The latest “atmospheric river” — an airborne current of dense moisture flowing from the ocean — was expected to drench much of California ahead of a Pacific storm front bringing additional showers to low-lying areas and more snow to the Sierra Nevada mountains through Thursday.

Authorities warned that heavy downpours would likely unleash flash flooding and mudslides, especially in areas where the ground remains saturated from rains that soaked northern California days earlier. Fire-ravaged hill slopes are also particularly vulnerable to slides.

The U.S. National Weather Service also posted high-wind warnings across the San Francisco Bay area and central California coast, with gale-force gusts expected to knock down tree limbs and power lines, disrupting electricity service in many areas.

Showers fell across southern California early in the day on Wednesday, slickening freeways during the morning Los Angeles-area commute, but rains were expected to reach peak intensity on Thursday morning.

Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency on Wednesday to support the state’s winter weather hazards response, and activated California’s flood operations centre.

The governor’s Office of Emergency Services said it had pre-positioned crews in three counties likely to be hardest hit by flooding — Marin, Butte and Sacramento — and in five counties facing heightened mudslide threats where previous wildfires have stripped hillsides of vegetation. But “burn scars” in other parts of the state were also at risk.

State natural resources secretary Wade Crowfoot urged residents in high-risk areas to stay indoors unless they are ordered to evacuate, and to prepare for power outages by charging electrical devices and having flashlights and candles handy.

Sacramento County crews were still out on Wednesday repairing levee breaches along the Cosumnes River, near Sacramento, where flooding last weekend closed Highway 99, Crowfoot said at a news briefing in the state capital.

The latest round of extreme weather was the second in a series of potentially damaging storms expected to hit the state over the next seven to 10 days, Nancy Ward, director of emergency services, told reporters. The state operations centre had been placed at its highest level, she said.

“We anticipate that this may be one of the most challenging and impactful series of storms to touch down in California in the last five years,” she said.

While forecasts call for heavy rain and snow to taper off by late Thursday in California, coastal showers were likely to linger over the Pacific Northwest into Friday morning, according to the NWS.

Snow from the West Coast was expected to spread on Wednesday into the Great Basin, and extend into parts of the Southwest and central Rockies by Friday, the weather service said. A separate storm system hovering on Wednesday over parts of the Midwest was forecast to drift off the East Coast by Friday.

— Reporting for Reuters by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento; writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles.

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Dubbed SWOT, short for Surface Water and Ocean Topography, the advanced radar satellite is designed to give scientists an unprecedented view of the life-giving fluid covering 70 per cent of the planet, shedding new light on the mechanics and consequences of climate change.

A Falcon 9 rocket, owned and operated by billionaire Elon Musk’s commercial launch company SpaceX, was set to liftoff before dawn on Thursday from the Vandenberg U.S. Space Force Base, about 275 km northwest of Los Angeles, to carry SWOT into orbit.

If all goes as planned, the SUV-sized satellite will produce research data within several months.

Nearly 20 years in development, SWOT incorporates advanced microwave radar technology that scientists say will collect height-surface measurements of oceans, lakes, reservoirs and rivers in high-definition detail over 90 per cent of the globe.

The data, compiled from radar sweeps of the planet at least twice every 21 days, will enhance ocean-circulation models, bolster weather and climate forecasts and aid in managing scarce freshwater supplies in drought-stricken regions, according to researchers.

The satellite was designed and built at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles. Developed by the U.S. space agency in collaboration with its counterparts in France and Canada, SWOT was one of 15 missions listed by the National Research Council as projects NASA should undertake in the coming decade.

“It’s really the first mission to observe nearly all water on the planet’s surface,” said JPL scientist Ben Hamlington, who also leads NASA’s sea-level change team.

One major thrust of the mission is to explore how oceans absorb atmospheric heat and carbon dioxide in a natural process that moderates global temperatures and climate change.

Scanning the seas from orbit, SWOT is designed to precisely measure fine differences in surface elevations around smaller currents and eddies, where much the oceans’ drawdown of heat and carbon is believed to occur. And SWOT can do so with 10 times greater resolution than existing technologies, according to JPL.

Looking for oceans’ tipping point

Oceans are estimated to have absorbed more than 90 per cent of the excess heat trapped in Earth’s atmosphere by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

Studying the mechanism by which that happens will help climate scientists answer a key question: “What is the turning point at which oceans start releasing, rather than absorbing, huge amounts of heat back into the atmosphere and accelerate global warming, rather than limiting it?” said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, SWOT’s program scientist at NASA in Washington.

