San Diego Now Has So Much Water That It’s Selling It With the Colorado River in crisis, Arizona and Nevada are turning to an unconventional life line: the ocean water off California’s golden beaches.

I am all for these sales, and ones like them, but the idea that this has reversed the narrative much less the reality, on San Diego's all-hands approach to water supply and its effects on local residents and the broader region, is very dubious.

www.wsj.com/us-news/clim...

Anti-Mask Sentiment Is Making It Hard to Protect People From Wildfire Smoke The COVID-era political divide is still having ripple effects.

For @heatmap.news today, I wrote about this problem and how — given the low snowpack and the bad fire season we're almost certainly in for — breaking through that stigma will be life-or-death. heatmap.news/masks-wildfi...

Map of the contiguous United States showing the spring bloom index anomaly as of April 19, 2026 from the USA National Phenology Network. Many areas are earlier than normal.

Aside from Florida, nearly the entire contiguous U.S. has experienced earlier than average first plant blooms in 2026. Earlier springs can cause longer allergy seasons, accelerate wildfire risk, increase pests/mosquitoes, and lead to less reliable snow-fed water.

Map: www.usanpn.org/data/maps/sp...

Fast-tracking US critical minerals could backfire without safeguards, Oxfam warns A central concern is that compressing timelines could undermine the very stability the US is seeking.

I have been thinking about this lately, so it’s nice to see an article about how fast tracking mineral projects in the US may end up actually slowing or stopping projects all together as mining companies risk their “social license to operate”

www.mining.com/fast-trackin...

Data centers are expensive, unpopular — and could be a tipping point in the midterms Anger over the data center boom has spilled into politics with voters unseating local politicians who support them. It's become an issue hard to ignore in the midterm elections.

Anger over the data center boom has spilled into politics with voters unseating local politicians who support them. It's become an issue hard to ignore in the midterm elections. n.pr/3QfF8I1

Someday, with luck and hard work, she will have a name too.

Water tales: Too much in Michigan and Wisconsin, not enough most everywhere else Record flooding in parts of the Great Lakes, while drought intensifies in parts of the South and West

Water in focus today: way too much in Wisconsin and Michigan with record flooding ongoing, while most of the rest of the country has too little and drought intensifies in parts of the West and South over the last week. More: tinyurl.com/4hvj6m8z

Disaster Capitalism in Higher Education | Los Angeles Review of Books What happens to local economies when universities downsize or shutter?

On the decline of higher education lareviewofbooks.org/article/disa...

being the party who funds and supports science, education and evidence means you're going to be the party of SMEs who use language specific to their area of expertise, and i don't think these two things are as easily divorced from one another as a lot of other people do

Map showing the western United States mean temperature for January to March 2026 relative to a 1991-2020 departure.

Almost the entire Western United States is averaging more than 5°F warmer than the most recent 1991-2020 climate baseline so far in 2026, which is truly remarkable. Off the color scale here!

Graphic from wrcc.dri.edu/my/

Google Starts Scanning All Your Photos As New Update Goes Live Google wants its AI to see all the photos of "you and your loved ones." Billions of users must now decide.

“Take a moment to think before you dive in. That’s the best advice for Google Photos users, as the company confirms its latest update can scan all your photos to “use actual images of you and your loved ones” in AI image generation.”

www.forbes.com/sites/zakdof...

Turns out earnest might be my love language. Saw Hoppers last weekend and cried through much of it just because of the pure earnestness.

New York’s Cutest! So earnest I could die.

A historic marine heat wave is battering California’s coast and impacting the weather Spring downpours, a muggier summer, stronger Pacific hurricanes and more mountain thunderstorms are among the impacts of the highly anomalous warm water off California’s coast.

There is so much heat stored in the Pacific right now, it's bound to impact atmospheric dynamics.

We've already seen more intense spring thunderstorms because of warm water near the California coast. But there are other ways it will affect Southwest U.S. weather.

