California Declared Totally Drought Free For First Time in Seven Years 160
California was declared totally drought free for the first time in more than seven years this week, following unusually abundant winter rains and snowfall statewide, according to the government's weekly report on U.S. drought conditions. From a report: The U.S. Drought Monitor's latest survey reflected an astonishing turnaround - at least for now - from a severe, prolonged dry spell that reduced irrigation supplies to farmers, forced strict household conservation measures and stoked a spate of deadly, devastating wildfires. A relatively small swath of California's southern-most region, including most of San Diego County, remains labeled "abnormally dry" on the drought map index, as does a tiny patch at the state's extreme northern end along the Oregon border. But this week marks the first time since mid-December of 2011 that 100 percent of the state has been classified as being free of drought, defined as a moisture deficit severe enough to cause social, environmental or economic ills. Conditions were classified as normal across 93 percent of the state.
Re: Trump should take credit (Score:1)
I am glad to see global warming can cause droughts as easily as it can stop them.
Phew.
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He has long critized California's water management policies. It seems he's getting through to them now.
From the summary:
California was declared totally drought free for the first time in more than seven years this week, following unusually abundant winter rains and snowfall statewide, according to the government's weekly report on U.S. drought conditions.
So, Trump should take credit for the weather? Who exactly do you think he's m"getting through" to?
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He has long critized California's water management policies. It seems he's getting through to them now.
From the summary:
California was declared totally drought free for the first time in more than seven years this week, following unusually abundant winter rains and snowfall statewide, according to the government's weekly report on U.S. drought conditions.
So, Trump should take credit for the weather? Who exactly do you think he's m"getting through" to?
Why not?
He gets blamed by TDS-addled, ORANGEMANBAD!!! twits for the phases of the moon.
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I remember Obama took credit for the healing of the earth and lowering of the seas before he even won the election.
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I remember Obama took credit for the healing of the earth and lowering of the seas before he even won the election.
Citations please?
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Obama, 06/03/2008: "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and the planet began to heal."
In reference to his nomination.
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Obama, 06/03/2008: "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and the planet began to heal."
In reference to his nomination.
He was not "taking credit" for those things. It was part of a rhetorical and aspirational invitation to the American public to mark the moment of his nomination as a call to the challenges ahead. In the context of the last paragraph of his address (shown below) he hardly sounds like he's full of himself.
The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment - this was the time - when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals. Thank you, God Bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.
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So if a democrat does it, it's "aspirational". If a republican does it, it's racist/nazism/ignorance/etc.
Something I did not say. Something I have not said, or even implied, ever. Be more creative with your strawmen.
Got it. How about we just call it what it is, campaign rhetoric on BOTH sides.
No, let's call it quoting out of context. Supply the context, and the false accusation self-destructs.
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Re: (Score:2, Troll)
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well to be fair; if the drought intensified; someone, somewhere would blame him.
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"If you like your doctor...."
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Ca has been in a "drought" for 50 years (Score:3)
I was raised in CA and every year there was some idiot politician talking about how we were in a drought.
It's as if they don't understand, "average" rainfall. We'd get creamed in the winter, nothing in the summer, and they'd call it a drought.
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Problem is, there's been a very obvious change in the winter rainfall patterns here in L.A. over the last decade. It used to start raining by November, but now it's usually warm and dry until February. We've had 80-90 degree Decembers. This winter was remarkable because it rained a lot, it rained early, and it actually got cold before Christmas. The hills are crazy green, which we haven't seen in a long time. It's not a matter of dry summers/wet winters anymore, but a lot of year-round dryness that's been r
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He has long critized California's water management policies. It seems he's getting through to them now.
Don't worry. It won't take long for California Democrats to find a way to screw even this one up.
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They will likely find a way to tax the rain.
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No, it must have been global warning. Sorry, climate change.
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In Finland they rake their water reservoirs so they don't have these sorts of problems.
Leftist tears (Score:2, Funny)
Must be from all the Leftest Tears since Trump took office.
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Tears are made of water which came from a well irrigated California... The body does not spontaneously create water from nowhere...
