Yesterday, my local reservoir, Lake Oroville, made the front page of Drudge. The photo below shows the Highway 162 suspension bridge and the Bidwell Marina, which is almost in the center of the lake now. The last time I was there at this very spot in September, boat launch ramps were still operable. From what I hear now, they are past the asphalt and down to mud for anyone that dares to try.
Below are two photos from the NASA MODIS imaging system that show California from the Los Angeles area north to the Oregon border. One if from January 13th, 2013, and the other is from January 14th, 2014.
The lack of snowpack in the northern Sierra Nevada is quite significant and the visual difference between years is stunning.
On Thursday, I was on Shasta Lake north of Redding, CA and took this photo of the Interstate 5 bridge crossing the reservoir. While you can’t see it in this photo, there still is water under the bridge. Shasta is the largest reservoir in California, and is down from its historical average by nearly half.
Of course, this is hardly new, low water levels have been seen on this lake before, such as in September 2005:
What is new is that the lake level is so low in winter, there’s no appreciable inflow, it continues to drop, AND there’s little snow-pack to replenish it.The US drought monitor shows the current situation:
![20140114_usdm_home[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/20140114_usdm_home1.png?quality=75)
Plus, California population has increased dramatically while water storage has not. That’s a testament to poor planning and the hands of environmentalists and their campaigns to stop new water storage systems. Some are saying this drought is in “uncharted territory”.
“Uncharted territory” has been a phrase spoken by many during recent water conversations. The population in California has doubled since 1977, many more permanent crops have been planted and more refuges established.
Source: http://www.chicoer.com/news/ci_24939467/governors-drought-declaration-leaves-no-doubt-butte-county
And the cause of this? Certainly not “global warming” though I’m sure the activist idiots will use every trick in the book to try to create a linkage. The cause is a the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and a weak to neutral and persistent La Niña pattern that some are calling “La Nada”. Bob Tisdale has a good summary on the PDO situation and how it is also related to “the pause” in global warming. The ocean rules the climate system.
The paper Chylek et al describes the linkage of ocean cycles to climate of the southwestern USA.
In the graph below, you can see that pattern has been in place since the strong La Niña of 2010. In 1997/98 when the huge El Niño occurred, California had so much water that dams were full and fears of flooding abounded. You can also see the long stretch of drought in the mid to late 1970’s reflected in this graph.
Yesterday, Governor Brown declared a drought emergency, which is probably a bit too late. He held up this graph showing precipitation by water year. In California, a water year is from July 1st to June 30th.
Here’s the source of data for that graph, showing that Governor Brown’s graph doesn’t quite tell the entire story since the peaks are muted and only the filtered values are used. His graph also only goes back to 1970. The next closest dry year was 1898, so the idea that this is “uncharted territory” for California is an accurate statement.
Here is the PR from the Governor’s office yesterday:
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SAN FRANCISCO – With California facing water shortfalls in the driest year in recorded state history, Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today proclaimed a State of Emergency and directed state officials to take all necessary actions to prepare for these drought conditions.
“We can’t make it rain, but we can be much better prepared for the terrible consequences that California’s drought now threatens, including dramatically less water for our farms and communities and increased fires in both urban and rural areas,” said Governor Brown. “I’ve declared this emergency and I’m calling all Californians to conserve water in every way possible.”
In the State of Emergency declaration, Governor Brown directed state officials to assist farmers and communities that are economically impacted by dry conditions and to ensure the state can respond if Californians face drinking water shortages. The Governor also directed state agencies to use less water and hire more firefighters and initiated a greatly expanded water conservation public awareness campaign (details at saveourh2o.org).
In addition, the proclamation gives state water officials more flexibility to manage supply throughout California under drought conditions.
State water officials say that California’s river and reservoirs are below their record lows. Manual and electronic readings record the snowpack’s statewide water content at about 20 percent of normal average for this time of year.
The Governor’s drought State of Emergency follows a series of actions the administration has taken to ensure that California is prepared for record dry conditions. In May 2013, Governor Brown issued an Executive Order to direct state water officials to expedite the review and processing of voluntary transfers of water and water rights. In December, the Governor formed a Drought Task Force to review expected water allocations, California’s preparedness for water scarcity and whether conditions merit a drought declaration. Earlier this week, the Governor toured the Central Valley and spoke with growers and others impacted by California’s record dry conditions.
