According to the National Weather Service, 2013 is the driest year in California since record-keeping began back in 1849. It was 89 degrees a few days ago in Burbank. In the middle of February.
Those teabaggers who claim climate change doesn't exist can bend over so I can fuck them with sharp pointy stick.
California is enduring its driest calendar year on record, with no signs of relief coming anytime soon. In San Francisco, the city is seeing its driest year since records began during the Gold Rush year of 1849.
Although a drought emergency has not yet been officially declared, a lack of rain and snow this winter could bring catastrophic losses to California agriculture, as water allotments are slashed by state agencies.
"Soil moisture is depleted, reservoir storage is down and even if we had average rainfall statewide, we probably wouldn't see average runoff just because soil moisture is so depleted," California Department of Water Resources deputy drought manager Jeanine Jones said last week.
In Southern California, through Tuesday, the weather station in downtown Los Angeles had received only 3.6 inches of rain so far in 2013, according to the National Weather Service. If no more rain falls, this would make 2013 the city's driest calendar year on record, breaking the record of the previous driest years, 1947 and 1953, when 4.08 inches fell each year.
In a typical year, Los Angeles receives 14.91 inches of rain; records in the city go back to 1877. "Many other locations around the region are approaching similar dubious record or near-record dry calendar years," climatologist Mark Svoboda noted in the most recent U.S. Drought Monitor, a federal website that tracks drought across the country.
The U.S. Drought Monitor reported that 94.25% of the state is enduring some level of drought conditions and that most of the prime agriculture area of the Central Valley is in extreme drought, the second-worst category.
At least 90% of the state has been in a drought since early May.
Other Western states, such as Oregon, Idaho and Nevada, are also seeing drought conditions, according to the Drought Monitor. Some spots in southern Oregon are also on the brink of record dry years.
Earlier this month, several federal and California lawmakers called on Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown and President Obama to declare a drought emergency and a federal disaster in the state.
"We have had two years of dry conditions that have depleted our reservoirs and reduced carry-over storage to historically low levels not seen since 1977,'' Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.) wrote in the letter to Brown and Obama.
Brown has formed an interagency task force to monitor the potential for a statewide formal drought declaration.
The drought helped fuel an unusual December wildfire from Dec. 15-22 near Big Sur in Northern California. Though the fire is now contained, it destroyed dozens of homes and forced about 100 evacuations, AccuWeather reported. The blaze burned more than 900 acres.
Catastrophic wildfires remain the greatest risk the state would likely face next year after a third-straight dry winter: "A couple of the state's most disastrous wildfire events occurred in Southern California in 2003 and 2007, following drought conditions," Jones said.
A large blocking ridge of high pressure in the eastern Pacific and Gulf of Alaska has caused the lack of rain and snow this year, said meteorologist Jan Null of Golden Gate Weather Services, a private firm. He said the ridge diverts the storms over it and forces them instead into the middle of the country and across into the East.
The dryness should continue: No rain or snow is in the forecast for at least the next seven days anywhere in the state of California, according to the Weather Prediction Center. And the long-range forecast from the Climate Prediction Center is also not promising: below-average rain and snow for all of central and Southern California through March.
They should invest in some desalination plants they pricey to set up but I bet people in CA would be willing to pay a bit more for water then to go without
"There are very few problems that cannot be solved by the suitable application of photon torpedoes
From my perspective, most of the people bitching about water are the farmers and ranchers in the San Joaquin and Owens valleys. They're very Republican, so any mention of having them pay more taxes to build water desalinization plants to make up for the water that we evil city-dwelling liberals are stealing is only going to make them go ballistic.
Farmers have pretty good reason to be... touchy about water. Their livelihood depends on it to an enormous extent. Yeah, it sucks for Joe Suburb to have his lawn die on him. Bob Farmer, on the other hand, is hit a lot harder if he has crops die because he can't water them. Which is making me wonder if we're going to get a nice reminder of why water rights laws were drafted in the first place. I imagine things are getting to the point where some will be willing to steal water from their neighbors, either diverting the flow of any canals or tapping in more directly. Which had a tendency to end violently, while it was happening in noticeable numbers.
A year of drought, however bad, does not in itself prove climate change. Any statistics on what precipitation levels for the past decade have been? You need a trend longer than a year to say much of anything. (Obviously, there's data from all over the globe that backs up climate change, but using this alone as proof is not ideal.)
Sig images are for people who aren't fucking lazy.
It's more the observation that all these different things form a pattern- droughts in places, polar icepacks shrinking, fewer and fewer truly cold days...
So EACH ONE becomes a sign of irritation for the person who's known climate change was going on for a long time, and is frustrated with deniers who think the climate is the same as in 1950, even though all these anomalies keep happening.
Napoleon the Clown wrote:Farmers have pretty good reason to be... touchy about water. Their livelihood depends on it to an enormous extent. Yeah, it sucks for Joe Suburb to have his lawn die on him. Bob Farmer, on the other hand, is hit a lot harder if he has crops die because he can't water them. Which is making me wonder if we're going to get a nice reminder of why water rights laws were drafted in the first place. I imagine things are getting to the point where some will be willing to steal water from their neighbors, either diverting the flow of any canals or tapping in more directly. Which had a tendency to end violently, while it was happening in noticeable numbers.
I agree that city-dwellers need to do better in conserving water. My new house has a full desert landscape with drought-resistant plants and a drip irrigation system.
That said, farmers are partly to blame too. I drive through the 5, 99, and 395 highways often enough to see wasteful methods of water delivery...open canals, flooding fields, sprinklers in the heat of the day instead of the morning or evening. If they used more efficient watering systems, they wouldn't have as many fallow fields.
