Even after nearly two months of wet weather along the West Coast, California has still not fully escaped its years-long drought, weather and climate experts with the state’s Department of Water Resources said this week.
The state’s water storage and snowpack levels have risen sharply since the end of December as a result of more than a dozen atmospheric rivers that have doused the state in January and March as well as the heavy snowfall across the state in February.
State Climatologist Michael Anderson said Wednesday that California has seen “pretty fantastic” drought-busting weather patterns so far in 2023, which have also helped saturate the state’s previously arid groundwater basins.
However, he said, the state is still partly at the mercy of conditions in the Colorado River Basin, which provides water to some 40 million people in Southern California as well as Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming.
As for a concrete answer on whether the drought is over, Anderson offered an answer that boiled down to “no, but kind of.”
“One of the big challenges for California lies outside of California in the Colorado River Basin, a basin that’s been in drought for 23 years and running,” Anderson said.
“We can say things are improving, just there will be lingering impacts, particularly those in the groundwater and in those basins outside of California that we rely on for our supply,” he added.
The state is expected to see a wet weather lull into the weekend, albeit with a low chance for showers before another atmospheric river potentially arrives between March 19 and 22.
Long-term forecasts are also uncertain, but do show evidence of more potential precipitation throughout the remainder of March.
The short period of dry weather could be a boon to the state’s Flood Operations Center as it attempts to help flooded parts of the state, including along the Pajaro River in Monterey County.
The river’s levee broke Saturday morning, resulting in a 400-foot-wide gap that Monterey County officials said earlier this week could take up to a week to repair.
Jeremy Arrich, the manager of the DWR’s Department of Flood Management, said Wednesday that crews have filled the break in the river and continue to make progress in bringing the broken section back up to the same height as the rest of the levee.
“The initial attempt was to get rock placed along that … break and get it above the water levels, and then we’ll go back through and raise that levee section,” Arrich said. “That’s a temporary repair but that’s what we do in these kinds of situations.”
19 comments
You know, we could be 10 ft underwater- everywhere- and the State and the water agencies will still be screaming drought, drought, drought.
Just another way to hold onto gouging Californian’s
The Earth would have to flood again for them to even consider calling it. But, the Earth could flood and if they told the dem voters that there was still a drought, they would believe their overlords.
With Gavin and the Democrats in charge there will never be enough rain to move out of drought status. We enjoy the high water rates and the constant fear of being arrested by the FBI in full tactical gear if we go over our allotted monthly amount.
We’ll water like we have for the last 40 years thru every drought that came along, we didn’t cut back ever and it made no difference at all except for a higher water bill in surcharges which don’t bother us at all and here we go again drought drought drought like above person mentioned we could be 10 ft underwater and they’d still be screaming drought.
Hey California politicians and whomever get over your gestapo scare tactics you are losing your liberal pathetic base more each day.
Whatever happens the rates will rise.
It’s like California’s “Fire Season.” It’s, “We didn’t have enough rain so it will be dry, and we’ll have a bad fire season. Or, we had too much rain, so there’s more growth, and we’ll have a bad fire season. Does California ever have a good fire season?
Ooh. What did I say? Then this comes out.
https://tinyurl.com/2f4p9nou
Still like bumper sticker,
Save Water Fight Forest Fires
with delta smelt
They’re already starting to position themselves to push another bond measure for water infrastructure.
I guess they have not been paying attention to the snow pack? These people are literally delusional. There will never be enough water to satisfy them. Vote them all out. There is nothing worse than a democrat politician.
Not delusional, dishonest. Blatantly dishonest. While we’re at it, deviant and corrupt, too.
Lake Oroville. December, January, and March.
https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/nDyI4wYYurnVFYMyzTrmbg–/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTcwNTtoPTUwMztjZj13ZWJw/https://media.zenfs.com/en/la_times_articles_853/c8c5b14c509064181de24bfb61c1ca87
It’s the job of the politico sociopaths to keep us under control and broke. And of course they’re use rate increases for woke things other than fixing the water infrastructure. Life is so good in the 21st century. 😵💫
Horse manure!
Quit believing anything any local, national, political or otherwise agency yaks about nowadays.
You simply cannot trust “any so called officials” period, I don’t care who it is or what they represent.
The Colorado River has too many people living off of it. That’s why bigger and better desal plants have to be built in California. We have no idea what next year will bring to Northern California so they should be built here also.
Do you think this is still going to be a problem in 2025?
Why wouldn’t it be?
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