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canyonwalkerCalifornia has gotten quite a downpour of rain the past few weeks. I mentioned that in a blog earlier today. Along with that rain has come a lot of harm. Floods in low-lying areas and near swollen creeks have injuring people and destroying property, numerous mudslides have blocked roads requiring costly repair, and even several sinkholes have opened up swallowing cars.
All that rain has a positive side, too, though. We need it. We've been in a multi-year drought... not just here in California but across the Western US. Reservoirs are at historically low levels, groundwater is dangerously depleted, and years of water rationing has hurt agriculture. With all this rain people are breathing a sigh of relief. Indeed today I've seen numerous news articles that California is now out of extreme drought conditions. But does that mean we're really out of trouble? Alas, no.
The source pretty much all of the news articles today are using is the US Drought Monitor run by a number of government agencies in conjunction at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. They publish a weekly series of maps like the one above.
In the pic I've shared I've chosen only California and I've placed two maps side by side for comparison. One's the most recent report, released today with data as of Tuesday. The other's a snapshot of conditions in September, before the start of California's rainfall season.
The comparison shows you what news editors are writing headlines about: the worst levels of drought are now gone. That dark red spot of "Exceptional Drought" covering the San Joaquin Valley of California, one of the most productive agricultural regions in the country, has softened to merely Severe Drought... and some of it's only Moderate Drought! Likewise that big band of red, marking Extreme Drought, has softened a category or two, too.
So, is today's news good news or not? Well, in a glass-half-full manner, yes, it's good news. Three weeks of rain have pulled us back from the worst conditions. But the reality is we're not out of trouble yet. We are still in drought. Even almost a full season's rainfall in just the past 3 weeks, if it stops raining now we'll be back in conditions like last September by this September. It's going to take more rain, a lot more rain, to end the drought.
All that rain has a positive side, too, though. We need it. We've been in a multi-year drought... not just here in California but across the Western US. Reservoirs are at historically low levels, groundwater is dangerously depleted, and years of water rationing has hurt agriculture. With all this rain people are breathing a sigh of relief. Indeed today I've seen numerous news articles that California is now out of extreme drought conditions. But does that mean we're really out of trouble? Alas, no.
The source pretty much all of the news articles today are using is the US Drought Monitor run by a number of government agencies in conjunction at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. They publish a weekly series of maps like the one above.
In the pic I've shared I've chosen only California and I've placed two maps side by side for comparison. One's the most recent report, released today with data as of Tuesday. The other's a snapshot of conditions in September, before the start of California's rainfall season.
The comparison shows you what news editors are writing headlines about: the worst levels of drought are now gone. That dark red spot of "Exceptional Drought" covering the San Joaquin Valley of California, one of the most productive agricultural regions in the country, has softened to merely Severe Drought... and some of it's only Moderate Drought! Likewise that big band of red, marking Extreme Drought, has softened a category or two, too.
So, is today's news good news or not? Well, in a glass-half-full manner, yes, it's good news. Three weeks of rain have pulled us back from the worst conditions. But the reality is we're not out of trouble yet. We are still in drought. Even almost a full season's rainfall in just the past 3 weeks, if it stops raining now we'll be back in conditions like last September by this September. It's going to take more rain, a lot more rain, to end the drought.