Meanwhile on my side of the continent we're having one of the coldest and snowiest winters on record... though I think if I remember correctly part of climate change is that we will experience more extremes of hot and cold?
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" - The official Troll motto, as stated by Adam Savage
All Super cold weather acts as PROOF That Climate change is a crock and false.
All Super hot weather is just a fluke and has Nothing what so ever to do with man made changes.
Just keep repeating that over and over,,,,
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Tribble wrote:Meanwhile on my side of the continent we're having one of the coldest and snowiest winters on record... though I think if I remember correctly part of climate change is that we will experience more extremes of hot and cold?
Er... eastern seaboard of the US?
If so, it really isn't that extreme- we've had lots and lots of snowstorms lately, but they're not at all out of line with stuff that happened in previous years.
Toronto lol - believe it or not, we usually don't get all that much snow when compared to Buffalo and New York City, so when a big storm comes it's a bit of a shock. And this year we had the first severe ice storm since 1998. Of course, this came after a summer of record rainfall and flooding lol
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" - The official Troll motto, as stated by Adam Savage
If you ask me, "Climate change" is a very poorly phrased term. What we are getting is a far more energetic atmosphere thanks to the greater amount of heat energy being dumped into the atmosphere, thus leading to far greater extremes in climate as a result.
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Tribble wrote:Toronto lol - believe it or not, we usually don't get all that much snow when compared to Buffalo and New York City, so when a big storm comes it's a bit of a shock. And this year we had the first severe ice storm since 1998. Of course, this came after a summer of record rainfall and flooding lol
So, climatically you're a ways inland... but yeah, just having increased rainfall will predictably lead to more snow if that rainfall happens to land when it's below freezing.
Has it been colder than usual? People sometimes fail to distinguish between cold precipitation and cold temperatures.
Up in my neck of the woods (Owen Sound Ontario) it's been the coldest and worst winter in a lot of people's memory. Mine for sure, but I have only been here for 12 years.
So, climatically you're a ways inland... but yeah, just having increased rainfall will predictably lead to more snow if that rainfall happens to land when it's below freezing.Has it been colder than usual? People sometimes fail to distinguish between cold precipitation and cold temperatures.
Yes, it has been considerably colder than usual, though I'm not going to claim that we're as bad off as, say, Owen Sound
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" - The official Troll motto, as stated by Adam Savage
Wettest December and January in at least 90 years. The two weeks that passed were the most exceptional two weeks of rain since records began ~250 years ago. And not a single day of snow this winter.
This is not taking into account the storms that have battered us for the last two months and destroyed hundreds of millions of pounds of property.
Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies,
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And here in Finland the meterological service is more or less predicting the end of winter (at least here in the south) in the next two weeks, starting after this weekend, which should be smack in the middle of the coldest part of winter.
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Edi wrote:And here in Finland the meterological service is more or less predicting the end of winter (at least here in the south) in the next two weeks, starting after this weekend, which should be smack in the middle of the coldest part of winter.
My trees, flowers, and plants are starting to bloom. Two months early. My Venus Flytrap (normally a semi-tropical plant, hibernates in the winter), is sending up new leaves. I think we had maybe two weeks tops of actually cold weather.
And here in the greater Chicago area we've had heavy snow/extreme cold for about 5-6 weeks which is different than at least the past 30 years, and arguably new. We finally got a thaw this week (historically there have been brief warm interludes in January and February, but not this year) but with the huge snow load that has lead to flooding. We're going back into a freeze, but it looks like it won't be quite as extreme as earlier.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
Tribble wrote:Toronto lol - believe it or not, we usually don't get all that much snow when compared to Buffalo and New York City, so when a big storm comes it's a bit of a shock. And this year we had the first severe ice storm since 1998. Of course, this came after a summer of record rainfall and flooding lol
That's odd.... I remember constant snowing back in 1990 - 1993 when I lived in Toronto. That or I could be remembering it wrong (I was only 8 - 10 years old).
Tribble wrote:Toronto lol - believe it or not, we usually don't get all that much snow when compared to Buffalo and New York City, so when a big storm comes it's a bit of a shock. And this year we had the first severe ice storm since 1998. Of course, this came after a summer of record rainfall and flooding lol
That's odd.... I remember constant snowing back in 1990 - 1993 when I lived in Toronto. That or I could be remembering it wrong (I was only 8 - 10 years old).
The average annual snowfall in Toronto is about 122cm. For comparison Barrie, which is only ~110km driving distance North of us, receives 223cm of snow annually. And Buffalo, which is ~170km driving distance away southeast of us, receives on average 240.5cm. And poor aieeegrunt living in Owen Sound receives on average 330cm of snow per year. So comparatively speaking, we're pretty well off! Toronto seems to be in a spot where due to being on lake Ontario and the having ridges just to the north, most storms just graze us rather than hit us dead on.
So when I mention that Toronto have had a heavy snowfall this year, just imagine what those places are like
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" - The official Troll motto, as stated by Adam Savage
Here in Belgium we're having spring for a couple of weeks now. It's 12-14°C in the middle of February, which is about 20°C higher compared with last year. Needless to say, were having the hottest winter since the day of measurement, with the previous record only a couple of years ago.
Well from what I'm hearing now, the storm that is just beginning to drizzle rain here in SoCal is supposed to be a three day long storm at least, and literally the biggest one we've had in three years.
I just hope it's not too much of a good thing - floods and mudslides are a bad thing.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
