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California declared drought free for first time in seven years
- c_r_w 8y agoDoes this account for the massively depleted aquifers thoughout the state?
- givinguflac 8y agoHaving recently visited a few, I’m thinking no.
- theandrewbailey 8y agoHow does one visit an aquifer? A shaft?
- TomK32 8y agoYou are a Dwarf Fortress player? I don't think anyone else "visits" aquifiers.
- jayess 8y ago> “The reservoirs are full, lakes are full, the streams are flowing, there’s tons of snow,” said Jessica Blunden, a climate scientist with the National Climatic Data Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “All the drought is officially gone.” https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-rain-california-drought-conditions-20190314-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-rain-california... EDIT: Sorry, you're referring to aquifers, not reservoirs.
- babyslothzoo 8y agoAquifers are not manmade reservoirs, lakes, or streams
- c_r_w 8y agoYep. I personally know folks with a small ranch outside of Sacramento who had to dig down 90 feet to find water for their well. Hard to imagine that being replenished by a few rainy seasons.
- 0xffff2 8y agoEven in places where water is more plentiful that's not a particularly deep well.
- c_r_w 8y agoHmm maybe it was deeper. I remember being shocked at the time, but my memory of the scale may be significantly off. It was discussed in the context of "there is barely any water in this aquifer these days."
- 0xffff2 8y agoMaybe it was 900 feet? That would be more in the range of "shockingly deep, but quite possibly necessary in California".
- benj111 8y agoThis quote gets me thinking about how snow is treated in this system. It isn't like water in a stream because it stays where it is. It isn't like a reservoir or aquifer because the water isn't trivially dispatchable. I suppose it depends where the snow is, some could be 'permanent', some seasonal melt, some gone by next week. So really we should be differentiating the different types of snow?
- gwbas1c 8y ago
- nathanaldensr 8y agoMy understanding of aquifers is that many of them take many years to fully replenish depending on their size and the makeup of the substrate. I remember a few years ago during the severe droughts there was much worry over aquifer depletion and land subsidence[1]. The primary concern was that certain soil types would compact permanently then no longer be able to hold water ever again. I doubt one season of heavy rainfall and snow melts solves that issue. [1]: https://ca.water.usgs.gov/land_subsidence/ https://ca.water.usgs.gov/land_subsidence/
- jxcl 8y agoMany years being on the scale of tens to thousands of years. Cody did a great video on his channel showing confined aquifers, how they work, and why they recharge so slowly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4iCgxsZX4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4iCgxsZX4
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Does this account for the massively depleted aquifers thoughout the state? By definition, no. Though being drought free is enabling some parts of the state to actively pump water into aquifers beyond natural recovery, so they aren't unrelated.
- joe-collins 8y agoThank you for voicing this question. I think there's an excess of celebration for one wet year, when the long-term damages of drought are far from healed.
- babyslothzoo 8y agoGive it a few months
- pnw_hazor 8y agoI heard we have 12 years.
- olivermarks 8y agoDavid Bowie said 5 years in 1972
- rhacker 8y agoGrew up in CA. Yes this is true. CA is state that has permanent drought, temporary relief. This is temporary relief.
- dwags 8y agoIt's been raining every couple of days in sunny San Diego for like 3 months
- djrogers 8y agoAnd yet we won't be building any more water storage. As a result, we have about the same water capacity to survice the next drought as we had in the 1970s. There were half as many residents then, and climate change wasn't a concern...
- jcranmer 8y agoBuilding more water storage doesn't address the fundamental problem that California uses more water than is actually provided by nature (on average).
- cjensen 8y agoJust to emphasize this: the southern San Joaquin valley drains to the ocean only during extreme El Niño events. So basically there is no water left to be captured there. The only water left is north of Sacramento, and is needed to keep the SF Bay alive. Sure, the Bay could survive if a little more water was taken, but that wouldn't be enough to solve the problem.
- Gibbon1 8y agoI came here to just say 'drought' implies abnormal lack of rainfall. For California the issue is there is nothing abnormal about years of little rainfall. There is a comment from Charles Bowden the rings to true to me. Talking about the Civilization in the Arizona Desert; the desert will win eventually because you can't take what it doesn't have. With California the real question is how much damage will we do while losing the battle.
- linuxftw 8y agoSeems California has a 'people problem' and the population is past the carrying capacity.
