drought

[pbrower2a]

Our esteemed climatologist (irony intended) and practically-certain Republican nominee for President Donald Trump has made public appearances in California's water-thirsty Central Valley and proclaimed that there is no drought of water so long as Californians are ready to practically drain the Sacramento Delta to give a respite to growers.


[quote-USA Today]

California suffered one of its driest years in 2015. And last year the state hit its driest four-year period on record.

But Donald Trump isn't sold. The presumptive GOP nominee told supporters in Fresno, Calif., on Friday night that no such dry spell exists.

Trump said state officials were simply denying water to Central Valley farmers to prioritize the Delta smelt, a native California fish nearing extinction — or as Trump called it, "a certain kind of three-inch fish.”

“We’re going to solve your water problem. You have a water problem that is so insane. It is so ridiculous where they’re taking the water and shoving it out to sea,” Trump told thousands of supporters at the campaign event.

A series of graphics from the Los Angeles Times shows the progression of the drought from 2011 through today, using data from the U.S. Drought Monitor, a federal website that tracks the dry conditions. The drought worsened in 2014 and 2015 and has marginally subsided this year.

The most recent Drought Monitor report says that over the past week parts of northeastern California and northern Nevada recorded improvements, and "overall conditions have continued to steadily improve during the past year."

Trump spoke in Fresno and San Diego ahead of California's June 7 primary. California is the country's top agriculture producer, and the drought raised tensions among farmers, government officials and environmentalists.

State officials imposed a water ban on June 1, 2015, after record low rain and snowfall. The scarcity was evident from the Sierra Nevada's shrunken snowpack to the dry wells of the Central Valley.

Trump's comments come weeks after Gov. Jerry Brown issued an executive order updating water restrictions. The water rules were imposed in hopes of building the state's "resilience" in the long-term water conservation measures through monthly water use reporting and bans on "clearly wasteful practices such as hosing off sidewalks, driveways and other hardscapes," according to a news release from the California Government Operations Agency's website.

Meanwhile, the powerful farm lobby is trying to secure federal and state approval for billions of dollars to create new water tunnels, dams and other projects.

At least we know where Trump stands on the issue: “If I win, believe me, we’re going to start opening up the water so that you can have your farmers survive."

[/quote]


http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/polit..._3JCT5NiOg

[pbrower2a]

Quote:There is no time to waste. The timetable for action is accelerating. The record lows are coming sooner in the season – July 9, 2014; June 23, 2015; May 18, 2016. All eyes are on the number 1,075. If Mead’s elevation in August is projected to be lower than 1,075 feet at the start of the following year, then a shortage would be declared. The Bureau of Reclamation estimates a 56 percent chance of a lower basin shortage by 2018. This means water cuts from the Colorado for Arizona and Nevada (and potentially for California, depending on how the ongoing negotiations shake out).
Despite the gloomy forecast, there are encouraging signs of camaraderie. A shortage would have come sooner if not for concerted conservation efforts in recent years. A $US 11 million program that was agreed to in 2014 is paying for conservation projects that bank the saved water in Mead. A similar program is taking place in the upper basin.
All told, a shortage will not decimate the basin. Its punch is more psychological at the moment than physical. But it is symbolic of the difficulty ahead if Lake Mead drops below 1,050 feet, or 1,025 feet, or even near the 950-foot level where hydropower generation would cease. The sternest tests for the Colorado River Basin — both political and hydrological — are still to come.

Lake Mead is the reservoir for a big piece of the American Southwest, including Las Vegas.

...Just imagine the magnificent ruins of desert cities in America. Las Vegas. Palm Springs. Phoenix. Maybe Los Angeles, San Diego, and even San Francisco, San Jose, and Monterrey. Any golfers out there? Just imagine Pebble Beach -- gone.

[pbrower2a]

[pbrower2a]

Just imagine -- parts of California were the promised land to Okies fleeing the Dust Bowl conditions of the early 1930s, as we can so remember in The Grapes of Wrath, novel or film. Imagine this reversed.

[radind]

(05-30-2016, 07:25 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Our esteemed climatologist (irony intended) and practically-certain Republican nominee for President Donald Trump has made public appearances in California's water-thirsty Central Valley and proclaimed that there is no drought of water so long as Californians are ready to practically drain the Sacramento Delta to give a respite to growers.


[quote-USA Today]

California suffered one of its driest years in 2015. And last year the state hit its driest four-year period on record.

But Donald Trump isn't sold. The presumptive GOP nominee told supporters in Fresno, Calif., on Friday night that no such dry spell exists.

Trump said state officials were simply denying water to Central Valley farmers to prioritize the Delta smelt, a native California fish nearing extinction — or as Trump called it, "a certain kind of three-inch fish.”

“We’re going to solve your water problem. You have a water problem that is so insane. It is so ridiculous where they’re taking the water and shoving it out to sea,” Trump told thousands of supporters at the campaign event.

