"The past month has brought major storms and over 30 trillion gallons of water to California. So many people are asking, is California still in a drought? The answer is yes, despite the rain, we are still in a drought, and here's why."--Halia Pratt, 6th grade
For as long as most Californians can remember, our state has been in a drought due in large part to low precipitation, depleting groundwater, and rising temperatures. The past month has brought major storms and over 30 trillion gallons of water to California. So many people are asking, is California still in a drought? The answer is yes, despite the rain, we are still in a drought, and here's why.
While the rain didn’t end our drought, it did affect it in some big ways. Droughts are measured according to five categories: exceptional, extreme, severe, moderate, and abnormally dry,exceptional being the worst and abnormally dry being the least. Before the storms, over a third of California was in the extreme drought category and small sections were in the exceptional category. Now, a few weeks after the storms, less than 1% of California is in extreme drought and none of it is in exceptional drought, which is a vast improvement.
If droughts are caused by a lack of water and we just got over 30 trillion gallons of water, why are we still in a drought?
Well, the water in California is mainly used for three different purposes: environmental, agriculture, and urban use. 50% of water use is for environmental purposes, 40% for agriculture, and 10% for urban use. In California each person uses roughly fifty-five gallons of water per day. There are 39.24 million people in California, so that's 2,158.2 gallons of water per day, and 787,743 gallons of water per year. That’s just for residential use, which only makes up 10% of California’s water usage. So, while the rain did help, it did little to reduce the amount of water usage in California—and reducing our water usage is what needs to be done to get out of this drought.
California gets most of its water from reservoirs (man-made lakes created for storing water). Most reservoirs are made by making dams across rivers. A majority of the rain that fell these past few weeks didn't even make it into the many reservoirs around California, and instead fell under them. The water that did fall into the reservoirs was too much for them to handle because many of our reservoirs are smaller and most can’t withstand the unusual amount of rainfall that recently fell. If the reservoirs tried to retain all the recent rainfall, it could mean flooding for the area around the reservoirs. So, in an attempt to fix this, the gates in the dams were opened to allow some water to flow out of the reservoirs and eventually into the ocean.
This might seem counterintuitive or wasteful, but according to CalMatters.org, “‘This strategy is especially necessary at smaller reservoirs, like Folsom Lake. Outflow through the dam was running somewhere in the ballpark of 1,000 cubic feet per second in early December,’ said Michael Anderson, a climatologist with the Department of Water Resources. Recently, he said,’ state reservoir operators were releasing roughly 30,000 cubic feet per second from the dam. Most of this water eventually flows to the ocean. It may seem like water wasted, but it also could mean a city saved.’”
The rain was able to take us down a category in the drought metric and supplied us with an abundance of water in our reservoirs. It also helped to water our plants, which is helpful because agriculture is one of the main drought contributors.
The recent rains were partially caused by climate change. Climate change is the long-term change in the average weather patterns that have come to define Earth's local, regional and global climates and is caused by the increasing output of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. According to the Center for Climate Sciences at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, “With every 1.8 degF (1 degC) increase in sea surface temperatures, the number of extreme storms has risen by about 21%. If climate model projections hold true, extreme storms may increase 60% by century’s end.” This basically means that if climate change continues it will continue to heat sea surface temperatures, which will in turn cause more severe weather like the storms. So, if climate change continues, so will the severe storms probably.
The rain helped us lessen the severity of our drought, gave us more water reserves, and helped bring some of the green back to California. It also caused a lot of damage and killed 21 people . It was a reminder that climate change is getting so severe that it is causing over 30 trillion gallons of water to pour out of the sky and, even after that, we are still in a drought. To get out of the drought we have to reduce the amount of water we use and use the water we do have to its fullest extent and for the right purposes.
This might seem counterintuitive or wasteful, but according to CalMatters.org, “‘This strategy is especially necessary at smaller reservoirs, like Folsom Lake. Outflow through the dam was running somewhere in the ballpark of 1,000 cubic feet per second in early December,’ said Michael Anderson, a climatologist with the Department of Water Resources. Recently, he said,’ state reservoir operators were releasing roughly 30,000 cubic feet per second from the dam. Most of this water eventually flows to the ocean. It may seem like water wasted, but it also could mean a city saved.’”
The rain was able to take us down a category in the drought metric and supplied us with an abundance of water in our reservoirs. It also helped to water our plants, which is helpful because agriculture is one of the main drought contributors.
The recent rains were partially caused by climate change. Climate change is the long-term change in the average weather patterns that have come to define Earth's local, regional and global climates and is caused by the increasing output of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. According to the Center for Climate Sciences at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, “With every 1.8 degF (1 degC) increase in sea surface temperatures, the number of extreme storms has risen by about 21%. If climate model projections hold true, extreme storms may increase 60% by century’s end.” This basically means that if climate change continues it will continue to heat sea surface temperatures, which will in turn cause more severe weather like the storms. So, if climate change continues, so will the severe storms probably.
The rain helped us lessen the severity of our drought, gave us more water reserves, and helped bring some of the green back to California. It also caused a lot of damage and killed 21 people . It was a reminder that climate change is getting so severe that it is causing over 30 trillion gallons of water to pour out of the sky and, even after that, we are still in a drought. To get out of the drought we have to reduce the amount of water we use and use the water we do have to its fullest extent and for the right purposes.