Feds order massive water release from Flaming Gorge to prop up Lake Powell The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has ordered a release of up to one million acre feet of water from Flaming Gorge to help prop up Lake Powell.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has ordered a release of up to one million acre feet of water from Flaming Gorge to help prop up Lake Powell.

The One With Teleportation (April 2026) This newsletter is a compilation of recent disaster ~things~ that I think are cool, important, or otherwise of interest to people who are intrigued with disaster (broadly defined).

The April Disasterology Newsletter proves the value of saving receipts.

open.substack.com/pub/disaster...

“Basically, city officials around the Valley are worried that one small town’s water crisis could make national headlines and spook people and companies from moving to — and spending money in — the Phoenix area.”

Cave Creek gets 95% of its water from the Colorado and the supply may be halved.

Hydropower at risk as Colorado River outlook grows more dire Runoff into the Colorado is at near record-low levels, and a new report calls out the need for emergency action.

‘Hydropower at risk as Colorado River outlook grows more dire’ by @debkrol.bsky.social

Trump administration takes emergency step to prop up key Colorado River reservoir As the Colorado River shrinks in an extremely dry year, the Trump administration is moving water from one reservoir to another, and will cut the amount that's released downstream to California, Arizon...

The water crisis along the Colorado River has gotten so serious that the Trump administration is responding with emergency measures to prop up Lake Powell, the nation’s second largest reservoir. www.latimes.com/environment/...

3 Southern California residents sentenced in bear suit insurance fraud scheme Three Southern California residents have been sentenced in a bizarre insurance fraud scheme which prosecutors say involved them staging fake bear attacks on high-end cars.

People tried to scam insurance by dressing up as a bear and wrecking luxury cars.

"Investigators then took the video to biologists with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to also look at the video. The biologists said, 'it was clearly a human in a bear suit.'"

abc7.com/post/3-south...

Here we go

Newsroom | Bureau of Reclamation Bureau of Reclamation

NEW: Bureau of Reclamation announces it is diverting water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir to Lake Powell and reducing Powell's releases in response to a "historic drought"

"... potential for up to an additional 40% reduction to Hoover Dam’s hydropower generating capacity as early as this fall."

Yikes is the contiguous US dry

Our cosmos, ourselves Science, culture, and imagination are inextricable, argues a cosmologist

Thanks @cbo.bsky.social for this review of THE EDGE OF SPACE-TIME! To be read by a peer like this is an honor!

"Instead, the reader is given a project that sings both the radio hits and the deep cuts of physics, set to an instrumental of different scholarly contexts, disciplines, and inspirations."

AI Slop Is Making the Internet Fake-Happy A new study examines the impact of the rise of AI-generated websites on the internet—and found some surprising results.

We have lots of anecdotal evidence about what AI does to the internet. Now we're seeing a new wave of research, including a new paper from Stanford and the Internet Archive that puts the number of AI websites at around 35%—and draws some surprising conclusions: www.wired.com/story/ai-slo...

Residents told to evacuate downstream of west Michigan dam Residents downriver from a Newaygo County dam were told Thursday to "Evacuate NOW" as waters rise on the Muskegon River.

Residents downriver from a Newaygo County dam were told Thursday to "Evacuate NOW" as waters rise on the Muskegon River.

The ocean off California keeps breaking heat records The marine heat wave of 2026 is simmering the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, and experts are warning that it could lead to a warm, humid and stormy summer.

The ocean off California keeps breaking heat records
www.latimes.com/environment/...

Data from @scrippsocean.bsky.social

1 worker dead, 1 hurt in collapse of irrigation tunnel in north Stanislaus County The Canyon Tunnel Project is north of Knights Ferry.

This is pretty terrible news. There was a partial collapse of an under-construction irrigation tunnel that collapsed and killed a worker. Tunnel is a modernization project to SSJID and OID along Stanislaus River.
www.modbee.com/news/local/a...

Senate Votes to Allow Mining Near Minnesota Wilderness

The Senate just voted to allow mining upstream from a pristine wilderness area in Minnesota, the Boundary Waters. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/16/c...

Yes, thank you. This whole era for me is in big part grace after grace after grace.