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And what is on the horizon? Hopefully an El Niño, which will also get blamed on/connected to “global warming”. if the Nino 3.4 model ensemble is to be believed, then California will likely see a strong precipitation rebound in 2014/2015.
From the WUWT ENSO Reference Page:
![nino34Mon[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/nino34mon1.gif)
UPDATE: This stament from NOAA is relevant. (h/t to Roger Pielke Sr.)
DROUGHT INFORMATION STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SAN DIEGO CA
800 PM PDT FRI JAN 17 2014
...GOVERNOR JERRY BROWN DECLARES A DROUGHT STATE OF EMERGENCY FOR
CALIFORNIA ON JANUARY 17TH 2014...
...THE USDA HAS DECLARED A DROUGHT DESIGNATION FOR SAN BERNARDINO
COUNTY FOR 2014 FOR ELIGIBLE AGRICULTURAL PRODUCERS...
...EXTREME DROUGHT CONDITIONS DEVELOPING OVER PORTIONS OF
SOUTHWESTERN CALIFORNIA...
SYNOPSIS...
PORTIONS OF SOUTHWESTERN CALIFORNIA HAVE EXPERIENCED TWO BELOW
AVERAGE RAINFALL SEASONS RESULTING IN A REDUCTION IN RESERVOIR AND
GROUNDWATER LEVELS IN SOME AREAS. THE MUCH DRIER THAN USUAL
VEGETATION FOR MID-WINTER HAS CONTRIBUTED TO A HEIGHTENED WILDFIRE
CONCERN. THESE CONDITIONS WERE ELEVATED TO AN EXTREME DROUGHT
DEPICTION (D3) ON THE U.S. DROUGHT MONITOR MAPS WITHIN ORANGE COUNTY
IN MID JANUARY 2014. THE U.S. DROUGHT MONITOR CLASSIFIES DROUGHT
INTO FIVE CATEGORIES OF INCREASING SEVERITY: ABNORMALLY DRY
(D0)...MODERATE DROUGHT (D1)...SEVERE DROUGHT (D2)...EXTREME DROUGHT
(D3)...AND EXCEPTIONAL DROUGHT (D4).
PLEASE NOTE THAT NEITHER NOAA NOR THE NWS DECLARES DROUGHTS.
DROUGHTS IN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA ARE DECLARED BY THE GOVERNOR
THROUGH THE RECOMMENDATION OF THE CALIFORNIA STATE DEPARTMENT OF
WATER RESOURCES AND THE STATE CLIMATOLOGIST. HOWEVER...LOCAL
OFFICIALS CAN DECLARE LOCAL DROUGHT OR WATER EMERGENCIES AT TIMES
WHEN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA HAS NOT DECLARED AN OFFICIAL DROUGHT.
LOCAL WATER PURVEYORS CAN ALSO IMPLEMENT VOLUNTARY OR MANDATORY
RESTRICTIONS ON WATER USAGE IN RESPONSE TO CURRENT OR FORECAST WATER
SUPPLY CONDITIONS REGARDLESS OF DROUGHT DECLARATIONS. THIS DROUGHT
STATEMENT PROVIDES A SUMMARY OF PERTINENT INFORMATION TO ENHANCE
PUBLIC AWARENESS OF DROUGHT OR ABNORMALLY DRY CONDITIONS.
SUMMARY OF IMPACTS...
AT THIS TIME...IMPACTS HAVE BEEN LIMITED IN EXTREME SOUTHWESTERN
PORTIONS OF THE STATE DUE TO THE AVAILABILITY OF IMPORTED WATER.
HOWEVER...THE LACK OF PRECIPITATION HAS ALLOWED VEGETATION TO DRY TO
CRITICAL LEVELS IN MANY AREAS...INCREASING THE POTENTIAL FOR
WILDFIRES. THE WARM AND DRY WEATHER HAS ALSO REDUCED THE
AVAILABILITY OF RANGE LAND GRASSES FOR LIVESTOCK. WHERE LOCAL WELLS
ARE FED BY RAINFALL AND LOCAL RUNOFF...SOME SHALLOW WELLS MAY BE
GOING DRY OR HAVE ALREADY DRIED UP. IN ADDITION...THE LACK OF
RAINFALL AND RUNOFF THIS WINTER HAS LOWERED THE FLOW IN THE SAN
DIEGO RIVER...RESULTING IN STRESSES ON THE VEGETATION AND
WILDLIFE.
