
California declared drought free for first time in seven years - MilnerRoute
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-drought-idUSKCN1QW09A
======
dror
John Steinbeck, "East of Eden", 1952.

"There would be five or six wet and wonderful years when there might be
nineteen to twenty-five inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass.
Then would come six or seven pretty good years of twelve to sixteen inches of
rain. And then the dry years would come, and sometimes there would be only
seven or eight inches of rain. The land dried up and the grasses headed out
miserably a few inches high and great bare scabby places appeared in the
valley."

...

"And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the
rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It
was always that way."

~~~
ryanwaggoner
I always think about this passage when I read about California droughts. I
wonder if this is actually true and what causes it.

~~~
StephenConnell
"California drought: Past dry periods have lasted more than 200 years,
scientists say" [https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/01/25/california-drought-
pa...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/01/25/california-drought-past-dry-
periods-have-lasted-more-than-200-years-scientists-say/)

------
whalesalad
The experience here in Orange County over the last few months has been nuts.

Being able to hang out down near the ocean and see the San Gabriel mountains
just decked out in snow is surreal:
[https://i.redd.it/kueaye5p6si21.jpg](https://i.redd.it/kueaye5p6si21.jpg)

Another photo:
[https://i.redd.it/vy7dlavrh0f21.jpg](https://i.redd.it/vy7dlavrh0f21.jpg)

Anaheim hills, an area that rarely gets snowed on:
[https://i.redd.it/trbf198kb6i21.jpg](https://i.redd.it/trbf198kb6i21.jpg)

Then we roll right into the poppy/wildflower superbloom which has been
bonkers: [https://weather.com/travel/news/2019-03-13-super-bloom-
flowe...](https://weather.com/travel/news/2019-03-13-super-bloom-flower-show-
california#9)

The blackstar canyon waterfall is LIT!
[https://i.redd.it/4bq8v71ff7j21.jpg](https://i.redd.it/4bq8v71ff7j21.jpg)

Last but not least we are smack dab in the middle of an epic butterfly
migration, [https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2019/03/08/why-are-there-
so...](https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2019/03/08/why-are-there-so-many-
butterflies-in-southern-california-right-now/)

Driving down the 73 toll road yesterday I think I drove through about 300
butterflies, at least. They just kinda flop over the car, none of them hit me.
It was like driving through a butterfly hail storm.

This place sucks a lot of the time with all of the congestion and traffic,
heat, smog, high cost of living etc... but times like this really make you
stop and appreciate how beautiful it is.

~~~
mrfusion
I thought California. Has the best climate in the country?

~~~
maxxxxx
Along the coast and in some mountain areas it's perfect. Otherwise it's a
f...ing desert.

~~~
dfee
I dig the desert. It’s nice to escape to e.g. Joshua Tree.

Later this summer I’ll be hiking Mt. Whitney, and will swing through Death
Valley on the way home. 15k altitude change in a few hours.

~~~
wjossey
Try the cactus to clouds hike.

------
jedberg
They need to completely change the way water in California is billed. Right
now rates keep going up as we get better at conservation, which disincentives
conservation.

At the same time, in areas with a flat rate, people use way too much water.
When Sacramento had a flat rate, you'd see people turn on their hose as they
left for work and let it flood their lawn all day, running into the street, to
keep their lush green lawns in 105F weather. As soon as they introduced water
meters, the lawns went brown and the bills went up.

I think the billing needs to be a flat rate for everyone that is high enough
to cover all water delivery costs, based on size of property, and then you get
a credit if your usage is below median for similar families/farms/industries
and you get an equal surcharge if you're above that. Then you'd be encouraged
to use less water than your neighbors, but all the costs would even out since
1/2 the people by definition would pay extra, so they wouldn't have to raise
the flat rate part so quickly, only slowly as the overall cost of the water
system increases. It would put the consumer in much more control of their
water costs.

My family for example gets hit with a huge surcharge because we added two
people to our family since they started tracking, so we aren't "conserving"
anymore. We're conserving more than before, we just have double the people!

~~~
gdubs
It’s agriculture. Personal conservation _should_ be incentivized, but unless
we make radical changes the price will have to go up as water trends towards
scarcity. For people who conserve, their rates should increase more slowly.

But we have to address agriculture and stop externalizing the true cost to the
environment. What agriculture has accomplished is _astonishing_ , but it’s
just not sustainable in any number of dimensions.

~~~
yellowapple
Mandatory aquifer recharging would be a good first step. One of the big
problems is that California can't adequately take advantage of these wet
winters because the reservoirs can only hold so much and the ground can only
absorb water so fast, so a lot of water ends up getting into the rivers and
escaping back into the Pacific (or sits in ephemeral lakes/ponds/wetlands
until it evaporates). If we helped along the process of getting water back
underground (which should be readily doable, e.g. by pumping water back _down_
into wells), that'd significantly lessen the strain we've put on our aquifer
systems.

