Two-thirds of California's counties are in a drought emergency. Get used to it.

[marmar]

Two-thirds of California’s counties are in a drought emergency. Get used to it.
Water scarcity is now a permanent feature.





Nathanael Johnson
Sr. Staff Writer

(Grist) From a rise overlooking the unusually low San Luis Reservoir, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a drought emergency for 39 of the state’s 58 counties on Monday. This was the second stop on his dry lake tour: Less than a month earlier, Newsom had stood on the cracked bottom of Lake Mendocino, a spot normally 20-feet underwater, and announced a drought emergency in Sonoma and Mendocino counties. Not far from where he spoke in April, an early wildfire raged, where spring grasses had prematurely yellowed to tinder.

“That’s unprecedented for this time of year, said Grant Davis, general manager of Sonoma Water, who spoke at the same lectern as Newsom that day. “We’ve had big fires three out of the last five years. Believe me this is climate change and extreme weather all rolled into one.”

As California’s not-so-wet season draws to a close, half the state is already in ‘extreme drought.’ That means that thousands of wells could go dry in the poorest rural areas in the coming months, and fish populations will suffer as rivers heat up. In the northern half of the state, reservoir levels are already as low as they were three years into the last major drought that ran from 2011 to 2017. But California emerged from that long spate of dry weather with hard-won skills that make it better prepared this time around.

The entire West has suffered from droughts in recent years, but there’s something that captures the public imagination when disaster hits California, the most populous state, that promised land of sunshine, fruit trees, and celluloid dreams. Whenever drought grips California, elements of the media fall into an ecstatic doom loop, producing headlines that make the state sound like an apocalyptic wasteland. ............(more)

https://grist.org/climate/two-thirds-of-californias-counties-are-now-in-a-drought-emergency-get-used-to-it/

[AllaN01Bear]

1. ca is a semi arid state with mostly dry and intruppted by some wet years .

get used to it . we should have water conservation rules on at all times not just during bad years.

[Polly Hennessey]

2. I am in El Dorado County. I am getting used to it.

[NickB79]

3. Vast swathes of the Southwest will be abandoned in the next 20-30 yr

Remember the Okies fleeing the Dust Bowl in the 1930's?

We'll start seeing it again in the 2030's. Only this time, don't expect the drought to break in our lifetimes. We've permanently altered the planet's climate.

Climate refugees will be our fellow Americans

[IcyPeas]

4. check out this map:

https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA

[Wounded Bear]

5. It would take several years of above average rain/snow to get back to "normal"...

with normal being something that might be a modern anomaly. Meanwhile, IIRC the aquifer under the Central Valley is being depleted rapidly.

[Raine]

6. and still they keep building and building 🙄

cramming more and more people into the state and then telling us not use much water. It seems like it would make sense to discourage people from continuing to come here. 🤔

[Angleae]

7. CA has more people leaving than entering.

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2021/01/06/california-exodus-top-5-largest-outbound-migration/
https://lao.ca.gov/LAOEconTax/Article/Detail/265

[Raine]

9. That's true but you wouldn't know it

by the traffic, congestion and building that goes on in Los Angeles County, haha.

[Kaleva]

8. Almost all of lower Michigan is experiencing moderate drought

https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?Midwest

[Xolodno]

10. Cadillac Desert.

This was all eventually going to come to fork in the road. Good news, population is declining. Bad news, population is declining which means less taxes, economic growth, etc.

Bad news for the country, expect higher food prices.