CLIMATE SUMMARY...
ORANGE COUNTY HAS BEEN ONE OF THE DRIEST AREAS IN OUR REGION OVER
THE PAST FEW YEARS. WESTERN REGION CLIMATE CENTER RECORDS FROM THE
SANTA ANA FIRE STATION INDICATE 2013 WAS THE THIRD DRIEST...AND THE
THREE YEAR PERIOD ENDING DECEMBER 2013 WAS THE FIFTH DRIEST. RAINS
HAVE BEEN MORE GENEROUS FARTHER SOUTH IN SAN DIEGO COUNTY WHERE
LINDBERGH FIELD LOGS BOTH 2013 AND THE THREE YEAR PERIOD 2010-2013
AS ONLY THE 20TH DRIEST ON RECORD.
A WELL-DEVELOPED MONSOON IN LATE SUMMER HELPED TO RAISE SEASONAL
RAINFALL IN THE MOUNTAINS AND DESERTS.
PRECIPITATION SUMMARY FOR SELECTED CITIES...
DECEMBER 2013 SINCE JULY 1 2013
REPORTED % OF NORMAL REPORTED % OF NORMAL
NEWPORT BEACH 0.31 17% 0.69 20%
TUSTIN 0.98 41% 1.91 41%
IDYLLWILD 1.47 40% 7.77 80%
RIVERSIDE 0.16 10% 1.15 36%
PALM SPRINGS TRACE 0% 1.26 45%
BIG BEAR LAKE 1.02 33% 5.50 70%
REDLANDS 0.16 10% 2.54 61%
EL MIRAGE 0.03 4% 2.14 101%
BORREGO SPRINGS 0.00 0% 4.35 168%
CAMPO 0.78 34% 5.57 100%
LAKE CUYAMACA 1.71 35% 11.88 99%
LINDBERGH FIELD 0.46 30% 2.24 68%
PRECIPITATION/TEMPERATURE OUTLOOK...
LITTLE IF ANY PRECIPITATION IS FORECAST FOR THE REMAINDER OF JANUARY
WITH THE LATEST AVAILABLE GLOBAL MODELS HOLDING A STRONG RIDGE OF
HIGH PRESSURE OVER THE WEST COAST.
THE CLIMATE PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOK FOR FEBRUARY IS INDICATING A
BETTER THAN 70% CHANCE OF CONTINUED DRIER AND WARMER THAN AVERAGE
WEATHER.
HYDROLOGIC SUMMARY AND OUTLOOK...
WITH NO WIDESPREAD PRECIPITATION IN THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE...NO
SIGNIFICANT INCREASES CAN BE EXPECTED IN AREA RIVERS AND RESERVOIRS.
THE LATEST U.S. SEASONAL DROUGHT OUTLOOK CALLS FOR DROUGHT
CONDITIONS TO PERSIST OR INTENSIFY THROUGH MARCH 2014.
NEXT SCHEDULED ISSUANCE DATE...
THE NEXT SCHEDULED DROUGHT INFORMATION STATEMENT WILL BE ISSUED BY
FEBRUARY 17TH...OR SOONER IF NECESSARY...IN RESPONSE TO SIGNIFICANT
CHANGES IN CONDITIONS.
&&
RELATED WEBSITES...
GOVERNORS EMERGENCY PROCLAMATION: WWW.GOV.CA.GOV/NEWS.PHP?ID18368.
CALIFORNIA DATA EXCHANGE CENTER: CDEC.WATER.CA.GOV/
CALIFORNIA NEVADA RIVER FORECAST CENTER: WWW.CNRFC.NOAA.GOV/
DROUGHT MONITOR: DROUGHTMONITOR.UNL.EDU
U.S. DROUGHT PORTAL: HTTP://WWW.DROUGHT.GOV/DROUGHT/
CALIFORNIA DROUGHT PAGE: WATERSUPPLYCONDITIONS.WATER.CA.GOV/
CLIMATE PREDICTION CENTER: WWW.CPC.NCEP.NOAA.GOV
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SAN DIEGO: WWW.WRH.NOAA.GOV/SGX/
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...