Step two is to significantly beef up our reservoir system. We should be able
to capture way more of our winter rainfall than we currently do. That'll be a
pretty big help to farms and cities further south (i.e. in the more arid half
of California).

Step three is to stop pussyfooting around building desalination plants. If
Israel can go from being constantly on the verge of drought to having a giant
water surplus, then there's no reason we can't do the same with California
(especially since we have way more room to build 'em :) ). California's
adjacent to the single largest body of water in the world; it's ridiculous
that we ain't taking advantage of that.

~~~
jedberg
I think the main reason we don't have desalination plants is because they have
to be on or near the ocean, which is the most expensive property in the state.
No one wants to ruin their view or have a big industrial machine near their
home. Basically, I think NIMBYism keeps us from having Desal.

~~~
derekdahmer
There's plenty of empty government land on the California Coast.

The main reason there aren't more desal plants is because ejecting the
leftover brine into the ocean is an environmental concern.

~~~
jfoutz
And it’s expensive. You pump a ton of energy into a system to get water. Water
is so cheap you can pour it on the ground.

~~~
yellowapple
Water's a lot less cheap in actual deserts (like in Nevada and Arizona).
Places with massive water surpluses (like what California could have) tend to
end up selling their surpluses to places with water deficits, raking in cash
that can go into all sorts of things that California wants to buy (like, say,
high-speed rail connections between all the major cities).

------
djrogers
And yet we won't be building any more water storage. As a result, we have
about the same water capacity to survice the next drought as we had in the
1970s. There were half as many residents then, and climate change wasn't a
concern...

~~~
Retric
Residential water use is minimal. Most water is used for irrigation.

Further, cheap water storage results in increased evaporation, it’s a net loss
over time.

~~~
kbutler
Even lossy storage allows saving during times of excess for use during times
of drought.

And what happens to that lost evaporated water?

~~~
xyzzyz
Falls somewhere else down the wind. It's not completely gone, but it's gone
for you.

------
ksb
For those interested in seeing drought data, here's a CA map:

[https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonito...](https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA)

And here's a time series:

[https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Data/Timeseries.aspx](https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Data/Timeseries.aspx)

~~~
afterburner
Time series is for the whole country or continental only.

~~~
ksb
You can narrow it down to just California

------
pfdietz
To first order, California's water problem is agricultural. And that's because
there's no market in that water that would curtail what is a very low value
use of it.

Fix that, or resort to fractional measures that just paper over the underlying
dysfunction.

~~~
jshen
I always cringe when I hear markers and water in the same sentence. I’m not
sure what exactly you mean by “markets” but the history of water rights in CA
is a great lesson highlighting how spectacularly “markets” can fail to handle
water.

~~~
pdonis
As I understand it, the history of water rights in CA, and indeed in the US
west generally, is a history of lack of markets; it's all been political
maneuvering by various factions to make sure they aren't the ones who go short
when the water gets divided up. There has never been an actual market to
allocate the limited supply of water to the highest value uses. If there were,
agriculture in much of CA wouldn't exist, since much of CA is a desert and it
makes no sense to do agriculture in a desert when you can ship in food from
elsewhere at lower cost.

~~~
jshen
How do you determine who owns water in the first place.

~~~
ip26
A real & important question, but by no means an impossible problem. E.g.
suppose "the public" (e.g. gov't, as with public lands) owns all of it in the
first place, sells it, and uses the proceeds to fund water projects.

A less radical option would be to keep the system of water rights we have
today and simply allow the water to be bought and sold. Currently if you sell
it, someone can take you to court & say "well you didn't _use_ it, so you
should lose your water rights" (because California follows the doctrine of
first use). Would run the risk of creating wealthy water czars overnight, but
less radical.

~~~
jshen
Who sets the price and what stops the very wealthy from buying it all and
selling it for a giant profit. The further we go down this train of thought
the less market-like it becomes very quickly.

~~~
ip26
It's a market. The first owner sets the price at whatever point they like,
balancing their interests of revenue, protecting the resource, and so forth.
If people are arbitraging & selling the water for increased prices, the first
owner increases their price and eliminates the arbitrage opportunity.

~~~
jshen
How do you get a first owner for water?

~~~
ip26
Are you being intentionally obtuse? I just described two ways. There's Right
of first use, Riparian rights, and my pet illustrative example of treating it
as a publicly held asset to be sold... There's other ways beyond those three,
but the first two are how ownership is assigned in the US today.