Why Not (Score:1)
Sure. I mean, saying ignorant and Deplorable things seems to be your bag. And Trump has offered worthless advice to California ("rake the forests", "Wall", "California needs water and should have planned for that", etc.).
So it's Leftist Tears (not 'Leftest') then, at least it's water and at least it's useful. Your ignorance? Not so much!
Re:Leftist tears (Score:4, Insightful)
This place has become a cesspool. Umpteen years ago when I started coming here, there was plenty of debate, but usually it had something to do with facts or or at the very least science. Comments like this would have been down modded into oblivion for being flaimbait. I dunno if mod bots are to blame or what, but it seems like the only posts you see if you browse at 2 are shitposts like this. That, or an anti science conspiracy. Slashdot used to be the best location on the internet to get detailed, informed conversation about any science topic there was. Now it is just a forum for superkendal and his sad asshole ac stalker to stroke each other for attention.
Does anyone have ANY suggestions for a nerd news site where the community hasn't become so toxic? I need a new haunt. I was hoping I could stick around until things got better, but I think I need to admit to myself that this place is dead. This crowd is just picking over the bones.
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If you find what you're looking for, let the rest of us know too, because as far as I can tell pretty much the entire internet is like this now (except for small enclaves of equally-reactionary backlash to that).
Re: Leftist tears (Score:1)
It's stupid partisan shit. The media does it too. Turn to any national news channel of your choice, chances are they're taking about Trump. Google news's first listed stories almost always have some mention of Trump.
I'm sick of the shit, there's more going on in the world than Donald fucking Trump.
Climate change (Score:2, Insightful)
I've been told wet weather is a sign of climate change. Two years ago, drought was a sign of climate change. It's an all powerful phenomenon that explains everything.
Re:Climate change (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is complexity. The climate is warming, so :global warming" is accurate. However, you tell that to Joe On the Street and he thinks it just means Alaska will be like California in the end so what's wrong with that?
The real truth is with the added heat energy, the climate will swing more wildly. One day you can enjoy a spring day, the next, you get 3 feet of snow dumped on you.
The use of climate change is meant to reflect that - the climate is changing, and the wonderful summer days you remembered as a kid was replaced with scorching hot heatwaves years ago. Plus, the word "change" is scary
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Our temperatures are going from 72/73 F today (3/15/19) to possibly 42 F tomorrow. That's a 30 degree swing of temperature in one day.
No snow, but definitely a wild swing.
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The real truth is with the added heat energy, the climate will swing more wildly. One day you can enjoy a spring day, the next, you get 3 feet of snow dumped on you.
That sounds like a normal spring day in Boulder, CO.
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"hear" "global". I don't think you know what those words mean.
Re:Climate change (Score:5, Informative)
Extreme swings in weather conditions are a sign that the earth's climate system has absorbed more energy. And we have been seeing lots of extreme swings in the last couple of decades.
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Understood. Climate change causes any/every noteworthy change in weather. It's really amazing that way.
Re:Climate change (Score:5, Insightful)
"Understood?" No, you fail at understanding how oscillating systems behave. More energy leads to higher amplitudes.
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Drought is a consistent weather pattern — consistent lack of rain, not a changing one.
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Wow you really are special.
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Not as special as climate change. Climate change causes everything.
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It would be better if climate change didn't cause consistent weather and changing weather, drought and rain, heat and cold, more hurricanes and also fewer, and everything else.
The only pattern is that belief is mandatory. The specifics of what we must believe are various and depend on political needs.
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More energy leads to higher amplitudes.
Just add more capacitors (but not the Chinese ones).
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Not plenty of water. One year being drought free doesn't mean we can all go back to drenching the lawns like they were rice paddies and taking two hour showers.
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I agree that nature is big and complex. I also agree that it's a bit silly to assign any specific event to climate change, and I do wish people would stop doing it.
What do we know? We know that the global mean temperature has risen by a degree recently (observations and analysis, including models and experiments). From all the evidence we have, the rate of this change is unprecedented. It corresponds very well with increasing emissions of certain gases, and we have a physical explanation for why these g
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Absorbed more energy.
