All the efforts of California’s residents have paid off – as national weather forecasters have declared the state’s most extreme drought in the last 126 years has come to an end.
Pat yourself on the back – for all those unwatered yards, all those missed showers, all the times you didn’t wash the car, all that rain water you collected – has now officially pushed he state out of that darn lingering drought.
And the U.S. Drought Monitor reported all of the state was drought-free as of Thursday, November 9. (See map.)
But – wait a minute. Didn’t the atmospheric rivers that washed over the state at the beginning of the year, cut the drought down by half in March? Didn’t those storms bring record snowfall and a snowpack lasting through August?
And didn’t Tropical Storm Hillary drench California with a year’s worth of rain in a single day across parts of the state? Yes, to all those questions. Doubtless, human efforts to end the drought helped … a little, but the main force was mother nature.
In the drought map released Thursday by the U.S. Drought Monitor, no part of the state showed drought conditions, with only about 5 percent being abnormally dry.
BTW, the coming winter is expected to further help the Golden State’s lakes, reservoirs and groundwater levels thanks to a strong El El Niño weather pattern.
The Climate Prediction Center says with 100 percent certainty the strengthening El Niño weather pattern will last through early winter, and with 90 percent certainty that it will last until spring. The agency, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, expects the El Niño pattern to bring very rainy conditions to California this winter. In most El Niño winters, the Golden State tends to be rainier than usual from January to March.
The first storm of the season is expected to arrive in SoCal next week, according to the National Weather Service.
News source: PatchSanDiego
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
But yet imported water rates are rising. With the Hodges dump of 11 billion gallons our city made no provisions to save the water knowing for years the dam was in need of repair.
We got a lot of water last year. BUT are the multiple layers of underground water aquifers full too???? If they’re not, then this is all surface water, and yes it filled up the reservoirs in CA, BUT that water can easily be consumed by businesses, residences and condensation with a couple years of drought, which will happen again. The Delta waters in northern CA had receded by miles. Do those residents have river front property again, at above or regular levels? Remember the huge reservoirs had their boat ramps way up the hillside, far from water, so far that people could drive into the former towns at the bottom of the reservoir. We can have that again if we waste water. This mayor and Council doesn’t have the common sense to realize that is reality.
Ummm, sorry Pat S to give you bad news. Actually, the entire Central Valley floor has dropped tens of feet because, with the incredible draining for irrigation, city/town water needs etc., the aquifer caverns have been crushed to non-existence due to the weight of the land above. Water pressure holding up the dirt is what kept them caverns, take away the water and they turn into compressed dirt. All this rain just washes off and never re-fills aquifers that have been destroyed by humans.
No more aquifers to hold water in other words. Oops. Who’da thunk dirt was so heavy? Here is a photo on the USGS site that will blow your mind, and remember this was taken in 1977. It’s only become much worse since then, except in places where the ground can’t crush itself any flatter down below.
https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/science/land-subsidence
And as this article states, it’s a worldwide problem but with 8 billion humans and rising by 367, 889 daily on the planet I don’t see it getting any better. I read somewhere recently that 1 pound of hamburger = 1,200 gallons of water (I think). Or maybe that was for one almond? Too much bad news to absorb!
Frank: sorry dude, the Mega-drought of the Southwest is not over, not by any measurement. Please don’t mis-inform people!! Massive climate destabilization-related weather ‘events’ such as 31 atmospheric rivers dumping enormous amounts of water in one winter isn’t going to change the trajectory since the problem will only get worse as the population grows and the more building goes on that uses ever-increasing amounts of water is needed. One family house on a plot of land uses X amount per year and gets torn down for a building with ten or fifteen families living on the same plot of land? Forty MILLION people in Cali and each person needs 1 gallon a day to drink to just survive.
Besides, most of the water SoCal (and AZ, NV, etc) uses is drained from the dwindling amount left in the Colorado River Basin. The outlook there isn’t looking good at all.
Bluntly, this is unsustainable. We all should understand this basic premise. In the long term, especially as the climate will continue to drastically heat up with our never-ending increases in GHG emissions (what we are seeing globally), well, you do the math! And yes there is more water falling from the sky due to the heat, water evaporates and has to fall somewhere, but that isn’t going to save the idiocy our civilization seems to thrive on.
sealintheSelkirks