FRESNO, Calif – A strong El Niño weather pattern is predicted to bring an enormous amount of rain to California this winter. State agencies are gearing up for storm damage and flooding, but water officials in the Central Valley are welcoming the rain with open arms.
The latest forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projects El Nino will bring wetter-than-average periods in the coming months.
Laura Ramos, director of the California Water Institute at Fresno State, told Central Valley Daily’s Soreath Hok that much of that water will likely not go to waste this year.
The City of Fresno – a city of half a million residents – uses an average of 125 million gallons of water per day and the water comes from two main sources: surface and groundwater.
Groundwater supplies are heavily fed in recent years by so-called recharge basins.
Recharge basins are giant man-made pits that capture excess surface water to send it underground. The groundwater eventually supplies homes, communities and farmers in the surrounding area.
In early 2023, storms and floods in California caught water managers by surprise, and left families cleaning up flood disasters as a series of storms pounded the state for weeks.
Ramos says previous flood emergencies have taught water managers a lot about how to prepare for storms, especially by capturing excess water and seeing excess water as an opportunity.
“In many decades before, we saw a lot of that as stormwater, let’s get it out into the rivers, and now we’re thinking completely differently.” Ramos said.
But she said water managers are still in need of more pumps to move the high volume of water that is expected.
In 2023, Gov. Gavin Newsom also issued an executive order to enable local water agencies to quickly capture excess water from heavy rainfall and use it to recharge groundwater basins.
Newsom has already issued a state of emergency in anticipation of heavy storms this year, just like several San Joaquin Valley counties.
Ramos says water experts are cautiously optimistic about the looming storms.
“I’m excited and worried because we are already learning how to make these wet years an opportunity instead of thinking of them as a nuisance like we did before,” Ramos said. “I’m just still a little worried because I think we’ve made progress, we still have a long way to go.”
Listen to the full interview with Ramos here. This segment aired on Central Valley Daily on Oct. 12, 2026. If you have a story idea, email podcast@kvpr.org.
