Stop asking when California’s drought will be over. Dry winters are the new normal
A month ago, when California received a record-breaking bounty of December rain and snow, headlines up and down the state asked different versions of the same hopeful question:
Is the drought finally over?
Now that we’ve reached the end of the driest recorded January in Fresno history — barely a trace of rain — and no meaningful precipitation in the February forecast, time to throw that entire premise out the window.
Because obviously, the drought isn’t over. But more than that, it’s time to stop using that word to describe our current climate pattern. “Drought” implies a temporary situation. This is the way things are and will be. Bursts of precipitation followed by months of dry weather is the new normal. And the sooner we start accepting that reality, the better.
California began 2022 with a robust snowpack measured at 160 percent of average statewide. In the southern Sierra, which includes the San Joaquin River watershed and those south, the number was 170 percent.
Talk about a short-lived celebration. Following our parched January, the statewide average is down to 99 percent of normal (as of Friday) and shrinking by the day. And if we don’t get any snow between now and April 1, the official end of rainfall season, we’d be at 58 percent of normal for the year.
Oops, caught myself. Those figures represent the old normal. By that, I mean the normal containing the 20th century, an usually wet period of the state’s history during which our water storage and conveyance systems were built.
It all worked because winter storms produced an ample Sierra snowpack that reliably melted every spring and summer to fill reservoirs and deliver enough water to meet the ever-growing demand. Those days are over. Now and for the foreseeable future, our water will arrive haphazardly.
Leading climate scientists have a term for California’s new weather. They call it “climate whiplash” in reference to the rise of wild swings between extreme events.
How wild? Think intense drought interspersed with record downpours. Or destructive forest fires followed closely by equally destructive floods. Does any of that sound familiar?
Ask residents of Montecito, an unincorporated community outside Santa Barbara. In December 2017, a devastating wildfire swept through the area. Weeks later torrential rains pelted the same burned-out ground causing floods and debris slides that killed 23 people.
More dams not the solution
Rather than arriving in fairly even amounts during December, January and February, California’s rain and snow falls unpredictably. There are years like this one when we get pounded early and then the spigot suddenly gets shut off. There are years like 2021, when we get hardly any precipitation at all. And there are years like 2018, when months of dry weather were halted by freaky March snowstorms.
As part of the new, warmer normal, water that used to remain stored in the mountains as snow now melts sooner and more quickly, or falls as rain instead, and starts to fill our reservoirs months before the demand hits. Studies show these extreme, often untimely wet events have been increasing in magnitude for the last 50 years.
For some, the simple answer would be to build more dams. But no matter how many dams we build, it would still never be enough to capture what the Sierra stored on its own. Besides, dams are an expensive and inefficient means of water storage — another remnant of a 20th century mindset that also needs updating.
Judging by signs I see along Highways 99 and 152, many central San Joaquin Valley farmers (as well as local politicians who occupy places in their pockets) would strongly disagree. Oh well. Best of luck convincing the rest of the state to fund half-baked projects like Temperance Flat Dam that would hardly contain any water in all but the wettest of years.
Because California has endured previous droughts, the belief that we’ll endure this one too is an easy trap to fall into. Unfortunately that way of thinking won’t get us anywhere but deeper into the hole.
Residential water restrictions such as hosing down sidewalks and driveways, washing cars without a shutoff nozzle and irrigating lawns and gardens after rain must be permanent measures rather than temporary. More cities must purify the water they use, then reuse it. And, yes, some agricultural acreage must be fallowed — especially in places that are unsustainable without draining every last drop of groundwater.
But most of all, it’s our collective mindset that needs altering. California is not experiencing a temporary period of below-average rainfall aka a drought. This is the way things are.
