I drove across the causeway the other day, and was struck by the parched brownness of the rice stubble below, still unplanted, compared to last year's shimmering floodwaters filling the Yolo Bypass up to the top of the levees. What a difference a year makes, in this chronically unstable climate of ours.
According to a report in the SF Chronicle, we're headed for a record dry winter, with Sacramento only at 44% of normal and SF at the fifth-dryest since 1850 (the San Joaquin Valley is even worse off, at around 1/3 normal rainfall). The dry air was part of what made the frost so bad in the Central Valley, since the damp air of the usual tule fog tends to insulate trees a bit. Hopefully the late rains won't knock off the almond and apricot blossoms again, and I really hope (knockonwood) that we don't get a pineapple express dumping warm rain on the meagre snowpack, putting us more in the hole than we already are.
The dry spell should certainly add a bit of intensity to the current debate in Sacramento over whether to build more reservoirs (Republicans) or enact more conservation measures (Democrats). We've gone a while since we had a big drought, and a lot of those houses up in the foothills haven't seen how well the aquifers hold up in one like we had in 76-77, or the 7-year drought from 86-93. My guess is that we'll probably need a bit of both in the end, but conservation tends to be far more cost-effective a method, water-acre by water-acre, and ought to be tried first, if just to see how much slack we actually need.
One of the maddening things about drought is that you never really know when it begins, and you can't really say you're in one until things really get bad. Especially here in California, where a couple of big, cold storms can restore the snowpack in a week, you end up mumbling to yourself about "if it keeps up like this, this could be a drought," but you don't really know for sure. After 1986's torrential rains, they opened the floodgates to keep some capacity in the dams for future storms, and then it just didn't rain much for seven years. All you can do is sit and wait, and hope that the rain will come in time.
At least they've had plenty of time to keep fixing those levees. If we do get a March miracle or 1986-esque soakers in late spring, we're going to need them to be solid.
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UPDATE - Yolo Cowboy has a related post up about how this dry weather is affecting Central Valley ranchers.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
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NOAA had released its winter 2007 predictions at the beginning of this month. Seattle was buried under snow and ice and when the forecast called for a sunny, dry, and warm February and March I was, to say the least, skeptical.
Yet here we are - been nice and sunny and clear, if not terribly warm, for at least a week, and no rain in sight. We got all we needed in November and December, but this does not bode well.
Last summer a number of communities out on the Olympic Peninsula and Vancouver Island ran dry. They had to truck water in to make it through to the autumn rains.
I saw the same SF Chronicle article you mention here, read it on the flight back up yesterday. And all I could think about was the Monterey Peninsula, with its stretched-to-the-limit water supplies.
That article also quoted a CA water official as nothing that water demand in the state has soared since 1977, when rationing was enacted and Marin had to run a hose across the Richmond Bridge to tap EBMUD's reservoirs.
yeah, dryest el nino i've ever seen.
part of the problem is that the decade-long wet cycle we've had has lulled people into complacency, assuming it's a climactic norm instead of just another one of california's erratic swings. i remember the spraypainted lawns of the early 90s, and was lucky enough to have formed my water habits then, but i suspect that many people have gotten a bit lazy with water conservation.
i'm confused about the question of CA's net water usage since 1977, though. in the video linked in this diary from a couple of weeks ago, UCD history prof. louis warren claims that we're actually using about the same amount of water since then, with a whole lot more people and economic activity, but the article says differently.
what scares the heck out of me is the paleoclimatological research that says that CA has had century-long droughts in the past. combined with global warming, another one of those things could finish the state, no matter what we did.
tell you what, though. if we end up in a drought this summer, on top of the hottest summer on record as they're predicting, things are going to suck. hard. and probably burn as well.
Yikes. The thought of a hot and dry summer does not at all bode well for me - I'll be moving to a parched Monterey Peninsula right at that time. Heh, I might just turn around and come back here!
Have you ever read Mike Davis' 1998 book Ecology of Fear? If not, you ought to - he describes in some detail those elements of the paleoclimatology. From page 21:
"California had endured two epic droughts during the Middle Ages, one of about 220 years (from approximately 890 to 1100) and the other of about 140 years (from approximately 1210 to 1350)...Stine [the CSU East Bay researcher who discovered these droughts] estimates that snow-fed runoff from the Sierra plummeted to less than 25 percent of the modern average during the most arid phases of the long droughts. (By contrast, during the 1986-93 drought, runoff averaged 65 percent of the mean.)"
Eek.
I don't know what to make of Prof. Warren's claims. I'm skeptical, but it is possible, I guess, that subdivisions use less water than the farmland that they replaced. But I'm not willing to bet my summer on that.
my dad's explanation was that california has lost a lot of its heavy industry, which was water-intensive, and that we've just gotten a bit smarter about conservation since then (low-flush toilets/showerheads and the like).
140 years of 25% rainfall would be unpleasant, to say the least.
when i was in taiwan, we had a pretty bad drought one summer where they rotated water going on and off between city blocks. you saved up what water you could in buckets and tubs, and sponge bathed until thew drought broke a few months later.
not the end of the world, although a bit unpleasant in a subtropical summer, but we got by just fine. it would be hell on agriculture and ranching, though, and that's big money in this state, even if the silicon valley stuff is sexier.
"we will get by, we will survive."
By comparison, here on the North China Plain, we've had 1 day of snow this month. That's it and the water in my shower is starting to come out a little...rust-colored, shall we say.
Ah well, relief will come with the annual April sandstorms...
no joke, california's water problems pale in comparison with the north china plain's urban and industrial cores.
in one sense, i almost regret never havign seen a real sandstorm, but then i remember how lovely the sand felt when i breathed it in riding my bike to qinghua on one of those mild dusty days of march.
make sure to post the pictures if you get one of those apocalyptic sandstorms, ok?
Looks like you all aren't going to have to wait long:
Series of storms to hit NorCal
We're gonna get these too here in the NW. But we've had more than enough rain this season.
about time. here's hoping we thread the needle between the february of floods in 1986 and a sustained drought like 1976. (knock on wood)
at any rate, it is most definitely welcome rain.
Don't forget the 7 year CA drought began the summer after the Feb '86 flooding. In 3 generations of family memory (back to 1900) prior to '86, the drought cycles ran 2 years max followed by several years of fair-moderate-heavy rainfall. I remember comments on tree ring studies that the 2-year drought was the long established norm.... except for those pesky 100+ year droughts in the middle ages couple w/the 100-year floods that scoured Putah Creek up towards Berryessa (?).
My guess is that we (as a world) are in for more erratic, extreme weather as we progress further into the transition between climatic epocs.
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