SWOT’s ability to discern smaller surface features also be used to study the impact of rising ocean levels on coastlines.

More precise data along tidal zones would help predict how far storm-surge flooding may penetrate inland, as well as the extent of saltwater intrusion into estuaries, wetlands and underground aquifers.

Freshwater bodies are another key focus SWOT, equipped to observe the entire length of nearly all rivers wider than 100 metres, as well as more than one million lakes and reservoirs larger than 15 acres.

Taking inventory of Earth’s water resources repeatedly over SWOT’s three-year mission will enable researchers to better trace fluctuations in the planet’s rivers and lakes during seasonal changes and major weather events.

NASA’s SWOT freshwater science lead, Tamlin Pavelsky, said collecting such data was akin to “taking the pulse of the world’s water system, so we’ll be able to see when it’s racing and we’ll be able to see when it’s slow.”

SWOT’s radar instrument operates at the so-called Ka-band frequency of the microwave spectrum, allowing scans to penetrate cloud cover and darkness over wide swaths of the Earth. This enables scientists to accurately map their observations in two dimensions regardless of weather or time of day and to cover large geographic areas far more quickly than before.

By comparison, previous studies of water bodies relied on data taken at specific points, such as river or ocean gauges, or from satellites that can only track measurements along a one-dimensional line, requiring scientists to fill in data gaps through extrapolation.

“Rather than giving us a line of elevations, it’s giving us a map of elevations, and that’s just a total game changer,” Pavelsky said.

— Steve Gorman is a Reuters correspondent in Los Angeles.

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State biologists fatally shot two members of the so-called Profanity Peak wolf pack from a helicopter on Aug. 5 after confirming five fatal wolf attacks on livestock in that area, just south of the state’s border with British Columbia. Further lethal-control efforts were later called off.

But eradication orders were renewed, and expanded to the entire pack, on Aug. 19 when the state Fish and Wildlife Department determined the same group of wolves was behind additional attacks that left two calves dead and a third injured.

Aerial kill teams have since destroyed four more wolves, including a pup, and wildlife agents are looking for the remaining five members of the targeted pack, said Craig Bartlett, a spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife Department.

“We’ve never taken out an entire pack before,” Bartlett said, adding officials could still decide at some point to suspend the hunt and spare some of the remaining wolves if livestock attacks appear to have been halted.

In the meantime, he said, the number of cattle killed or injured by wolves in the area had grown to 12.

The Profanity Peak wolves make up one of 19 wolf packs known to inhabit Washington, 15 of them in the eastern third of the state where federal Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves were lifted in 2011.

Wolves are still listed as endangered under state law, which allows officials to remove wolves found to be repeatedly preying on livestock. But the population has grown steadily since 2008, when the first pack documented in Washington in many decades was confirmed, and they now number about 90 animals statewide, Bartlett said.

The current effort targeting the Profanity Peak pack marks the third time state officials have used lethal means against wolves. The two previous efforts, in 2012 and 2014, resulted in the deaths of 10 wolves, but some members of those packs ended up being spared, Bartlett said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles.

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The settlement, confirmed in a joint statement by the two sides, was reached three days after U.S. Labour Secretary Thomas Perez arrived in San Francisco to broker a deal with the help of a federal mediator who had joined in the talks six weeks earlier.

The White House called the deal “a huge relief” for the economy, businesses and workers.

President Barack Obama urged the parties “to work together to clear out the backlogs and congestion in the West Coast ports as they finalize their agreement,” the White House said in a statement.

The 20,000 dockworkers covered by the tentative five-year labour accord have been without a contract since July.

Tensions arising from the talks have played out since last fall in chronic cargo backups that have increasingly slowed freight traffic at the ports, which handle nearly half of all U.S. maritime trade and more than 70 per cent of the nation’s imports from Asia.

More recently, the shipping companies have sharply curtailed operations at the marine terminals, suspending loading and unloading of cargo vessels for night shifts, holidays and weekends at the five busiest ports.

Perez said that as part of Friday’s accord, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the shippers’ bargaining agent, the Pacific Maritime Association, agreed to fully restore all port operations starting Saturday evening.

Perez was sent to California on Tuesday as an emissary for Obama, who had come under mounting political pressure to intervene in a conflict that by some estimates could have ended up costing the U.S. economy billions of dollars.

Almost summoned to Washington?

Perez said he told the union and management negotiators: “You have an obligation to resolve this matter quickly because too many people and businesses are suffering.”

In a conference call with reporters following the agreement, Perez said he also had put leaders from both sides on notice that unless they came to terms swiftly they would be “summoned to Washington to continue their negotiations at the White House.”