~~~
jshen
riparian rights is what led to the CA water wars where the wealthy from LA
bought land up stream of the farmers in the owen's valley. It didn't solve the
problem we're talking about regarding rich people buying up the water.

I have no idea how first use could work for water, would be happy to read more
if you link me to something about it. A quick googling returned nothing.

The last one requires a lot more specifics to talk about meaningfully, but
I'll bet that most of the free marketers wouldn't consider it a free market.

------
c_r_w
Does this account for the massively depleted aquifers thoughout the state?

~~~
jayess
> “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.”

[https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-rain-
california...](https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-rain-california-
drought-conditions-20190314-story.html)

EDIT: Sorry, you're referring to aquifers, not reservoirs.

~~~
benj111
This quote gets me thinking about how snow is treated in this system.

It isn't like water in a stream because it stays where it is. It isn't like a
reservoir or aquifer because the water isn't trivially dispatchable.

I suppose it depends where the snow is, some could be 'permanent', some
seasonal melt, some gone by next week.

So really we should be differentiating the different types of snow?

~~~
mturmon
Snow is really important. It is quantified as “SWE” or snow water equivalent,
the amount of water that would be released when the snow melts.

SWE is monitored by satellites, aircraft, and by in situ measurements like
from snow pillows. In California, the state DWR tracks SWE to estimate
reservoir influx.

More: [https://aso.jpl.nasa.gov](https://aso.jpl.nasa.gov)

~~~
benj111
Thanks, didn't realise snow pillows were a thing.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_pillow](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_pillow)

------
whymsicalburito
Tell that to my water bill, the drought surcharge is still over 50% of the
bill...

~~~
ceejayoz
The changes in behavior those surcharges are intended to cause remain
important, especially as future droughts are quite likely.

~~~
Varcht
Oh the quality of life behaviors of residents that use a very small percentage
of the water? Residents use 10% of the water, 50% of the water is
"environmental" and is dumped into the ocean for the smelt, etc.[0]

[0] [https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-
california/](https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/)

~~~
ceejayoz
> 50% of the water is "environmental" and is dumped into the ocean for the
> smelt

That's a funny way of saying "we didn't want to dry up the rivers", isn't it?

~~~
Varcht
It is sort of a trope in CA, oh and it's the deltas, are you saying that
stinking up their bathrooms with un-flushed urine and being charged a
surcharge to save 10% of 10% of the available water is logical?

Isn't it really just a "feel good" thing?

~~~
ceejayoz
Australian toilets frequently have two buttons, one for a small flush (for
urine) and another for a larger flush. "No flushing" is hardly the only
option.

California needs to tackle water usage. There are reasonable changes that can
be made in homes and towns - swapping to drought-resistant gardens instead of
lawns, rain barrels to catch run-off, absorbent parking lots that don't drain
out to the sewers, etc.

Agriculture also needs to be tackled, sure. That doesn't mean saving a percent
here and there is of no use.

~~~
bdamm
This style of toilet is already very common in California, as is drought
resistant landscaping. There could be more, but California could already be
past 50% towards best case on those approaches.

------
avip
Same for us in Israel, it's been a fantastic year. I'm clocking 900mm! It's
been 15 years since we've last seen such wonderfully rainy year. Praise the
Lord, El-Niño, and any other involved entity.

------
p1esk
Santa Barbara county still reports "stage 3 drought condition":
[https://www.santabarbaraca.gov/gov/depts/pw/resources/system...](https://www.santabarbaraca.gov/gov/depts/pw/resources/system/docs/default.asp)

~~~
24gttghh
[https://www.drought.gov/drought/states/california](https://www.drought.gov/drought/states/california)
which was updated 3 days ago. No drought, simply 6.6% "D0-Abnormally dry".

~~~
casefields
This one is pretty good too. Essentially the same info:
[https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonito...](https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?West)

~~~
24gttghh
Yeah that's basically the same thing. The National Drought Mitigation Center
is at U Nebraska Lincoln :)

------
mrharrison
Being a bit cynical here, but could we just call it the California rain cycle,
instead of being amazed every 7-10 years when droughts come and go.

~~~
mehrdadn
> instead of being amazed every 7-10 years when droughts come and go.

Was there a drought 10 years ago though? I don't recall.

~~~
drdeadringer
Yes. When I first moved to the Bay Area I could not turn on NPR without
hearing about the poor delta smelt suffering from the drought for what seemed
like every 5 minutes.

------
dwags
It's been raining every couple of days in sunny San Diego for like 3 months

~~~
rarlsatan
There really hasn't been such a significant amount of rainfall here in years,
I just worry about the fire danger coming in the fall because of all of the
new growth.

~~~
ralusek
There can be no water without fire, it is known.

------
miguelmota
It rained a good amount last month in Los Angeles which was great. All the
rain however uncovered a ton of potholes on the roads which is dangerous
particularly for motorcycles. Hope the city gets this patched.

------
docker_up
As someone who has lived in the Bay Area for over 20 years, I knew this would
happen. I was never worried for a second that the drought was the "new
normal". I believe the climate will continue to change and cycle. Yes, we are
experiencing global warming, and yes our environment is heading for disaster,
everyone was too easy to believe that this particular drought was the "new
normal" with little proof.

