Climate Hysteria Run Amok: California’s ‘Permanent’ Drought Not So Permanent

It’s official: California is 100% drought-free.

For the first time since 2011, the state shows no areas suffering from prolonged drought and illustrates almost entirely normal conditions, according to a map released Thursday by the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Former Gov. Jerry Brown issued an executive order in 2017 that lifted the drought emergency in most of the state, leaving some breathing a sigh of relief.

But he cautioned Californians to keep saving water as some parts of the state was still suffering from extreme drought. Now, two years later, that deficit seems to have been erased, thanks to an exceptionally wet winter.

“The reservoirs are full, lakes are full, the streams are flowing, there’s tons of snow,” said Jessica Blunden, a climate scientist with the National Climatic Data Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “All the drought is officially gone.”

The Drought Monitor, which collects data from scientists from the National Drought Mitigation Center, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and dozens of weather agencies, last showed a drought map that was clear in December 2011.

In updating the map, scientists consult with hydrologists, water managers, meteorologists, and other experts to determine the amount of water in the state’s reservoirs, the snowpack level, and other key measurements. With the wet winter streak going strong, their reports have been good.

In January, storms filled up many of the state’s water reserves almost to capacity and added about 580 billion gallons of water to reservoirs across the state. That month, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, a major source of California’s water supply, doubled — and then doubled again in February.

“California has been getting a tremendous amount of rain, storms, and snow,” Blunden said. “It’s just been extremely wet and it’s been so wet … that we’ve been able to alleviate drought across the state.”

A year ago, just 11% of the state was experiencing normal conditions while 88.9% of the state was “abnormally dry,” according to the drought report. Some parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties were still colored dark red, meaning they were experiencing “extreme drought.”

Read more at LA Times