Worst Drought in 1,200 Years!
Feb. 15th, 2022 07:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerI saw an alarming item in my newsfeed yesterday. "Western Megadrought is Worst in 1,200 Years" one particularly vivid headline read. But is it just clickbait or is there a "there", there? I caught up with the story via The Washington Post's article "Southwest drought is the most extreme in 1,200 years, study finds" (14 Feb 2022).
The picture used in the article is actually from last year, Oct. 2021, but it's a sight that has become familiar in coverage of the multiyear drought in California. It shows houseboats squeezed together in what's left of Lake Oroville, one of the state's biggest reservoirs. Before the drought the lake was deep enough to cover all the brown hillsides!
The answer to my question about clickbait is No, there really is a "there" there. These articles point to a recent study published in Nature which found that the period of 2000-2021 is the driest period in the American West since 800 CE.
At the start of 2022 I was optimistic this would be a year we stave off the drought. We'd just come out of an exceptionally rainy December, after a fairly rainy November. The article reflects that, noting that at 12/31 California was at 160% of normal season-to-date rainfall. Now, after 6 weeks of clear skies and warm weather, we're at just 73% of normal for the season to date.
Figures like "73%" don't sound alarming. Comparisons like "deepest drought in 1,200 years" do. We could be looking at a widespread disaster like the Dust Bowl unfolding. As I remarked when I wrote about the downside of warm & sunny days in winter a few weeks ago, if I were a religious person I'd pray for rain.
The picture used in the article is actually from last year, Oct. 2021, but it's a sight that has become familiar in coverage of the multiyear drought in California. It shows houseboats squeezed together in what's left of Lake Oroville, one of the state's biggest reservoirs. Before the drought the lake was deep enough to cover all the brown hillsides!
The answer to my question about clickbait is No, there really is a "there" there. These articles point to a recent study published in Nature which found that the period of 2000-2021 is the driest period in the American West since 800 CE.
At the start of 2022 I was optimistic this would be a year we stave off the drought. We'd just come out of an exceptionally rainy December, after a fairly rainy November. The article reflects that, noting that at 12/31 California was at 160% of normal season-to-date rainfall. Now, after 6 weeks of clear skies and warm weather, we're at just 73% of normal for the season to date.
Figures like "73%" don't sound alarming. Comparisons like "deepest drought in 1,200 years" do. We could be looking at a widespread disaster like the Dust Bowl unfolding. As I remarked when I wrote about the downside of warm & sunny days in winter a few weeks ago, if I were a religious person I'd pray for rain.