~~~
LoSboccacc
> yes our environment is heading for disaster

now I'd like to see which model predicted the end of the drought and see when
those predicts its return.

------
musicale
Unfortunately California still thinks that one of the wettest centuries in
thousands of years is "normal rainfall."

------
xivzgrev
People are complaining about the rain in the Bay Area but I say bring it on!!
I remember the drought and how I feel sad with mountains of dead grass year
round.

Glad to see we are heading out of a drought (this year) - enjoy it!

------
hkmurakami
This rain season has get like the La Nina winter of 1996. Glad we have it.

------
burnallofit
Well, enjoy it, this will last about 4 months

------
DataJunkie
Just until the next dry year and everyone will be crying about the drought and
how the sky is falling.

------
robertAngst
Talked to an uber driver, he said this was 'climate change'.

Drought = desert

rain = climate change?

What is California

~~~
bduerst
California has cyclical droughts and this last one was not that abnormal from
the natural variability:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_in_California#Weather...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_in_California#Weather_cycles)

My uber driver today said the extra memory in phones is making us all sick,
but computer screens were safe, so why would you even mention it was your uber
driver?

------
dimal
Looks like we'll have plenty of fuel for another bad fire season.

------
babyslothzoo
Give it a few months

~~~
pnw_hazor
I heard we have 12 years.

~~~
olivermarks
David Bowie said 5 years in 1972

------
electricslpnsld
It’s all about that delicious Hetch Hetchy

------
ggm
Stand by for record bushfires next season

------
JustSomeNobody
Can't wait for all the climate change deniers to have a field day with this.

~~~
jdminhbg
Maybe people should stop claiming normal patterns of precipitation variability
are unstoppable catastrophic results of climate change then?

~~~
mamon
Also, climate change might have catastropthic results on some parts of the
world, and positive effect on other. I wouldn't mind for instance if Central
Europe got warm climate similar to Mediterranean. Now, why would I fight a
change that clearly benefits me? :)

~~~
maxxxxx
In principle you have a point but if millions of people have to leave their
home area and are looking for a place to live things may be less golden.

the same thing happened in Syria. The war there didn't really impact Europe
directly but the refugees certainly did.

------
hnaccy
Gonna go wash my car three times :D

------
zobzu
its funny how no matter what happens climate wise "its terrible and wrong"
when it's reported.

What drought.gov calls abnormally-dry is not actually abnormal. What they
really mean is "its non-ideal", as if the climate was always ideal pre-2011.

Anything that is lower than D2 ("severe drought") is normal, and of course its
better to thrive toward ideal and maintaining better conditions. But it
doesn't mean that somehow weather was ideal all the time before 2011 and now
its never good enough.

Let the downvotes flow...

[https://www.drought.gov/drought/states/california](https://www.drought.gov/drought/states/california)

~~~
creddit
I actually agree with the core sentiment of your post, but find you playing a
victim without yet being victimized in any way with "Let the downvotes
flow..." to be really counter productive.

~~~
tomjakubowski
Could you rephrase the core sentiment of the post that you agree with? I can't
understand what it's saying at all, other than expressing anger at the
reporting of climate issues.

~~~
will4274
There is a trend where all climate events are said by news sources to be
indicative of climate change. Abnormally warm winters => climate change.
Abnormally cold winters => climate change. Drought => climate change.
Hurricanes => climate change. As is typical on many topics, some news
organizations are apt to over-state the certainty of scientific evidence. For
example, the link between climate change and hurricanes is commonly cited in
news sources (see
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hurricane+climate+change+huff+post...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hurricane+climate+change+huff+post+medium)).
While the link has a reasonable theoretical mechanism (warm air seems to make
hurricanes stronger, global warming => more warm air), it hasn't actually been
observed in practice - we had an average number of hurricanes last decade and
an abnormally small number the decade prior. Nevertheless, some news sources
publish articles along the lines of "most damaging hurricane ever, is it
because of global warming?"

Depending on where you sit, this is either evidence that global warming is a
massive hoax and not happening at all OR evidence that news sources sometimes
get a little carried away trying to publish the most alarmist and exotic
things that they can find, but that the underlying science of global warming
is valid and with uncertain impacts.

