New Perspectives on the Western Water Crisis By Benjamin Deniston · benjamin.deniston@gmail.com “Right now [california] has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing. California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought like this one (let alone…

California Drought Update by Patrick Ruckert March 26, 2015 patruckert@hotmail.com Myths, Frauds and Insanity To begin this week’s report I want to mention some of the myths, frauds and other insanities that characterize the discussion about the drought by some of the climate scientists, political leaders and media. 1) The…

California Drought Update March 19, 2015 by Patrick Ruckert California this past week has seen an explosion of warnings, calls for rationing, hand-wringing, hysteria, and just outright nonsense about the drought. On March 12, Jay Famiglietti, the senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech and a professor of…

California Drought Update March 12, 2015 by Patrick Ruckert With the end of winter just a week or so away, and with it the official end of the California rainy season, it is time to review and report on the drought. Let me begin with what I wrote in the…

California Drought Update February 16, 2015 by Patrick Ruckert Headlines around the world over the last week warn of the apocalypse. Well, maybe not quite that, but the headlines about the new NASA, Cornell and Columbia universities’ report might evoke that image. The study, released last week, claims that between…

California Drought Update February 5, 2015 by Patrick Ruckert “First-ever rainless January in S.F. History,” was the headline in the San Francisco Chronicle on January 31, after the more than normal rainfall that northern California received in December had raised hopes. Today an atmospheric river will make landfall in the…

California Drought Update By Patrick Ruckert December 29, 2014 A correction to last week’s report: Under “More discussion meant to provoke response,” I misidentified Mathew Ogden by calling him Alan Ogden. The end of December has state officials and the press commenting on the year without precipitation, until we got…

California Drought Update By Patrick Ruckert December 22, 2014 It rained some more The welcomed rain and snow that has arrived in California over the past few weeks has alleviated unfortunately not the drought, but the perceptions of most of the population that the worries about the drought are now…