- Retric 8y agoResidential water use is minimal. Most water is used for irrigation. Further, cheap water storage results in increased evaporation, it’s a net loss over time.
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoCan't wait for all the climate change deniers to have a field day with this.
- jdminhbg 8y agoMaybe people should stop claiming normal patterns of precipitation variability are unstoppable catastrophic results of climate change then?
- mamon 8y agoAlso, climate change might have catastropthic results on some parts of the world, and positive effect on other. I wouldn't mind for instance if Central Europe got warm climate similar to Mediterranean. Now, why would I fight a change that clearly benefits me? :)
- maxxxxx 8y agoIn principle you have a point but if millions of people have to leave their home area and are looking for a place to live things may be less golden. the same thing happened in Syria. The war there didn't really impact Europe directly but the refugees certainly did.
- southern_cross 8y agoI have relatives in Texas who a few years back were being told by climate experts that drought (where local reservoirs and other bodies of water had sunk to dangerously low levels) was the new normal. Many folks who had built homes near such bodies of water were being told that their properties were now permanently devalued, being not so much lakefront properties any longer. Of course, not quite more than a year later those reservoirs and such were once again full to overflowing, and too much water was the new problem. So yeah, whenever a "climate expert" tells you that something is the "new normal", or that you are now in a "permanent state of drought", or whatever, then you can pretty much just safely assume that they're full of it! In my late teens my normally wet-and-green area got hit hard by a drought. Rivers and reservoirs started drying up, wildfires (small ones, at least) became common occurrences, and temperatures peaked so high at times that roads started buckling and the interiors of cars started melting and so on. Any of that sound familiar? Well, this all happened in my area circa 1980, but before long conditions returned to normal, where occasional flooding was a far more recurrent issue than anything like a drought was. Nobody was trying to blame climate change at the time, either; it was just "drought".
- whymsicalburito 8y agoTell that to my water bill, the drought surcharge is still over 50% of the bill...
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoThat's just how it goes. Revenue streams never go away. Government becomes dependent on that revenue and continuing to collect is it easier than re-shuffling other revenue around or choosing what to de-fund so the revenue gets kept. Get used to your drought surcharge. It's not going anywhere. Edit: Based on the popularity of this comment one would think government revenue streams go poof all the time. If anybody has evidence of this I would like to know more about is to I can advocate for replicating those circumstance in my state.
- benj111 8y ago>Revenue streams I see what you did there.
- mey 8y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_telephone_excise_tax https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_telephone_excise_tax
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoReading the article it sounds like the federal government never actually repealed the tax (Clinton vetoed the most recent attempt) but collection was ultimately halted in 2006 as a result of a federal court ruling. I guess the tax did actually go away but it was not voluntary on the part of the government. Edit: Is this interpretation incorrect or just inconvenient?
- noonespecial 8y agoRemember those "fuel surcharges" from when gas was over $4/gallon? Me too. I'm still paying them.
- whalesalad 8y agoThe experience here in Orange County over the last few months has been nuts. Being able to hang out down near the ocean and see the San Gabriel mountains just decked out in snow is surreal: https://i.redd.it/kueaye5p6si21.jpg https://i.redd.it/kueaye5p6si21.jpg Another photo: https://i.redd.it/vy7dlavrh0f21.jpg https://i.redd.it/vy7dlavrh0f21.jpg Anaheim hills, an area that rarely gets snowed on: https://i.redd.it/trbf198kb6i21.jpg https://i.redd.it/trbf198kb6i21.jpg Then we roll right into the poppy/wildflower superbloom which has been bonkers: https://weather.com/travel/news/2019-03-13-super-bloom-flower-show-california#9 https://weather.com/travel/news/2019-03-13-super-bloom-flowe... The blackstar canyon waterfall is LIT! https://i.redd.it/4bq8v71ff7j21.jpg https://i.redd.it/4bq8v71ff7j21.jpg Last but not least we are smack dab in the middle of an epic butterfly migration, https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2019/03/08/why-are-there-so-many-butterflies-in-southern-california-right-now/ https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2019/03/08/why-are-there-so... Driving down the 73 toll road yesterday I think I drove through about 300 butterflies, at least. They just kinda flop over the car, none of them hit me. It was like driving through a butterfly hail storm. This place sucks a lot of the time with all of the congestion and traffic, heat, smog, high cost of living etc... but times like this really make you stop and appreciate how beautiful it is.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- gnarcoregrizz 8y ago> This place sucks a lot of the time with all of the congestion and traffic, heat, smog, high cost of living etc... but times like this really make you stop and appreciate how beautiful it is. That's how I feel every day here
- anonymous5133 8y agoI felt so sad that the butterfly's habit was destroyed by so many people here.
