(With expanded coverage of all the Western States)
by Patrick Ruckert
www.californiadroughtupdate.org/20230105-California-Water-and-Infrastructure-Report.pdf
A Note to Readers
Almost all the media coverage this week is about rain, snow, atmospheric rivers, bomb cyclones, floods, snowpacks, and what affect will all this have on the drought.
Some of the stories highlight record rain levels for some parts of California, and the more far-out stories claim that all this is caused by global warming and is unprecedented.
First, let us dispatch that last claim. The book review I wrote back in 2014 on “The West Without Water: What Past Floods, Droughts, and Other Climatic Clues Tell Us About Tomorrow,” in summary, demonstrates that the past 2,000 years of climatic history for California has been one of alternating megadroughts and megafloods.
The first item below this introduction provides more, including a link to my review of the book.
The second item that underlines the reality that our present climate and weather are really just “more of the same,” are the storms and the resulting floods that engulfed the entire west coast in the winter of 1861-1862. Forty-seven days of nearly continuous atmospheric rivers, created, among other floods, a lake ten feet deep, 300 miles long and 20 miles wide in the Central Valley.
The report on that catastrophe is item number two this week.
Next is the U.S. Drought Monitor map for California this week, showing that the past three weeks of storms have had a moderate impact in lessening the severity of the drought. Next week’s map, I am sure will continue that trend.
Two more sections round out this week’s report. First, I just include some of the more interesting , and for some readers, I think, a little education on storms, atmospheric rivers, bomb cyclones and more.
Next are a few articles on the Colorado River Basin, which is getting some impact from the atmospheric rivers California is experiencing. In addition, like California, the snowpack there is above average for the present date.
Some of the flooding is very serious and already at least two people have died. California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a statewide emergency declaration earlier Wednesday, clearing the way to quickly disseminate aid for those affected by the winter storms wreaking havoc on the drought-plagued state, said Nancy Ward, state director of emergency services, during a news conference.
Most of the articles include the cautionary note that even a series of storms do not mean the end of the drought. California and the Colorado River Basin require not just some storms in the first couple weeks of winter, but an almost unending series of storms for, not just this year, but for several years. To fill up Lake Mead, for example, will require about 35 million acre feet. That is a lot of water.
In addition, the soil throughout the region is extremely dry, and the Spring run-off from the snowpacks will be reduced because the soil will absorb much of the water, and the streams and rivers will not be as robust as they were before the droughts.
One more thing, the drought has forced farmers to pump more water from the aquifers, lowering them to levels that dry up shallower wells. 1,400 wells in California alone went dry last year.
Ending the drought in California and the megadrought in the Colorado River Basin is a more complex question than getting a lot of precipitation in the first couple weeks of this winter.