If the figures are to be believed, and there is no reason not to, the earth is 1.5C warmer than before the Industrial age started. Correct?
So, that is a change from 366C to 367.5C? A 0.41% change.
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What you've "been told", in general, is not a solid foundation for reasoning. People say all sorts of things.
Re:Climate change (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been told wet weather is a sign of climate change. Two years ago, drought was a sign of climate change. It's an all powerful phenomenon that explains everything.
I've been told the inability to track a straight line is a sign of poor alignment in a car. I've also been told that difficulty in turning is also a sign of poor alignment in a car. I've been told that the inability to stop is a sign of bad brake adjustment. I've been told that sudden jerky stops are also a sign of bad brake adjustment. I've been told that an engine failing to heat up can be caused by a bad thermostat. I've been told that a car overheating can also be caused by a bad thermostat. Gosh, it's almost as if opposing extremes in a given system can be caused by the same thing!
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Speed increases when going down a hill are a sign of bad break adjustment.
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Speed increases when going down a hill are a sign of bad break adjustment.
No. Speed increases going down a hill means that the car is an automatic, and the transmission has entered a high flow low-resistance state(look up the basics of a torque convertor). The other option is that the car is a manual, and the clutch is disengaged. With the clutch engaged, the engine and gear ratio will limit the speed going down a hill, effectively working on the same principal as a Jake brake(engine brake on diesels).
If the brakes are causing the car to slowdown going down a hill without them
It's your car stupid (Score:1)
Looks at your post...looks at UID...looks at post....looks at UID...
YOU'RE DRVING A DODGE! What the hell did you expect???
Re:Climate change (Score:4, Informative)
I've been told wet weather is a sign of climate change.
For the western US - the coast in particular - the ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation) pretty much trumps everything else. Typically in El Niño years, California is wetter than normal (and my state, Washington, is dryer than normal).
But those are still just percentages - they don't always pan out. Plus this winter's El Niño fizzled out about halfway through. As Freud might've said, "sometimes a wet winter is just a wet winter".
Additionally, multi-year droughts are not uncommon for California. There's a reason they decided to build water reservoirs with multi-year capacity, way back in the say. This may be affected by anthropogenic climate change, one way or the other, but it's also an underlying truth about California's climate.
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Additionally, multi-year droughts are not uncommon for California.
Tell the climate alarmists that. They were the ones saying you caused it by driving your car.
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Silly idiot. Hot sommers cause droughts ... obviously.
Hot winters cause more rain, obviously.
California is more dominated by El Nino and La Nina and the changing period between than by "global warming" at the moment anyway. Hint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
still paying high water prices (Score:3, Informative)
Sad part is we're still paying drought prices thanks to Jerry Brown. One way to raise taxes without raising taxes.
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Don't you mean the sandworms and the spice they produce?
LIBERAL TEARS (Score:1)
It's because of all those liberal tears...
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Exactly. Just like the electricity problems with Enron. And nothing will be done to prevent it from happening again, and again...
Doesn't California still have a problem though? (Score:3)
âoeWe designed our infrastructure in California to take that stormwater and send it out to the ocean as fast as possible, treating it as a hazard or waste,â said Kihara. Now STORMS, other state agencies and some cities are working to change that narrative. âoeIt previously got folded into the sewer fee, so your taxpayer money is taking that stormwater and routing it away. [But] the drought has made us look at what sources of water we can depend on other than Sierra snowpack, and along with desalination and recycled water, what about stormwater? We want the public to look at it from a different perspective: less as waste, and more as a resource.â
Don't most droughts occur in cycles? Shouldn't they be planning now how to capture as much water as possible for future use?
Re:Doesn't California still have a problem though? (Score:5, Interesting)
They're called lakes. You dam up a river or creek somewhere. When it rains, the water level goes up. When it's not raining, it gradually goes down, because the water is being used municipally.
