Environment
California is soaking wet. But drought looms if we don’t get more rain — a lot more
Six years ago, in the middle of a crippling drought, Californians were ordered to let their lawns turn yellow.
They put buckets in their showers to conserve. Scofflaws had to attend “drought school.” Meanwhile, farmers throughout the Central Valley had to idle many of their fields.
This week’s deluge left many Californians shoveling snow and splashing through puddles as an “atmospheric river” swept the state. More precipitation is in the forecast for next week. But experts worry that without repeated downpours over the next two months, the painful memories of the last drought could become reality again.
Last year was one of the driest rainy seasons on record, and prior to this week’s storm, the state was on pace for precipitation totals below the winter of 1976-77, the second-worst drought in California’s modern history.
This week’s wet weather certainly helped the state’s water picture, but California remains well below average in total precipitation and storage in critically important reservoirs across the state.
“We always welcome a good storm like this, but one week doesn’t make a winter, and one week doesn’t change a dry situation,” said David Rizzardo, chief of the hydrology branch at the state’s Department of Water Resources.
So far this season, the state has received only a few small or moderate “atmospheric river” storms like the one this week.
Atmospheric rivers form when high-powered winds drag a fire hose of tropical moisture across the surface of the Pacific Ocean, producing 500-mile wide conveyor belts of water that can last for days. The largest storms can produce as much rain as a major hurricane; in a typical year, they provide nearly half of the state’s annual precipitation.
They can cause major floods, and, in 2017, contributed to the emergency at Oroville Dam that prompted the evacuation of 188,000 residents.
But the state needs a series of them, desperately, to nourish the vast system of dams and canals that provide drinking water for millions and irrigation water for America’s most productive farm belt.
“The difference between a wet year and a dry here is about four to six atmospheric river storms,” said Jay Lund, the co-director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis.
And so far this year, the atmospheric rivers have been mostly a trickle. As of early Thursday, following the first full day of the latest storm, the season’s rainfall was still about half what it should be for this time of year.
The U.S. Drought Monitor already lists 75 percent of the state in a severe drought, with 100 percent of the entire state “abnormally dry.”
Water levels were 31% below normal in the state’s largest reservoir, Shasta Lake. Millerton Lake, a major reservoir that captures water from the Central and Southern Sierra, is less than a third full.
The Sierra snowpack — runoff from which is critical to filling reservoirs in the summer and fall — was at 58% of normal for the date.
Still, many water managers are wary of sounding another drought alarm. There are still two more months of potential rain and snow to come before the wet season unofficially ends, and water officials don’t want to cause a panic unless they absolutely have to.
“With the worldwide health crisis, people already are crisis-weary with COVID-19 and related housing and job disparities. And the last thing you want to do is really pile it on,” said Amy Talbot, water efficiency program manager for the Regional Water Authority, which represents more than two dozen Sacramento area water districts.
That said, the region’s water districts are ready to tell customers to cut back on lawn watering again if the state remains as dry as it has been and Gov. Gavin Newsom declares a drought emergency, Talbot said.
In the last drought, the Sacramento region cut water use by nearly 30 percent, mostly by reducing lawn watering.
SIERRA SNOWPACK
Map: NATHANIEL LEVINE | Source: California Department of Water Resources
Why rural California fears drought the most
Joe Del Bosque, a prominent farmer on the parched west side of the San Joaquin Valley, got some grim news last week from his main water supplier, the San Luis Water District.
“They said we’re facing another 2014, 2015, when we had zero water supply,” said Del Bosque, who relies on the federal government’s Central Valley Project to deliver the water he needs to grow almonds, cantaloupes and other crops on about 2,000 acres.
This week’s storm left Del Bosque feeling better about 2021 — but just barely.
“While everybody down here is very grateful to have this rain … I’m not sure it’s going to take us out of the drought,” he said.
“This water is going to tide us over until March, when we plant,” he said. But to keep those crops going through the rest of the season, “we’ll certainly need more.”
Fears of another big drought intensify the further one gets from California’s population centers. While urban Californians endured the last drought by watching their lawns go brown, their rural counterparts measured the impact in lost dollars and jobs.
UC Davis researchers found that hundreds of thousands of acres of land went fallow during the drought, erasing billions in farm income. Farmworkers saw their livelihoods suffer.
Farmers who get water from the Central Valley Project or its state counterpart, the State Water Project, are nervous about having those supplies dwindle as they did during the drought.
Del Bosque, for instance, wound up buying water on the open market from other farmers to keep his crops alive. The water cost him four times what he’d normally pay the federal government – prices that aren’t sustainable over the long haul.
“That takes a lot of crops off the table,” he said.
The drought that never truly ended
Former Gov. Jerry Brown declared the epic five-year drought officially over in spring 2017, following a ferocious winter, but the effects are still being felt.
The lingering impact reaches practically every aspect of California life. For instance, the death of millions of trees contributed to the massive wildfires that torched the state over the past few years.
The drought also left water supplies in much of the San Joaquin Valley in desperate shape, even after it officially ended.
During the drought, Valley farmers pumped the equivalent of seven Shasta Lakes worth of groundwater to irrigate their crops, worsening a crisis that was decades in the making. Community wells went dry, forcing some poor towns to import bottled water, and areas of the Valley floor crumbled because of the excessive pumping.
To remedy that, Brown signed a law to restrict groundwater pumping. The law requires newly-formed regional groundwater agencies to restore supplies to 2015 levels by 2040.
It’s a stunningly difficult task. Much of the Valley’s aquifers are considered “critically overdrafted,” according to state officials. The Public Policy Institute of California has predicted that at least 535,000 acres of agricultural land in the Valley will have to be permanently idled to comply with the reduction in pumping. That’s about 10% of the Valley’s farmland and could economically devastate one of the most impoverished regions of the state.
But instead of throttling back, farmers are under pressure to pump even harder in light of back-to-back dry winters.
The latest rains staved off “what likely would have been one of the top five driest years ever recorded, said Jason Phillips, chief executive of the Friant Water Authority. However, “we’re nowhere near out of the woods relative to getting to normal,” he said.
Unless conditions improve markedly, “there will be a lot of groundwater pumping to support the Valley’s cities and farms,” he said.
The Friant water district stretches from Fresno to Bakersfield.
Lund, the UC Davis scientist, said meeting the 2040 deadline was already proving difficult. He believes some of the groundwater agencies set up to regulate pumping have been relying on overly optimistic forecasts to avoid forcing their member farmers from having to fallow huge amounts of land and lay waste to their local economy.
“It was already going to be hard for them to make it, even if we had wet years, every year, until 2040,” Lund said. “A drought’s not going to help them at all.”
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