- snek 8y agoAny info on the camera(s) used for those first two reddit photos?
- docker_up 8y agoAs someone who has lived in the Bay Area for over 20 years, I knew this would happen. I was never worried for a second that the drought was the "new normal". I believe the climate will continue to change and cycle. Yes, we are experiencing global warming, and yes our environment is heading for disaster, everyone was too easy to believe that this particular drought was the "new normal" with little proof.
- LoSboccacc 8y ago> yes our environment is heading for disaster now I'd like to see which model predicted the end of the drought and see when those predicts its return.
- avip 8y agoSame for us in Israel, it's been a fantastic year. I'm clocking 900mm! It's been 15 years since we've last seen such wonderfully rainy year. Praise the Lord, El-Niño, and any other involved entity.
- hnaccy 8y agoGonna go wash my car three times :D
- p1esk 8y agoSanta Barbara county still reports "stage 3 drought condition": https://www.santabarbaraca.gov/gov/depts/pw/resources/system/docs/default.asp https://www.santabarbaraca.gov/gov/depts/pw/resources/system...
- 24gttghh 8y agohttps://www.drought.gov/drought/states/california https://www.drought.gov/drought/states/california which was updated 3 days ago. No drought, simply 6.6% "D0-Abnormally dry".
- casefields 8y agoThis one is pretty good too. Essentially the same info: https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?West https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonito...
- 24gttghh 8y agoYeah that's basically the same thing. The National Drought Mitigation Center is at U Nebraska Lincoln :)
- ksb 8y agoFor those interested in seeing drought data, here's a CA map: https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonito... And here's a time series: https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Data/Timeseries.aspx https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Data/Timeseries.aspx
- lisper 8y agoWorth noting that despite the epic rain this season, San Diego county is still "abnormally dry".
- afterburner 8y agoTime series is for the whole country or continental only.
- ksb 8y agoYou can narrow it down to just California
- SovietDissident 8y agoYes, but have the bozos in Sac learned anything? Have we built new water infrastructure to support a population 3x the size vs. when the original, now-ageing infrastructure was built? Was there a cessation of 40% of freshwater being drained into the oceans to preserve the habitats of baitfish and other environmentalist causes? No---we told farmers they were evil because they grow almonds, told people they need to conserve/pay more for water, and have not fixed any fundamental problems. Instead, the now-suspended train to nowhere was Jerry Brown's contribution (though nowhere near as bad as giving gov't workers collective bargaining "rights" in the 70s, fleecing taxpayers till the end of time), whereas his father's legacy was building actual infrastructure. There is going to be another drought---there has always been drought in California---and nothing will have been fixed. Maybe since the central CA aquifers were significantly drained (they actually sank!) in this drought go-around, next time the farmers will well and truly go out of the business, to the delight of the anti-business pink-haired SF crowd who doesn't realize that despite seeing a vast expanse of water on the horizon every day they walk to work through human excrement to the Twitter Ministry of Truth, the freshwater actually comes from Hetch Hetchy, dammed in the 1930s, and built for a population of the mid-20th century. The whole water crisis happened due to political and central planning incompetence---no one has been held accountable and nothing has been learned: expect a repeat. https://www.city-journal.org/html/scorching-california-13704.html https://www.city-journal.org/html/scorching-california-13704...
- losteric 8y agoWords are cheap. How are you taking action? Are you taking action?
- seehafer 8y agoI’d settle for a lot more people saying what OP is saying. California has one of the most incompetent governments in the world but this is masked because it is home to tech and we’re in boom times. Jerry Brown’s one big accomplishment was restraining the more idiotic impulses of his own caucus yet the political and media classes hail him as some sort of superlative political leader. His budget surplus is due to reneging on the “temporary” top marginal tax increase in boom times. Nothing more.
- pfdietz 8y agoTo first order, California's water problem is agricultural. And that's because there's no market in that water that would curtail what is a very low value use of it. Fix that, or resort to fractional measures that just paper over the underlying dysfunction.