The principal sticking point when he first joined the talks, Perez said, was the arbitration system for resolving workplace disputes under the contract. He did not disclose how that impasse was overcome but said the parties agreed to changes that would improve the system while “ensuring fairness to both sides.

Perez, who had been joined at times this week by U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, exited the talks Friday morning after meeting one last time with both sides.

Announcement of an agreement came hours later. The deal is subject to ratification by the union rank-and-file and the individual shipping lines and terminal operators that make up the PMA. No details of the terms were immediately revealed.

Disruptions at the ports, blamed by each side on the other as pressure tactics, have reverberated throughout the U.S. economy, extending to agriculture, manufacturing, retail and transportation.

Cargo loads that would normally take a few days to clear the ports have faced lag times of two weeks or more as dozens of inbound freighters stacked up at anchor along the coast, waiting for berths to open.

Ripple effects

California farmers were especially hard hit, with port disruptions posing a major barrier to perishable goods headed to overseas markets and export losses estimated to be running at hundreds of millions of dollars a week.

One automaker, Japan’s Honda Motor Co., said on Sunday it would slow production for a week at three North American plants due to delays in parts shipments from Asia. Other car manufacturers said they were switching to higher-cost air freight to minimize delivery slowdowns.

A longer-term concern has been that U.S. export business lost to other countries and ports may not return once the West Coast dockworker crisis ends.

Port officials have said it would take six to eight weeks to clear the immediate backlog of cargo containers piled up on the docks and several months for freight traffic to return to a normal rhythm once the dispute was settled.

Besides work slowdowns the companies accused the union of staging to gain bargaining leverage, and the curtailed operations the union said were designed to squeeze its members, the West Coast waterfront still faces a range of systemic problems cited by port authorities as factors in the backups.

One of those is the recent advent of supersized freighters that have been inundating the ports with higher volumes of cargo all at once, as well as railway delays and a shortage of truckers serving some of the harbours.

Still, the settlement averted a worst-case scenario of the labour dispute devolving into a full-scale, extended shutdown of the ports, which the retail and manufacturing industries have projected could cost the U.S. economy some US$2 billion a day.

The last time contract talks led to a complete closure of the West Coast ports was in 2002, when the companies imposed a lockout that was lifted 10 days later under a court order sought by President George W. Bush.

The shipping industry has estimated the 2002 lockout caused $15.6 billion in economic losses.

— Steve Gorman is a general news correspondent for Reuters in Los Angeles. Additional reporting for Reuters by Ann Saphir and Sarah McBride in San Francisco and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles.

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Foreign Pacific Rim customers facing chronic delays in shipments of U.S. food and farm products are turning to other countries for produce ranging from citrus and apples to beef and pork, the Washington-based Agriculture Transportation Coalition (AgTC) has reported.

Many frustrated U.S. suppliers are deciding to forgo exports and scrambling instead to find domestic buyers for their produce, driving down prices, said Wendy Fink-Weber, a spokeswoman for the Western Growers trade organization.

Industry experts say the longer-term concern is that export business lost to other countries, and other ports, may not return once the U.S. West Coast crisis is over.

“They’re losing their buyers and they’re losing their markets,” Fink-Weber said.

Precise figures on the extent of damage are hard to come by. The AgTC has estimated that total U.S. agricultural export losses — for fruits, vegetables and meats shipped by container — were running roughly US$400 million (C$498.8 million) a week in December, the latest month for which industry data was available.

Because the dislocation at the ports directly involves containerized cargo only, bulk shipments of grain and soybeans have largely been unaffected, the group said.

Height of citrus exports hit

Mounting waterfront cargo congestion and partial shutdown of the 29 ports last weekend and again on Thursday come as the California citrus industry reached its season of peak demand for exports of navel oranges and lemons to Asian countries.

California growers typically export a quarter of their annual US$500 million citrus crop to markets in Asia, Australia and New Zealand. But bottlenecks at the West Coast ports have reduced that by about 25 per cent, or roughly US$125 million, since October, according to the trade group California Citrus Mutual.

The head of overseas marketing for one major citrus grower, LoBue Bros Inc. of Lindsay, Calif., in the Central Valley heartland, said his company’s exports are off by about half.

The company normally gets 60 to 80 loads of citrus — 40,000 pounds of fruit per load — shipped overseas each week this time of year, but “right now I’m having trouble getting 20 out,” co-owner Joe LoBue told Reuters. “In 40 years, I haven’t seen it quite this bad.”

Industry officials said they expect losses to grow as the port slowdowns go on.