A series of graphics from the Los Angeles Times shows the progression of the drought from 2011 through today, using data from the U.S. Drought Monitor, a federal website that tracks the dry conditions. The drought worsened in 2014 and 2015 and has marginally subsided this year.

The most recent Drought Monitor report says that over the past week parts of northeastern California and northern Nevada recorded improvements, and "overall conditions have continued to steadily improve during the past year."

Trump spoke in Fresno and San Diego ahead of California's June 7 primary. California is the country's top agriculture producer, and the drought raised tensions among farmers, government officials and environmentalists.

State officials imposed a water ban on June 1, 2015, after record low rain and snowfall. The scarcity was evident from the Sierra Nevada's shrunken snowpack to the dry wells of the Central Valley.

Trump's comments come weeks after Gov. Jerry Brown issued an executive order updating water restrictions. The water rules were imposed in hopes of building the state's "resilience" in the long-term water conservation measures through monthly water use reporting and bans on "clearly wasteful practices such as hosing off sidewalks, driveways and other hardscapes," according to a news release from the California Government Operations Agency's website.

Meanwhile, the powerful farm lobby is trying to secure federal and state approval for billions of dollars to create new water tunnels, dams and other projects.

At least we know where Trump stands on the issue: “If I win, believe me, we’re going to start opening up the water so that you can have your farmers survive."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/polit..._3JCT5NiOg
[/quote]

Water shortages around the world.

Quote:https://www.drought.gov/gdm/current-conditions
… "April 2016 was the warmest April since records began in 1880. At 14.8C, April 2016 exceeded the 20th century average April temperature by 1.1C. In Europe, drought conditions remain around the Mediterranean Sea and have expanded slightly at the higher latitudes this month. In Asia, drought improved across much of western India but has intensified in the Southeast. India has experienced an intense heat wave resulting in hundreds of deaths. An estimated 330 million people in the country do not have enough water to meet their needs as a result of the drought. In Africa, short-term drought improved in the South as well as around the equator. Namibia is experiencing its worst crop performance in 80 years and foot shortages in Malawi have prompted a declaration of disaster, where 2.8 million people are being impacted. In North America, drought remains entrenched in the higher latitudes, especially across western Canada leading to widespread wildfires.”…

[pbrower2a]

Exceptional drought -- all of Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties. almost all of Kern, San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles and Orange Counties,  Kings Canyon and Yosemite National Parks. Much water for the San Francisco Bay Area comes from the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park.

Extreme drought: San Diego, Oceanside, Escondido, Riverside, San Bernardino, Fresno, Merced, Modesto, Barstow, Stockton, Livermore, eastern crest of the Sierra (whence comes Los Angeles water)

Severe drought: Monterrey, Salinas, Gilroy, Concord, Walnut Creek, Sacramento, Palm Springs, Indio, Brawley, Calexico, Reno, Carson City

Moderate drought: Napa, Chico, Yuba City, Las Vegas

Abnormally dry: San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Berkeley, San Rafael, Vallejo, Santa Rosa, Ukiah

Eureka seems to have gone back to normal.

[Odin]

Apparently Trump is just regurgitating right-wing conspiracy theories that have been popular in the rural Central Valley for years.

[Cynic Hero '86]

Weather pattern changes occur all the time. California has had drought conditions before.

[pbrower2a]

(06-02-2016, 07:43 PM)Cynic Hero Wrote: Weather pattern changes occur all the time. California has had drought conditions before.

But some places are more vulnerable than others -- like places with extremely-seasonal rainfall. Should the seasonal rainfall fail, then a place like San Francisco can become even drier than Phoenix.  Should the subtropical high park itself farther north in the winter, let us say at 35 North instead of at 25 North, then California from San Francisco to San Diego.. and northern Baja California -- become Atacama-like or Namib-like deserts.

California remains in bad shape. The Golden State gets practically no summer rainfall, so I need not show a contrast between May and today.

Northern Georgia is having a rough time, so Greater Atlanta could be having some 'water problems':



I'm not predicting a severe drought in Michigan, but the Lower Peninsula of Michigan has mostly gotten rather dry in about three months:



I have my prediction of what Global Warming once entrenched will do to the American Midwest: the ice over the Arctic Ocean will melt earlier, and during the summer the Arctic Ocean will go from having a reflective surface of white ice to having an absorptive surface of open water. Because of the long summer days the Arctic Ocean will warm rapidly in the summer and become a zone of intense thunderstorms over a warm polar ocean. Such will suck air from the mid-latitudes, and the American Midwest will have dry summers due to a summer high of the type that prevents summer rains in California.

Winters will be shorter and less severe in temperature -- but blizzards that now protect soil moisture will give way to chilly rains. There might be more juice behind winter rainstorms... I remember Michigan's "Year Without a Winter"one that had a mild winter but a dry summer in 2012 with a freak heat wave in March. Except for different topography, Michigan began to remind me of California.  Thirty years from now such could be the New Normal.

......
The AP reports that New England is having a severe drought.