- jshen 8y agoI always cringe when I hear markers and water in the same sentence. I’m not sure what exactly you mean by “markets” but the history of water rights in CA is a great lesson highlighting how spectacularly “markets” can fail to handle water.
- pdonis 8y agoAs I understand it, the history of water rights in CA, and indeed in the US west generally, is a history of lack of markets; it's all been political maneuvering by various factions to make sure they aren't the ones who go short when the water gets divided up. There has never been an actual market to allocate the limited supply of water to the highest value uses. If there were, agriculture in much of CA wouldn't exist, since much of CA is a desert and it makes no sense to do agriculture in a desert when you can ship in food from elsewhere at lower cost.
- jshen 8y agoHow do you determine who owns water in the first place.
- ip26 8y agoA real & important question, but by no means an impossible problem. E.g. suppose "the public" (e.g. gov't, as with public lands) owns all of it in the first place, sells it, and uses the proceeds to fund water projects. A less radical option would be to keep the system of water rights we have today and simply allow the water to be bought and sold. Currently if you sell it, someone can take you to court & say "well you didn't use it, so you should lose your water rights" (because California follows the doctrine of first use). Would run the risk of creating wealthy water czars overnight, but less radical.
- zobzu 8y agoits funny how no matter what happens climate wise "its terrible and wrong" when it's reported. What drought.gov calls abnormally-dry is not actually abnormal. What they really mean is "its non-ideal", as if the climate was always ideal pre-2011. Anything that is lower than D2 ("severe drought") is normal, and of course its better to thrive toward ideal and maintaining better conditions. But it doesn't mean that somehow weather was ideal all the time before 2011 and now its never good enough. Let the downvotes flow... https://www.drought.gov/drought/states/california https://www.drought.gov/drought/states/california
- jmeekr 8y ago1984 vibes in a way if you think about it.
- creddit 8y agoI actually agree with the core sentiment of your post, but find you playing a victim without yet being victimized in any way with "Let the downvotes flow..." to be really counter productive.
- tomjakubowski 8y agoCould you rephrase the core sentiment of the post that you agree with? I can't understand what it's saying at all, other than expressing anger at the reporting of climate issues.
- will4274 8y agoThere is a trend where all climate events are said by news sources to be indicative of climate change. Abnormally warm winters => climate change. Abnormally cold winters => climate change. Drought => climate change. Hurricanes => climate change. As is typical on many topics, some news organizations are apt to over-state the certainty of scientific evidence. For example, the link between climate change and hurricanes is commonly cited in news sources (see https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hurricane+climate+change+huff+post+medium https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hurricane+climate+change+huff+post...). While the link has a reasonable theoretical mechanism (warm air seems to make hurricanes stronger, global warming => more warm air), it hasn't actually been observed in practice - we had an average number of hurricanes last decade and an abnormally small number the decade prior. Nevertheless, some news sources publish articles along the lines of "most damaging hurricane ever, is it because of global warming?" Depending on where you sit, this is either evidence that global warming is a massive hoax and not happening at all OR evidence that news sources sometimes get a little carried away trying to publish the most alarmist and exotic things that they can find, but that the underlying science of global warming is valid and with uncertain impacts.
- DataJunkie 8y agoJust until the next dry year and everyone will be crying about the drought and how the sky is falling.
- jedberg 8y agoThey need to completely change the way water in California is billed. Right now rates keep going up as we get better at conservation, which disincentives conservation. At the same time, in areas with a flat rate, people use way too much water. When Sacramento had a flat rate, you'd see people turn on their hose as they left for work and let it flood their lawn all day, running into the street, to keep their lush green lawns in 105F weather. As soon as they introduced water meters, the lawns went brown and the bills went up. I think the billing needs to be a flat rate for everyone that is high enough to cover all water delivery costs, based on size of property, and then you get a credit if your usage is below median for similar families/farms/industries and you get an equal surcharge if you're above that. Then you'd be encouraged to use less water than your neighbors, but all the costs would even out since 1/2 the people by definition would pay extra, so they wouldn't have to raise the flat rate part so quickly, only slowly as the overall cost of the water system increases. It would put the consumer in much more control of their water costs. My family for example gets hit with a huge surcharge because we added two people to our family since they started tracking, so we aren't "conserving" anymore. We're conserving more than before, we just have double the people!