“Fruit is rotting on the docks, sales are being canceled by the customer, and our industry has slowed its harvesting so as not to place matured fruit into the marketplace,” Citrus Mutual president Noel Nelsen said in a statement.

Although some shipments arrive at warehouses and ports in refrigerated containers, “we’re not sure the containers are being stored in places where they have power, or that they’re getting plugged in,” said Dusty Ferrence, director of growers services for the agency.

In January alone, cherry growers in Oregon reported lost export sales of US$250,000 directly related to disruptions at the West Coast ports, according to the AgTC.

On Friday, more than 200 Washington state agriculture and forest products companies and organizations delivered a letter to their state congressional delegation urging their help in pressing the two sides in the labour dispute to quickly settle the dispute.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, representing 20,000 dock workers, has been negotiating for nine months on a new labour contract with the Pacific Maritime Association, the bargaining agent for shippers and terminal operators at the 29 ports.

— Steve Gorman is a general news correspondent for Reuters in Los Angeles.

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The loading and unloading of cargo vessels was halted for 24 hours as of Thursday morning, and the companies said those operations will be suspended — as they were last weekend — again this coming Saturday, Sunday and Monday, unless a contract settlement with the union is reached.

The two sides returned to the bargaining table on Thursday morning for the first time in nearly a week, meeting with a federal mediator at the union’s headquarters in San Francisco.

Officials for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, representing 20,000 dockworkers who have been without a contract since July, say they are very close to a deal with the companies’ bargaining agent, the Pacific Maritime Association.

But the PMA says the talks hit a snag over a new demand by the union for changes in the system of binding arbitration of contract disputes.

In the meantime, inbound cargo vessels continued to stack up at anchor, with about two dozen freighters left idle on Thursday morning waiting for a berth outside the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the nation’s two busiest cargo hubs. At least 28 more vessels were reported to be waiting at anchor or circling outside ports in San Francisco Bay and Puget Sound.

The numbers are likely to grow by the end of the weekend as additional vessels arrive from Asia with no place to park at the docks.

Supply chain crunch

The affected ports handle nearly half of all U.S. maritime trade and more than 70 per cent of imports from Asia. Severe congestion at those harbours has rippled through the U.S. commercial supply chain, disrupting deliveries of a wide range of goods, from agricultural produce to house wares and apparel.

Citing months of chronic slowdowns in freight traffic they blame the union for instigating, the companies said they were unwilling to pay union workers higher holiday and weekend wages while productivity declines and the cargo backlog grows.

Union shifts worked this Thursday and next Monday would command premium pay in observance of separate Presidents Day holidays falling on Abraham Lincoln and George Washington’s birthdays.

Union officials said the shippers were engaged in brinkmanship, using the partial shutdown to exaggerate the magnitude of the crisis and exert economic pressure on union members.

The West Coast ports were not left entirely dormant, however. The companies said work will continue in the dockyards, rail yards and terminal gates as they seek to clear some of the cargo containers already stacked up on the waterfronts.

The companies have accused the union of orchestrating work slowdowns since October to gain leverage in negotiations, saying the ports are at the brink of total gridlock. The union has faulted changes in shipping practices instituted by the carriers themselves for the worsening backlogs.

Retail and manufacturing groups, which project that a full, extended shutdown of the ports could cost the U.S. economy $2 billion a day, have urged the Obama administration to intervene to keep the two sides at the bargaining table until a deal is done.

U.S. Representative Dave Reichert, a Republican from Washington state, said he planned to introduce a resolution in Congress on Thursday urging a swift settlement to the labor dispute. Eighty-four members of Congress signed a Jan. 30 letter calling on the parties to come to terms quickly.

The White House has said it was monitoring the situation and that it was up to the parties to resolve their own differences.

— Steve Gorman is a general news correspondent for Reuters in Los Angeles. Additional reporting for Reuters by Krista Hughes in Washington, D.C.

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Reopening of the ports to cargo vessels idled by the weekend suspension and the freight traffic slowdowns leading up to it came as the dockworkers’ union and shippers were set to resume labour negotiations later in the day, the two sides said.

Shippers and terminal operators announced last week they would halt cargo crane operations for container vessels at the ports on Saturday and Sunday because of mounting congestion that they said has brought the docks to virtual gridlock.

The 29 affected ports handle nearly half of all U.S. maritime trade and more than 70 per cent of Asian imports.

The companies, represented by the Pacific Maritime Association, have accused the International Longshore and Warehouse Union of instigating work slowdowns to gain leverage at the bargaining table.

