If you're STILL quoting numbers for 2014 and the snowpack from April 1st 2015 --- you have serveral issues Tink..
Oops, you spotted my mistake. I copied the wrong paragraph from the USGS California Drought Facts article I had cited and quoted in post #14 of this thread.
Here's the right one for 2016 from that article...
Although water year 2016's snowpack started off at 136 percent of normal as measured on December 30, 2015, as of March 1, 2016, the California Department of Water Resources(DWR) measured the statewide snowpack to be at 83 percent of normal for this date, the result of moderate precipitation and relatively warm temperatures.
Rainy seasons in California are 5 or 6 months long. They don't FIT the yearly calendar. If you get EVEN ONE normal or above normal precipt season --- You are NOT SHORT OF WATER. REGARDLESS what the longterm booked deficit is on paper or how it is accounted for on the calendar.
Silly moron! Trump said 'there is no drought', so now you have to believe that, no matter what? The state is short on water when there isn't enough snowpack water storage to adequately feed the streams and rivers in the late spring and summer, when it gets very hot and dry. That is not far from the current situation, with the snowpack, as of March 1st, at only 83% of normal for that date and the string of extraordinarily hot months continuing to melt the snow more rapidly. This year might not be too bad compared to the recent severe drought years, but one year's rainfall will not fix everything.....nor does it guarantee that there will be adequate rain and snow fall next year, or the year after, when we're back in the La Niña phase of the ENSO, instead of the current El Niño
And you're quite wrong in your claims. "
EVEN ONE normal or above normal precipt season" does not end a five year drought or mean that the state is "NOT SHORT OF WATER", you clueless twit. You are apparently too ignorant to recognize the significance of the deeper long-term impacts of the multi-year drought afflicting California, like heavily
depleted groundwater.
California Drought Status 2016: El Nino Won’t Stop Record Water Shortage, Experts Say
International Business Times
BY
JESS MCHUGH @MCHUGHJESS
04/10/16
A dying Joshua Tree is pictured in November 2015 in Joshua Tree National Park, California. Despite rain and snow from the El Nino weather phenomenon, record water shortages have continued throughout the state. PHOTO: AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The El Niño weather phenomenon, which has sent rain and snowstorms to California in 2015 and 2016, hasn't solved the state's record drought, experts said. While the water level in some reservoirs has increased in this period, many aquifers and rivers remain dry as California farmers and residents explore new ways to cope with the ongoing water shortage.
El Niño has been a "band-aid on a gaping wound", Julien Emile-Geay, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Southern California, told Agence-France Presse Sunday.
California has long suffered from intermittent water shortages, and a five-year recent rain shortage has put the state in a period of drought. El Niño is a weather phenomenon defined as a 1.5-degree Celsius temperature warming in the Pacific Ocean that causes massive rain showers across California, Mexico, central America and the Southern U.S. While the increased rain is a welcome change, California would have needed to see 2.5-3 times its average rainfall in order to begin ending the drought, according to Kevin Werner, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's expert on climate in the western United States.
Residential use will need to be curbed, and California residents will need to find more creative ways of capturing rainwater and recycling water in order to better use the amount available. Activists and lawmakers alike have advocated for desalination and other technologies to conserve water.
Around 40 percent of water consumption is used for agriculture in California, and environmentalists have criticized farmers for not putting in place more advanced irrigation systems. California farmers also continue to grow plants like alfalfa that require large amounts of water and are better suited to other climates, some say. A water subsidy for farmers has only exacerbated the problem, one former governor said.
“The subsidies are distorting water usage throughout the West and providing an incentive to use more water than would be used in an open market,” Bruce Babbitt, Arizona’s former governor and a former U.S. Secretary of the Interior told ProPublica in May 2015, adding, “Water is going to be the oil of the 21st century, and it should go to the best use. Right now, I don’t know if we’re doing that.”
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