- gdubs 8y agoIt’s agriculture. Personal conservation should be incentivized, but unless we make radical changes the price will have to go up as water trends towards scarcity. For people who conserve, their rates should increase more slowly. But we have to address agriculture and stop externalizing the true cost to the environment. What agriculture has accomplished is astonishing, but it’s just not sustainable in any number of dimensions.
- jedberg 8y agoMy system addresses agricultural use. They pay a flat rate and then get credits/surcharges based on their usage compared to other farms.
- yellowapple 8y agoMandatory aquifer recharging would be a good first step. One of the big problems is that California can't adequately take advantage of these wet winters because the reservoirs can only hold so much and the ground can only absorb water so fast, so a lot of water ends up getting into the rivers and escaping back into the Pacific (or sits in ephemeral lakes/ponds/wetlands until it evaporates). If we helped along the process of getting water back underground (which should be readily doable, e.g. by pumping water back down into wells), that'd significantly lessen the strain we've put on our aquifer systems. Step two is to significantly beef up our reservoir system. We should be able to capture way more of our winter rainfall than we currently do. That'll be a pretty big help to farms and cities further south (i.e. in the more arid half of California). Step three is to stop pussyfooting around building desalination plants. If Israel can go from being constantly on the verge of drought to having a giant water surplus, then there's no reason we can't do the same with California (especially since we have way more room to build 'em :) ). California's adjacent to the single largest body of water in the world; it's ridiculous that we ain't taking advantage of that.
- dimal 8y agoLooks like we'll have plenty of fuel for another bad fire season.
- miguelmota 8y agoIt rained a good amount last month in Los Angeles which was great. All the rain however uncovered a ton of potholes on the roads which is dangerous particularly for motorcycles. Hope the city gets this patched.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mrharrison 8y agoBeing a bit cynical here, but could we just call it the California rain cycle, instead of being amazed every 7-10 years when droughts come and go.
- mehrdadn 8y ago> instead of being amazed every 7-10 years when droughts come and go. Was there a drought 10 years ago though? I don't recall.
- drdeadringer 8y agoYes. When I first moved to the Bay Area I could not turn on NPR without hearing about the poor delta smelt suffering from the drought for what seemed like every 5 minutes.
- burnallofit 8y agoWell, enjoy it, this will last about 4 months
- dror 8y agoJohn Steinbeck, "East of Eden", 1952. "There would be five or six wet and wonderful years when there might be nineteen to twenty-five inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of twelve to sixteen inches of rain. And then the dry years would come, and sometimes there would be only seven or eight inches of rain. The land dried up and the grasses headed out miserably a few inches high and great bare scabby places appeared in the valley." ... "And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way."
- ryanwaggoner 8y agoI always think about this passage when I read about California droughts. I wonder if this is actually true and what causes it.
- StephenConnell 8y ago"California drought: Past dry periods have lasted more than 200 years, scientists say" https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/01/25/california-drought-past-dry-periods-have-lasted-more-than-200-years-scientists-say/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/01/25/california-drought-pa...
- cgs 8y agoApocalyptic Planet by Craig Childs goes into depth on why this happens. We are living in pretty favorable conditions at the moment.
- xivzgrev 8y agoPeople are complaining about the rain in the Bay Area but I say bring it on!! I remember the drought and how I feel sad with mountains of dead grass year round. Glad to see we are heading out of a drought (this year) - enjoy it!
- ggm 8y agoStand by for record bushfires next season
- musicale 8y agoUnfortunately California still thinks that one of the wettest centuries in thousands of years is "normal rainfall."
- robertAngst 8y agoTalked to an uber driver, he said this was 'climate change'. Drought = desert rain = climate change? What is California
- bduerst 8y agoCalifornia has cyclical droughts and this last one was not that abnormal from the natural variability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_in_California#Weather_cycles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_in_California#Weather... My uber driver today said the extra memory in phones is making us all sick, but computer screens were safe, so why would you even mention it was your uber driver?
- electricslpnsld 8y agoIt’s all about that delicious Hetch Hetchy
- hkmurakami 8y agoThis rain season has get like the La Nina winter of 1996. Glad we have it.
- bayfunnyguy 8y agoCalifornia moves a significant amount of water from its source south. I don't know sure how much of an impact this has on our climate.