The union denies this and has faulted the carriers for the worsening congestion, citing numerous changes in shipping practices as contributing factors.

The weekend suspension of vessel loading and unloading added to the discord surrounding negotiations for a new contract for 20,000 dockworkers that have dragged on for nine months.

Union officials insisted a settlement was near in the federally mediated talks, calling the shippers’ move another act of public posturing.

Still, work continued in the terminal yards through the weekend to clear cargo containers that have been stacking up on the waterfronts, according to Pacific Maritime Association spokesman Steve Getzug, at least at the five busiest ports: Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle and Tacoma.

Ripple effects

The crippling backups at the ports that began in October have rippled through the U.S. commercial supply chain, disrupting shipments of a wide range of goods affecting agriculture, manufacturing, transportation and retail.

The Obama administration is closely monitoring the situation, White House spokesman Frank Benenati said on Monday, but the dispute “is up to the two parties to resolve at the bargaining table.”

“We urge them to do so as expeditiously as possible,” he said.

The last time contract talks led to a full shutdown of the West Coast ports was in 2002, when the companies imposed a lockout that was lifted 10 days later under a court order sought by President George W. Bush, invoking the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act.

The PMA has estimated the 2002 lockout caused US$15.6 billion in economic losses. When it ended, some 200 freighters were waiting at anchor to be unloaded up and down the coast.

By comparison, 23 vessels were anchored awaiting berths on Monday morning outside Los Angeles and Long Beach, down from 31 on Sunday, port authorities said.

The National Association of Manufacturers, which projects a new 10-day port shutdown could cost the country’s economy US$2.1 billion a day, urged the administration to ratchet up pressure for a settlement.

“We think the administration has to do more than just monitor,” said Robyn Boerstling, the group’s transportation director. “If the administration can impart a message of urgency, that would certainly be helpful.”

She said a number of manufacturers had reported that uncertainty surrounding the ports dispute had already led some Asian buyers to cancel their U.S. factory orders.

— Steve Gorman is a general news correspondent for Reuters in Los Angeles. Additional reporting for Reuters by Krista Hughes in Washington.

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Although the state Water Resources Department typically ends up supplying more water than first projected for the year ahead, its forecast for a “zero allocation” in 2014 is unprecedented since the agency began delivering water in 1967.

The announcement came a day after the agency said that water content in the snow pack of the Sierra Nevada mountain range — a key measure of surface water supplies — stood at just 12 per cent of average for this time of year.

That marked the lowest level recorded in more than half a century, despite a late-arriving Sierra winter storm.

Barring an unexpected turn-around in California’s current dry spell, the state faces its worst-ever water supply outlook, the agency said.

Governor Jerry Brown, whose drought emergency declaration two weeks ago capped the driest year on record for the state, said the agency’s zero allocation was a “stark reminder that California’s drought is real.” [Related story]

On Thursday Brown urged residents to redouble conservation efforts, suggesting they avoid flushing toilets unnecessarily and to turn off the tap while soaping up in the shower or shaving.

Some 25 million people, roughly two-thirds of California’s residents, and more than 750,000 acres of farmland get some or all of their drinking and irrigation supplies from the state Water Resources Department.

The water originates from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in northern California, fed by rainfall and snow-melt runoff from the Sierras.

The water is delivered to local agencies by way of a sprawling network of reservoirs, pipelines, aqueducts and pumping stations known as the State Water Project.

While a return to wetter weather in the months ahead could quickly ease the water crunch, the zero allotment announced on Friday was greeted with alarm by the project’s water users.

“For the first time in history, we are facing the real possibility of getting no water from the State Water Project. It’s a very serious situation,” said Terry Erlewine, general manager of the State Water Contractors.

The president of the California Farm Bureau Federation, Paul Wenger, called the news “a terrible blow.”

Each local agency will adapt in its own way, making up for some of the difference with groundwater reserves, buying water from other sources, using carry-over supplies conserved from the year before and increased conservation.

Besides the 29 local agencies that purchase water from the State Water Project, a separate group of Sacramento Valley farm districts whose rights to delta water predate construction of the State Water Project — and are thus guaranteed — could see their deliveries cut in half for the year, the agency warned.

Deliveries to the so-called “settlement contractors” were last reduced in 1992.

The other major supplier of water from the delta — and a more important one for California farmers producing over half of the fruit, vegetables and nuts grown in the U.S. — is the federal government’s Bureau of Reclamation.

That agency is slated to announce its initial allocation from the Central Valley Project next month, and it too is expected to be dismal.

— Steve Gorman is a general news correspondent for Reuters in Los Angeles.

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