There's a lake that's 60-70 years old that supplies most of the water to my hometown. There was a drought during my childhood, and I grew up knowing that lake to have two islands, a big one and a little one. Turns out the little one wasn't supposed to exist: that was a bit of lake bed peeking above the water surface because it had gotten so low. After the El Niño storms in the mid-90s, the lake was full to the brim, and remained mostly full for most of my adult life, but slowly dwindled down to record lows after such a long drought, so the point that instead of one island, instead of two islands, it had only two peninsulas, because so much of it had run dry you could walk out to either island on the dry lake bed.
I should go take a look at the lake this weekend, after all of the heavy rains we've been getting lately, and see how many islands there are in it now.
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tis worse then that, all the surface accumulation and even short term storage in lakes and reservoirs are great. However they desperately need to get that into the ground and replenish decades of draining all aquifers.
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replenish decades of draining all aquifers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquifer_storage_and_recovery [wikipedia.org]
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Enron owned a company called Azurix that was trying to do this in California. It was controversial since the goal was profit: they'd pump in water in good years and then sell it back to everyone in dry years, never mind that they didn't actually own the entirety of the aquifers but just the parts that their pumps were over. Same rent-seeking business model that Enron had for electricity. The locals were highly opposed to it and I remember lots of anti Azurix billboards in the central valley.
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It was controversial since the goal was profit
I can see why California didn't want Enron (or anyone else) trying to get a 'piece of the action' yet again. But that's not a reason to drop what might otherwise be a worthwhile idea.
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The problem is where to put the new reservoir. It's not easy. A major reason the watercourses were channelized back in the day was to make it possible to develop the land near them, so putting in dams now would flood a lot of very pricey real estate. And the development goes all the way from the hills to the shore, so you can't just build a dam somewhere downstream.
Seriously, look at a map of the Los Angeles area and try to find where to put a reservoir to store ru
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The Basilica Cistern (Turkish: Yerebatan Sarnıcı â" "Cistern Sinking Into Ground"), is the largest of several hundred ancient cisterns that lie beneath the city of Istanbul (formerly Constantinople), Turkey. The cistern, located 150 metres (490 ft) southwest of the Hagia Sophia on the historical peninsula of Sarayburnu, was built in the 6th century during the reign of Byzantine Emp
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My friend lived in San Jose area back in the 80'/90's. I'd visit him every few years and remember driving through the mountains and seeing the reservoirs. The trees kept growing and getting taller each year -- from the bottom of the reservoir! There was no water back then. And a stray wildfire up the backside.
I wonder about the water tables though. Have those recovered? Otherwise any success will be short lived if/when CA goes through this cycle again.
My wife used to live in San Diego and talked a
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They're called lakes.
They're actually called aquifers [stanford.edu]. Overpumping them (which is what happens during drought) reduces their capacity, and causes sinkholes [circleofblue.org].
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an aquifer is something different
this is not an aquifer [wikipedia.org]
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There's a fundamental problem with storm water, it ends up in cities, and cities are often close to the coast which makes it very difficult to do anything useful with storm water. It's not like you can put a giant dam across the beach. This is precisely why stormwater is ejected into the sea and yet captured inland in dams and lakes.
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Let's not forget homeless
Right. Flush them out to sea as well. Move tent camps into the LA river when?
Waiting to see... (Score:2)
All this at the cost of WA snowpack (Score:2)
Our snowpack is 70 percent of it's normal state.
There is a cost to everything.
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It also is correlated with your increased fire risk, and ours. Rains and snow cause plant growth and floods. We're used to it up here, but you can expect it to keep increasing in places where the infrastructure isn't there to handle it. We have salmon swim across our highways (literally over them), houses pulled into raging rivers, that kind of thing. Expect more of that in Cali.
(caveat: my siblings live in Cali, and are impacted by some of these events)
The new normal? (Score:1)
If this is the first time in SEVEN YEARS that things are "normal", shouldn't we set a new normal, where drought is "business as usual"?
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Throughout history, California has experienced many droughts, such as 1841, 1864, 1924, 1928â"1935, 1947â"1950, 1959â"1960, 1976â"1977, 2006â"2010, and 2012â"2017.[1]
This is Normal (Score:1)
California has always had long droughts followed by huge rainfall years. The news is, as usual, full of bullshit.
