As the world struggles for consensus on climate action and national policy focuses on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the impacts of climate change occur all around us. Drought, intense heat, wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes and rising seas, all on a scale not previously seen and often happening concurrently, bear witness to this.
California’s 2021 calendar year is over, but its 2022 Water Year (which started October 2021) is already three months old and still early in its wet season. So far this wet season is actually wet.
It is a good time to assess the condition of the present drought and whether it is likely to end with this wet season. And under such conditions, what are water management activities and policy initiatives we should be doing?
When it comes to water conservation, California is burying its head in the winter snow.
Future generations will not look kindly at our leaders’ complete failure to strategically address the state’s water shortages, which will only get worse with climate change.
Two years of some of the worst drought conditions in state history haven’t slowed Big Ag’s demands for more water. Meanwhile, urban users aren’t coming close to meeting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s call to voluntarily cut their water use by 15% from 2020 levels.
When a fire started spreading quickly in Boulder County, Colorado, on December 30, destroying nearly 1,000 homes as residents fled, the ground was dry. This was unusual: Boulder typically gets around 30 inches of snow between September and December. But last year, it had only a total of 1.7 inches over the same period before heavier snow finally started falling on December 31—too late to save the neighborhoods that burned.
After two consecutive years of drought, the state Department of Water Resources conducted the season’s first manual survey of the snowpack Dec. 30 and found a promising result—deep snow totaling 160% of average for the time of year.
State Climatologist Michael Anderson said storms in December that dumped several feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada and brought much-needed precipitation were “a great start to the water year.”
The American west faced an unprecedented year of climate disasters in 2021.
A cold wave in February triggered temperatures 50F below average in Texas, killing at least 150 across the state and leaving millions without power and water. Heatwaves over the summer broke temperature records across different western states, killing hundreds in the northwestern US and Canada. Fires seared through large swathes of the west, razing the northern California town of Greenville and searing through groves of giant sequoia trees.
This summer, the Guardian interviewed a panel of climate scientists about their experiences living through the crises that climate research had long foretold. As the year ends, they share their reflections on what’s happened – and what gives them hope, even as climate catastrophe looms.
Despite December’s heavy rains and record snowfall, water agencies remain geared up for California’s two-year-old drought to extend through 2022.
The precipitation did bring encouraging signs, including a Dec. 30 report from the Department of Water Resources that the snowpack at Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada is at a healthy level. The 78 inches of snow was 202% of the average for the site at that time of year, offering hope for an abundance of the imported water used in much of Southern California.
The National Weather Service says that San Diego’s daytime high temperature remained below 70 degrees on Wednesday for the 37th consecutive day.
By mid-afternoon, the temperature had only reached 65 and was not trending upward.
This is the longest that the city has stayed below 70 since 2015-16, when it remained unusually cool for 38 days between December 10 and January 16.
Despite a rush of rain and snow heading into 2022, 85% of California remains in severely dry conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
That’s why water agencies in Southern California and beyond are trying to squeeze a bit more water out of the storms that come this winter using a method called cloud seeding.
It’s a weather modification technique that uses silver iodide to bond cloud droplets together to form ice crystals, which grow into snowflakes and fall as either snow or rain, depending on the elevation.
In a clear sign that the drought persists, California today adopted new emergency regulations aimed at stopping residents from wasting the state’s precious water.
The rules ban practices such as hosing down sidewalks and driveways with drinking water, washing cars without a shutoff nozzle on the hose and irrigating lawns and gardens too soon after rain.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