CLIMATE PREDICTION CENTER
DROUGHT MONITOR
NATIONAL INTEGRATED DROUGHT INFORMATION SYSTEM
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LOS ANGELES/OXNARD
CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF WATER RESOURCES
CALIFORNIA STATE CLIMATOLOGIST
US ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS SOUTHERN DISTRICT
QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS...PLEASE REFER ALL QUESTIONS TO
W-SGX.WEBMASTER@NOAA.GOV.
&&
JAD
END
Drought in the western US is a consequence of cool water – La Nina conditions.
‘Global warming’ models predict that La Nina conditions should dramatically decrease, replaced by more frequent and more intense warm water – El Nino conditions.
More drought in California is evidence against ‘global warming’.
——————
Because they are both trying to plait sawdust
Jeff Sim says:
In Australia we have many mothballed desalination plants we can sell to California and maybe recoup some of the billions we spent by our leaders who foolishly listened to the Greens whose mantra was “It will never rain again in Australia.”
Sounds to me as you got your self thoroughly harropified, my good man.
starzmom says:
January 18, 2014 at 2:39 pm
I am reminded of John Christy’s comment of several years ago, when he discussed decade long droughts a millennium ago…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes the collapse of the Anasazi culture probably due to too many people and the droughts from 1080 to 1095 and the great drought” from 1276 to 1299. Some have added to that not enough meat, severe anemia and possible cannibalism.
http://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/anasazi-america-part-2/
http://www.canyonsworldwide.com/chacocanyon/p25.htm
We should also not forget the Dust Bowl of the 1930s
http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_02.html
http://www.weru.ksu.edu/new_weru/multimedia/dustbowl/dustbowlpics.html
These are not the only times of “dust”/ drought.
Sun/dust correlations and volcanic interference 2002
http://www.nsm.buffalo.edu/Phy/Labs/Ram/2002GL014858.pdf
My area of Northern Illinois (Rockford) has been getting a lot of snow lately. It shows yellow on the map. That may no longer be true. I’ll have to look it up.
I just looked it up: http://www.plantmaps.com/interactive-illinois-drought-conditions-map.php
Conditions are normal as of 13 Dec 2013
Well I suppose the best thing to do would be to take half of what you have left and start injecting it into the ground for hydraulic fracking.
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
We’re in the worst drought since 1898, at least, but it has to do with the Pacific Ocean, not the demon Global Warming. Read the whole thing. There are some impressive pictures there, too.
Peter Miller says: @ur momisugly January 18, 2014 at 3:12 pm
… However, don’t bet on any new dams being built, the ecoloons will make sure of that.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
A couple of years of drought and maybe they will wake up… But I doubt it.
Jeff Sim,
May be you could bundle the offer of the unused desalination plants and Tim Flannery with a big discount.
Down under, the “hottest evva” years have been AFTER the carbon tax was bought in.
California is by far the most gung-ho state in the US about implementing climate junk, and is by far the most affected by this drought.
Could it be that someone is trying t tell them something ? 🙂
Jerry Brown was elected Governor of Callifornia for the first time in 1976, and there was a drought in the state. He’s elected again and there’s another drought. Coincidence?
The new catch phrase for this drought is: ‘If it’s yellow it’s mellow, if it JERRY brown flush it down’
So you folks in Oregon and to the east of California flush more we really need the water!
I look forward to the water Nazis, last year the water Nazis knocked on my door. Saying your water usage has gone up… WHY! Then I showed them my vegetable garden… OH… that explains a lot.
I’m going to drill a well, at least I can water my veggies this coming year.
Overheard on OZ TV:-
Hot? Jeez, chickens are laying omelets!
From Cliff Mass’ discussion of the California water situation …
January 18, 2014 at 2:28 pm | Gail Combs says:
“Maybe Californian can buy some slightly used desalinization plants from Australia CHEAP?”
——–
They’d better hurry as the hulks here are rapidly rusting away.
