The first nine months of the 2022 water year are now in the books, and California remains mired in extreme drought conditions. More than 97% of the state’s land area is in at least “severe” drought status, 60% in at least “extreme” drought and the driest 12% in “exceptional” drought, according to a weekly update Thursday from the U.S. Drought Monitor. Extreme drought encompasses the entire Central Valley, with exceptional drought covering wide swaths of the San Joaquin Valley, according to the federal monitor. While the latest numbers are slightly better than at the outset of this water year, which started Oct. 1, there had been early optimism that record-setting weather late last calendar year would help avert a third straight year of drought.
A series of October storms including a monstrous “bomb cyclone” system brought the rainiest day ever recorded in Sacramento, and winter storms led the central Sierra Nevada range to smash an all-time record for December snowfall. More than six months later, those storms have continued to buoy California’s precipitation totals for the current water year deceptively close to average. Abysmal rain and snow totals from January through March, combined with late-spring and early-summer spurts of extreme heat, have evaporated much of the drought relief from last fall and winter.
In Los Angeles, Nearly 4 million Angelenos will be reduced to two-day-a-week watering restrictions on June 1 under drought rules released by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
The highly anticipated announcement came two weeks after the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California called for the strictest-ever water cuts in the region due to worsening drought conditions and reduced supplies from the California State Water Project. The MWD action left many to wonder just how the rules would be applied in L.A.
Write a Reply or Comment
You should Sign In or Sign Up account to post comment.