we find new and valuable sources of information that we did not know about. This explosion of Mono Basin content means that (more…)

Visit the Committee's online store for your holiday shopping!

To celebrate the two-month anniversary of the Mono Lake Committee’s online store, we invite you to see our merchandise and Mono Lake Committee logo products!

We have Mono Lake Committee 2010 Calendars, filter water bottles, Life at Mono Lake T-shirts, holiday notecards, Cadillac Desert, Huell Howser at Mono Lake DVDs, and we’ve even got brine shrimp earrings as well as other apparel, jewelry, books, gifts, local crafts, and games.

The items in our Fall Newsletter catalog and many additional products are available for ordering 24 hours a day at our online store; however, we are also pleased to receive your order by telephone (9:00 am to 5:00 pm every day).

All sales benefit the Committee’s work on behalf of Mono Lake, so take a look and find something special today!

We’re excited to announce that we’ve switched to a new server for all of the Committee’s Websites! This means monolake.org, monobasinresearch.org, and leevining.com are now considerably faster to load their beautiful pictures and cool content. Not only that, all (more…)

If you’ve poked around our new-and-improved Mono Lake Website, you probably already know that, but now we have it “in writing.” Last month we entered our website into the Adobe-TechSoup Show Your Impact design contest, and we came in as a runner-up in our category!

Many thanks to all of you who visited the contest site to vote for the Mono Lake Website. Your votes paid off! We will get a free (more…)