The drought in California driven primarily by politics. Mother nature only exacerbates it. If you’re in California, particularly the urban areas, look around and you will see that there has been no effort to control housing production.
There’s been a huge growth since 1990 of high and medium density multi-unit housing, single family homes and multi-unit housing being built in what was once foothills, and agricultural land. California’s Department of Finance has been encouraging growth with population projections that cite a doubling of the population by 2040 from 30 million to 60 million.
California Department of Housing in turn takes these figures and develops a Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) that it passes down to each and every city in that state. RHNA essentially tells how much new housing each city must find for a given period.
A couple of examples in the 2007 plan are Los Angeles and San Francisco. Los Angeles allocation was to build 112,876 units between the planning period of 2006 and 2014. San Francisco Bay Area allocation was 214,500. Many large cities in fact that have little developable land are forced to build vertically.
Water resources is NOT part of the calculus when California’s RHNA allocations are developed.
January 18, 2014 at 3:51 pm | Mike D. says:
“Jerry Brown was elected Governor of Callifornia for the first time in 1976, and there was a drought in the state. He’s elected again and there’s another drought. Coincidence?”
———-
GAIA is punishing them for electing him … they’ve already long run out of virgins to sacrifice.
There was news of a major breakthrough in desalination on WUWT about a year ago. I also blogged about it. Still something to think about. Read it here …
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/17/energy-resources-money-and-technology/
Would I be right in saying there has been a water pipeline from Canada to California for many years now?
My point is that water shortage in California isn’t a new phenomenon.
Because California’s housing and water policies are not intrinsically linked, the state is not able to bank water. Despite Gov. Brown’s recent declaration of a drought, Los Angeles declared a drought in 2008 and has been under an emergency order ever since.
That NOAA CFSv2 ensemble graph has been predicting strong El Nino for about the past year. It is about as accurate as reading sheep guts. It has had no forecasting skill for quite some time. It has also been my experience in researching these things that extreme drought is often broken by extreme flood and vice versa. The 1898 drought came after the severe flooding of the winter of 1861-1862 which saw 45 straight days of rain in the central valley and flooded Sacramento. The floods of 1907 and 1909 were really bad. In 1909 the Feather River basin had nearly 60 inches of rain in less than a month. BUT — it could be worse. California has seen periods of longer than a century of drought. There have been periods during the Holocene where Lake Tahoe was below its outlet for over 800 years. In the past 1000 years there have been two periods of a century or more of drought, one of them lasting over 200 years.
Bottom line: We could be in store for ANYTHING here. We could have extreme flooding in 10 years time or we could still be in severe drought like nothing we have ever seen since settlement. In the middle 13th century, Fallen Leaf Lake just south of Lake Tahoe was dry in places where there is now 150 feet of water. That isn’t all that long ago in geological time and if it has been that recent and if there has been more than one such event in the past 1000 years, then it is probably a common occurrence.
I will say this, though. I would rather see us spend money on water projects than a stupid train that nobody wants. This is going to take some of the wind out of the sails of people who want to empty Hetch Hetchy, too.
I was going to suggest that CA build more dams, but according to this map they have hundreds of them. Maybe during the rainy and melt seasons they could store more water for these drought events:
http://www.kqed.org/news/science/climatewatch/waterandpower/map.jsp
>>Would I be right in saying there has been a water pipeline from Canada to California for many years now?
Not quite. Northern California has historically been self sufficient and in fact exports a lot of its water to Southern California. Northern California is beginning to feel the squeeze these days because there is no link between growth and water supply.
Southern California has no ‘real’ local resources and has to import all of it’s water from Northern California (via State Water Project) and Colorado River Aqueduct. What groundwater they have is just storage that has to be recharged using imported water. The City of Los Angeles also imports water from the Eastern Sierras through its city owned Los Angeles aqueduct.
Oregon has refused to send water to California for years. There has been on and off talk of that in the past but Oregon always refuses to consider doing it.
‘I was going to suggest that CA build more dams,”
Lately there has been talk of tearing more dams DOWN, that’s what happens when you go a long time between droughts or floods. If it has been longer than 30 years since the last severe event, nobody under 30 has ever experienced it but gets to vote. Latest fad is calling for the emptying of Hetch Hetchy reservoir. That would be the stupidest move ever if that actually got done.