Half Of California Freed From Drought Thanks To Rain, Snow

[babylonsister]

I hope this is true...


Half Of California Freed From Drought Thanks To Rain, Snow
Three months ago virtually all of California was in drought, including at extreme and exceptional levels.
John Antczak
Mar 3, 2023, 04:32 AM EST

snip//

“Clearly the amount of water that’s fallen this year has greatly alleviated the drought,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It has not ended the drought completely but we’re in a very different place than we were a year ago.”

California’s latest drought began in 2020 and no relief appeared in sight heading into this winter.

Three months ago virtually all of California was in drought, including at extreme and exceptional levels. Water agencies serving millions of people, agriculture and industry were told to expect only a fraction of requested allocations.

The turnabout began with a series of atmospheric rivers that pounded the state from late December through mid-January, building a huge Sierra Nevada snowpack, causing flooding, toppling trees and smashing the coast with extreme surf.

Water authorities began boosting allocations and, after a few largely dry weeks, powerful storms with arctic air returned in February, creating epic vistas of white-capped mountains while shutting down highways and ski resorts and burying communities in enough snow to collapse roofs.



more...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/california-drought_n_6401b93be4b08223f12de06d

[A HERETIC I AM]

1. I'm certainly no expert on weather and climate....

But it seems to me the drought California has been experiencing isn’t going to be alleviated by a single, wet winter.

I lived in Northern LA County (Palmdale) in the early 2000’s and they were talking about a severe drought way back then.

I’ll believe the drought is over when the Bark Beetle infestation is mitigated and the forests aren’t ready to burn like kindling after a mere couple months with no rain.

[SunSeeker]

3. Yup, we haven't even refilled the reservoirs, let alone the aquifers or vanquished the bark beetle.

My beloved Lake Trinity is still only 33% full as of today. https://northtrinitylake.com/

[Sympthsical]

4. Not eliminated, but definitely alleviated

Drought and California are peas and carrots. It's a cyclical thing that happens here. However, the drought patterns over the past 20 years have been a bit more extreme than the historical record. We've been managing a mega-drought that's the first in 1,200 years. So well done there, humans and Nature. As with many places in the West, humans populated up areas where water is not always a guaranteed thing.

One very wet winter isn't determinative, but I'll take the relief nonetheless. We'll just have to see how the next few years go to see if we're out of this cycle for a bit or if this year was an anomaly. We're in for a wet weekend, then rain all next week to varying degrees. My real complaint is this has been one fuck of a cold winter. The hills around Napa were covered in snow this past week.

Of course, dry season will come with all this brush growing during the rains.

Who likes grass fires?!

Hopefully forest fires won't be as bad. Despite how it seems in the media, 2022 was actually a quieter year for them as far as we measure these things. Part of it is Governor Newsom and others went ham on fire suppression efforts via prescribed burning, other preventative measures, and investments in Cal Fire. We're starting to see dividends from all that.

I just hope water authorities use what we're building up this winter well and tell greedy corporate farmers in the valley to fuck off when they try to get their mitts on it all. One of the lesser discussed problems of the mega-drought is how aquifers have been drained. Excess water is a lot slower to reach them, so those are going to need years to recover no matter what one winter brings.

I'd like to stop reading stories about families in the Central Valley who cannot flush their toilets.

[SunSeeker]

2. Lake Trinity, one of the CA's biggest reservoirs, is still only 33% full. :(

https://northtrinitylake.com/

[Johnny2X2X]

5. Why pick only 1?

https://cdec.water.ca.gov/resapp/RescondMain

There are several near or over 100% of their historical averages. Including Orville which is 60% bigger than Trinity and is at 116% of its historical average. Or Shasta which is twice the volume of Trinity and is at 84% of historical averages. Why cherry pick the lowest one out of the 17 biggest CA reservoirs? 7 of the 17 are above their historical averages.

And keep ion mind that the snowpack in the mountains is what does the most long term good for busting droughts and the snowpack right now is already over 33% higher than a full season. Those snow packs are what will melt to start to fill Lake Powell and Lake Mead over the warm seasons.

Why not pick San Luis? It was at 12% of its average just a while ago and now is at 96%.

[SunSeeker]

7. Because Lake Trinity is where my family goes camping every year in June.

Lake Trinity is the only one I'm familiar with and have personal knowledge about. For the last few years, camping at Pinewood Cove was so sad. The cove of Pinewood Cove ( a finger of Lake Trinity) was dried up. We've been going there every year for 20 years, ever since we got married and had our son. And my husband has been going there since he was a kid. As the rains came this year, I've been keeping a tab on the lake level, but it has risen only a few percentage points to 33%. It's so disappointing.

Lake Trinity Marina and the folks I know who work there have been devastated by the drought. It's not worth renting a boat on a shrunken lake, so their boat rental business and services have taken a huge hit. There aren't many other jobs up there.

That's why. It's personal to me. Sorry if that bothers you so much.

[Johnny2X2X]

8. Doesn't bother me, just was asking, and you answered

And it is 48% of historical averages and rising, so with any luck it will be pretty full in June.

This drought has been bad for California, but this Winter is better than anyone could have dreamed for easing it. As posted by others, this won't end it, but it's alleviating it considerably. And these storms have been dumping an incredible amount of snow in the mountains, including all the way over in the Rockies. That snow will melt through Spring and Summer to slowly replenish bigger reservoirs like Powell and Mead.

[central scrutinizer]

6. Maybe the snow measurements indicate

There is enough water to fill the reservoirs come spring melt. Most reservoirs in Oregon are quite low this time of year so they can prevent lowland flooding if heavy rain and early snow melt fill the rivers. Some years they’re overly cautious and the reservoirs never reach full pool. They have lots of data on current conditions and have historical records but predicting this year’s spring rainfall is a crap shoot.

[SunSeeker]

9. Yes, that's my only hope, the spring melt of the big snow pack we have.

Trinity Lake, unlike most other CA reservoirs, is more dependent on snowmelt than rain. It is fed about 30 percent by rain and 70 percent from snowmelt.
https://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/Why-some-reservoirs-don-t-fill-as-quickly-6925126.php#taboola-2

I hope the snowpack keeps building and brings it up to at least 50%, so it looks like a lake, not a creek.