The dry blast in New Hampshire is being felt throughout the Northeast, from Maine to Pennsylvania, driven by a second year of below-average rainfall. Though not as dire as the West Coast drought of five-years running, the dry, hot weather has stressed farms and gardens, prompted water restrictions and bans in many towns and threatened to bring more wildfires than usual.
In the hardest hit areas of western New York, Massachusetts and southern parts of New Hampshire and Maine, it's been dryer than in a decade or more. And national weather experts predict the drought will persist at least through the end of October.
"The Northeast is a little bit of a mixed bag, but the bottom line is that the conditions have deteriorated over the past several weeks to a couple of months," said Rich Tinker, a drought specialist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
If there were a drought epicenter, it probably would be Massachusetts. More than 74 percent of the state, according to the United States Drought Monitor, is experiencing some degree of drought and almost the entire state is dry.

[Eric the Green]

Dump Trump. Water pumping in the central valley is already causing the land to sink. That's not an inexhaustible resource. And we've already built so many dams that in many places they are silted up and being removed. Trump has no clue; he exploits whatever passions he can as long as it fits his theme of going back to a horrible yesterday that never existed, and denying reality in favor of conspiracy theory. That's what our Cynic Hero wants too. Those who think like Trump and Cynic Hero can take the train to yesterday and leave tomorrow to us.

[pbrower2a]

(10-25-2016, 03:33 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(08-18-2016, 07:29 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: La Nina continues to deepen rapidly.

Minor potential silver lining - The Farmers' Almanac predicts this will be a "wet La Nina" winter, where NorCal has a more Northwestern pattern than other SW US locales. Normally the Pac NW gets lots of rain during La Nina conditions while the SW is parched.

So far, this seems to be the case. Of course, what happens during "prime time" (D-J-F), will determine everything.

On the other side of America, at roughly the same latitudes as Los Angeles and San Diego, is beginning to experience "exceptional drought". Just go down the list of states alphabetically and stop at the first state you find. Yes, Alabama.

By The Associated Press
on October 27, 2016 at 1:56 PM, updated October 27, 2016 at 2:38 PM

Quote:Wildfires are charring hundreds of acres daily in the South as drought conditions worsen across the region, and the heavy, widespread rains that officials say are needed to end the threat are nowhere in sight.
A crew using bulldozers worked to put out a wildfire that spread gray smoke across the rural community of Brookside about 20 miles northwest of Birmingham on Thursday, and another fire that began Wednesday, damaging several structures, was still burning but under control on the eastern edge of the metro area.
In Georgia, a fire that blackened dozens of acres around the city of Rome was still smoldering, and officials said the fire danger rating was at its highest across a wide area that included much of metro Atlanta.
The lack of storms means lightning probably didn't cause the fires. Authorities suspect simple carelessness â€" like tossing cigarette butts on dry ground â€" caused some of the blazes, while others could be arson.

http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index....ought.html



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/alab...0edc303fb7

[pbrower2a]

A massive wildfire burning in the Tennessee resort towns of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge has destroyed more than 100 structures, including homes and businesses, authorities said Tuesday.

Mandatory evacuations for residents and visitors were ordered and the National Guard was mobilized to Sevier County to help transport firefighters, remove debris and check on residents, as the fire spread across the Great Smoky Mountains National Park Monday night.
Gatlinburg is 35 miles southeast of Knoxville and has a population of roughly 4,000 people.

“This is the worst of the wildfires we’ve had this year,” Tennessee Emergency Management Agency spokesperson Dean Flener told The Huffington Post. “This is really bad.”

Over 14,000 people were evacuated and more than 12,000 power outages were reported, Flener said. He confirmed no fatalities had been reported, though four people were transported to the hospital for burn-related injuries. The TEMA has yet to determine the cause of the fire.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tenn...66c01b9ffc

An epidemic of wildfires is far more possible under drought conditions.

Tennessee:



North Carolina:

[Eric the Green]

The people of TN, NC and AL certainly are getting exactly what they have been voting for.

[The Wonkette]

(11-29-2016, 03:42 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The people of TN, NC and AL certainly are getting exactly what they have been voting for.

Except that substantial minorities of people in those States (and Georgia, also) voted like you did. I find that sentiment that you expressed to be distasteful, to put it mildly.

[pbrower2a]

(11-29-2016, 03:42 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The people of TN, NC and AL certainly are getting exactly what they have been voting for.

What about the black people of Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama who vote much like you? Give them a political break! They hurt, too!

If there were some divine justice there would have been plagues and crop failures in Germany in the late 1930s that would not end until Der Phooey "let My people go". Donald trump is not in the league with the Pharaoh, let alone the Fuhrer.

[pbrower2a]

It's going to take a while for the southern half of California to get enough of a recharge from extraordinary rainfall to undo five years of drought.

[pbrower2a]

As the peak-rain season ends in the Pacific coast region and the Southwest








It ain't over.

[pbrower2a]