Think Progress – by Ari Phillips
The rainy season is over in California before it ever really began.
As the state enters its fourth year of a prolonged and devastating drought, new snowpack estimates give Californians little to aspire to other than more hot and dry conditions. According to the Department of Water Resources, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is lower than any year since 1950, and at the end of March it is just 8 percent of the historical average.
This year’s paltry snowpack is less than one-third of the previous smallest size on record, which was 25 percent of average — an amount that was reached both last year and in 1977.
Winter is normally California’s rainy season, but the state has been parched since several big storms swept through late last year. And that looks like it’s going to continue — state climatologist Michael Anderson told the The Fresno Bee that there is “no significant precipitation in sight.”
“I think we’re done,” he said. “I see heat and more heat in the coming months.”
The impacts of the ongoing drought — which studies have shown is exacerbated by climate change — are being seen in everything from energy production to the survival of critical species like the Delta smelt.
According to a new report from the Pacific Institute, the ongoing drought is causing California to rely on natural gas to replace unavailable hydroelectricity power sources. The report states that the switch has cost California ratepayers $1.4 billion more for electricity than in average years, and has resulted in an 8 percent increase in carbon dioxide and other pollutants between 2011 and 2014.
With the first three months 2015 offering little respite from the drought, California Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed an expansive $1.1 billion emergency drought relief bill, the second such effort in as many years.
CREDIT: CA DWR
Snowpack usually provides about one third of California’s annual water use and 60 percent of the water that is captured in the state’s vast reservoir system. When snowpack was around one-quarter of average in 2014, it wasexpected to account for more like one-twentieth of that demand. Allocating the limited snow runoff this year to the many interested parties will be just as painful.
Marty Ralph, a research meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told NBC News that “without that snowpack, it’s really hard for the reservoirs and water supply to be available during the very dry part of the summer.”
Those that rely on the snowpack for recreational reasons have also been dismayed by this season’s failure to deliver.
“This has been what I’m now calling the ‘cruellest’ [sic] winter I’ve ever seen,”wrote Tim Cohee, CEO of Central California’s China Peak Ski resort, in a Facebook post in mid-February when the resort was forced to close. “We have not only dealt with no snow, but also with incredibly marginal snowmaking conditions … In nearly four decades I have never worked for a resort that closed mid-winter; now I have.”
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/30/3640399/california-snowpack-at-record-low/
Once upon a time, much of the state of California was a barren desert. And now, thanks to the worst drought in modern American history, much of the state is turning back into one. Scientists tell us that the 20th century was the wettest century that the state of California had seen in 1000 years. But now weather patterns are reverting back to historical norms, and California is rapidly running out of water. It is being reported that the state only has approximately a one year supply of water left in the reservoirs, and when the water is all gone there are no contingency plans. Back in early 2014, California Governor Jerry Brown declared a drought emergency for the entire state, but since that time water usage has only dropped by 9 percent. That is not nearly enough. The state of California has been losing more than 12 million acre-feet of total water a year since 2011, and we are quickly heading toward an extremely painful water crisis unlike anything that any of us have ever seen before.
But don’t take my word for it. According to the Los Angeles Times, Jay Famiglietti “is the senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech and a professor of Earth system science at UC Irvine”. What he has to say about the horrific drought in California is extremely sobering…
As our “wet” season draws to a close, it is clear that the paltry rain and snowfall have done almost nothing to alleviate epic drought conditions. January was the driest in California since record-keeping began in 1895. Groundwater and snowpack levels are at all-time lows. We’re not just up a creek without a paddle in California, we’re losing the creek too.
Data from NASA satellites show that the total amount of water stored in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins — that is, all of the snow, river and reservoir water, water in soils and groundwater combined — was 34 million acre-feet below normal in 2014. That loss is nearly 1.5 times the capacity of Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir.
Statewide, we’ve been dropping more than 12 million acre-feet of total water yearly since 2011. Roughly two-thirds of these losses are attributable to groundwater pumping for agricultural irrigation in the Central Valley. Farmers have little choice but to pump more groundwater during droughts, especially when their surface water allow
KEY thing to remember from this is that California 20th century was the wettest century that the state of California had seen in 1000 years. But now weather patterns are reverting back to historical norms. It’s funny how earths climate is reciprocal just like the ice ages that are to come.
HAARP.
WET BACKS
Water, 3 or 4, maybe $5.00 a gallon in the near future. Don’t be collecting rainwater or we’ll arrest your ass. They got their next gig all lined up to rape the pockets of hard working American slaves. Major corporations buying up all the water rights everywhere to be in a position to squeeze every man’s testicles to quench our thirst for water and their thirst for greed. There’s gonna come a day when a universal awakening will occur where every man who still “has a pair” will grab his gun and rid his town of this vermin. It only takes a spark to start a bonfire. I hope I live to see the day. In the meantime, I’ll continue use of the “board of wisdom”.