CLIMATEWIRE | When Maria Regalado Garcia tried to wash the dishes in her California home one recent morning, only a trickle of water emerged from the kitchen faucet. Other taps in her Tooleville house in rural Tulare County ran similarly dry.
Nearly three-quarters of California is in either extreme or exceptional drought, considered worse than severe, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. It’s so bad that scientists say the ongoing drought in the western United States marks the region’s driest 22-year stretch in more than 1,200 years. “The turn-of-the-twenty-first-century drought would not be on a megadrought trajectory in terms of severity or duration without” human-caused climate change, the study said.
So far this year, the state has had more than 660 wells go dry. The majority of those are in the San Joaquin Valley, said Kelsey Hinton, spokesperson with Community Water Center, which has offices in Visalia, Sacramento and Watsonville. Perez added that she had to remove a 60 foot pine in her backyard because the dying tree posed a fire hazard. “For safety issues, we had to cut it down,” she said.
“That’s a game changer for the industry because before they could … pump as much water as they needed,” said David Magana, senior research analyst with Rabobank, a Dutch multinational banking and financial services company. A University of California, Merced, study said the drought compelled California farmers last year to fallow about 400,000 acres, he said. Bloomberg reported the amount of unused California farmland could double to 800,000 acres this year.
Adding to that problem is that the Colorado River — a lifeblood of water out West — is heading into crisis territory. Reservoirs on the Colorado River could fall so low that water exports to Western states could stop, warned California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot at a recent agricultural conference.
Lake Shasta, a federally-managed reservoir, yesterday was at 37 percent, compared to the historical average of 54 percent for this time of year.
KameronHurley Don't think of it as the driest spell on record. Think of it as the wettest we're ever going to see again while the human race still lives.
Usually takes a celestial impact or massive volcanic event to destabilize the fifteen thousand year stable climate we’ve evolved in.
This is what you get when you spend the last 10 years shutting down 1200 dams. All the water ends up in the ocean. You and your green cronies did this on purpose.
Could it be a change of climate causing it? Wonder what could have made the climate change so drastically?
So there have been dry spells like this as far back as a thousand years? I thought this was caused by White supremacy?
And for those who choose to ignore such matters, the American West has experienced far worse drought periods that persisted for generations. Meanwhile, California added millions in population without building any new water storage.
Watchdogsniffer I’ve lived all my 58 years in the Valley. It bears zero resemblance to the place I lived even 25 years ago. It’s rainless now, yet no water restrictions? 🤷🏼♀️ Unlimited Big Ag, and acres of houses. You need water for all that. And there is none.
It’s happening because of all the hot air generated by the Democrats! We can control the climate if we could get rid of the Dems!
And how old is the earth again? Sample size!
Uncharted waters feels a bit on the nose eh?
MatScoutWillie
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