Historical rainfall graph: https://d1ml0gfpm9yj9s.cloudfront.net/assets/ca_preview-6fae971b8680789dcdde43613804b49c.jpg
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WTF? (Score:2)
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Most of the water used in California comes from snowpack. Rains in the Bay Area or Los Angeles don't help the big picture. The dams don't help as much as they could and they're very difficult to construct and maintain in the long run. Better bet, which angers the pro-dam farmers, is to fix the broken water allocation system in which a few people and institutions have rights to the majority of the water and everyone has to fight over what's left. Some of these water rights came into existence back when Spa
Celebration Time! (Score:1)
Do you think CA is storing ANY excess water? (Score:3, Informative)
NOPE.
Trillions of gallons of water are simply flowing to the ocean. So the next time there is a drought Californians will bitch and complain about global warming. When pointed out that the lack of water is policial in nature, they reply, as always, with "So politics controls the rain now?"
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The real problem is California selling its water. (Score:1)
Specifically NorCal water being redirected to Southern California and particularly LA.
While we were under water restrictions up here in NorCal, all that water was being funnelled down to Southern California to the economic benefit of the water authorities and not the regional groups who should have benefitted from it. End result: NorCal had a 'drought' because all its water was being directed all the way down to SoCal because they would pay more.
The drought scam in California has been entirely fictional, an
Re:The real problem is California selling its wate (Score:5, Interesting)
BS. Cities and towns only use about 10% of the water [scpr.org]. The vast majority of water is used for agriculture and for environmental reasons (keeping rivers flowing, wetlands wet, and preventing saltwater inundation in bays). Yes most of the water used by LA metro residents is piped in from elsewhere. But it's a tiny fraction of the water that's redirected around the state. Southern California has very little agriculture - a few orange groves and scattered ground crops. The vast majority of agriculture is in central California [rackcdn.com] (note that the Bay Area is actually in the middle of the state, not Northern California as its generally called, and is adjacent to most of this agricultural productivity).
What needs to happen is for the price of agricultural products grown in California to increase to truly reflect the scarcity of water. Agriculture contributes only 2% to California's GDP [wikipedia.org], but consumes 80% of its non-environmental water use. California's agriculture industry needs to be charged full price for the water it uses. People in other states will then either pay the higher prices for California crops and livestock, allowing California farmers to afford to buy water from sources in other states. Or they'll refuse to pay the higher prices, allowing production to move to states where it makes more economic sense to grow those crops and livestock. Both of these alleviate the endemic water shortages. But as long as the state government insists on subsidizing its agriculture industry with cheap water, it'll result in water shortages for residents outside of the agricultural areas. That's what happens when you subsidize something - it distorts the economy causing shortages elsewhere.
Re:The real problem is California selling its wate (Score:4, Interesting)
The real "real problem" is that California has too many people and too much agriculture using too much water.
The highest estimate I could find of pre-contact population in California was about 700,000. Of course natives didn't use massive flood irrigation techniques, so the state's carrying capacity is probably much higher, but we're closing in on 40 million people here combined with an unsustainable Central Valley irrigation system that's already causing salination of the soil and draw-downs of aquifers to the point where land is subsiding.
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What water are you talking about? River water? Do you dam a major river? Storm water? Where do you put that? Expend endless energy pumping it inland and uphill?
There's a reason water is left to flow into the ocean. It's frequently too expensive to do anything else with.
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But California already has dams at the best locations and new dams will be costly to build and operate. The state also has opportunities to increase storage in its groundwater basins, in some cases at relatively low cost. Coordinating surface and groundwater operations - principally by moving water out of reservoirs and into aquifers during wet periods - can increase the total amount of water stored.
https://www.ppic.org/publication/dams-in-california/ [ppic.org]
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There's a reason water is left to flow into the ocean. It's frequently too expensive to do anything else with.
If you think it's expensive to store, wait until there is another drought and Californians start whining about lack of water.
Arizona has also turned into a bath sponge now (Score:3)
One more rainstorm, and we're going to start getting alligators.
Weather (Score:2)
Move to California! It's always nice and sunny!
OMG we have drought because it hasn't rained enough!