California

"LOS ANGELES -- California has experienced one of the driest Januarys on record, and the lack of rain during a time of year when the weather is usually wet indicates the state is likely headed for a fourth straight year of drought, officials said."

"State workers performed a California winter ritual Thursday, poking hollow aluminum tubes into Sierra Nevada meadows to measure the snowpack. In what scientists see as a harbinger, they didn't find much."

"POINT REYES NATIONAL SEASHORE, Calif. — The once-bustling oyster farm and sales shack at the end of the dirt road had the look of sudden abandonment."

"Southern California gets the vast majority of its water from four aqueducts that flow from the north, but all of them cross the San Andreas Fault. That means millions of people are just one major earthquake away from drying out for a year or more."

"Federal investigators are blaming company safety culture, flawed emergency response and inadequate federal regulations for a 2012 fire at a Chevron Corp. refinery in California."

"Billionaire activist Tom Steyer won’t run for the U.S. Senate in 2016, saying Thursday he will instead concentrate on electing a Democratic president and in continued activism on his signature issue of climate change."

"For 24 years, traveling across the stark and dusty moonscape of what once was a glimmering 110-square-mile lake framed by snow-covered mountains, Ted Schade was a general in the Owens Valley water wars with Los Angeles. This was where Los Angeles began taking water for its own use nearly a century ago, leaving behind a dry lake bed that choked the valley with dust, turning it into one of the most polluted parts of the nation.
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"They’ve gone to logging and housing — but especially to climate change, says a new study"