36 million acre feet have been pumped out in the last 20 years.
It won’t get back up just with one year’s rain.
Groundwater depletion is also driven by bad wildlands management. When you suppress fire for 100 years and than don’t do anything to reduce bioload you have a massive overgrowth of trees and other vegetation that transpires off water which would otherwise recharge aquifers and run into reservoirs. Total water loss to this likely exceeds the entirety of human use in CA.
One fir tree transpires off 150 gallons a day; one redwood 500 gallons a day. Multiply that by an overgrowth of a couple hundred million of trees. To put things in perspective people in CA use and estimated 38 billion gallons a day (includes agriculture).
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That is less than one year’s consumption
I agree agriculture needs to conserve. Most likely it will no longer be able to compete with overseas competitors due to high labor costs the EPA and conservation measures . Meaning the San Joaquin valley will revert back to desert. We don’t need all the almonds and pistachios grown there … mostly for export
I use drip irrigation on my vines. Use very little water. Only water about 12 days a year. Nut trees take massive amounts of water.
It’s ridiculous that almond production has tripled during our supposed drought. Who likes almonds? .they are dry and flavorless. So they came up with almond milk to push this very limited demand product.
And now almond average is double that of wine grapes
Ironically Almonds are replacing other crops because they use less labor. But unfortunately they use too much water. It might be cheaper to pay them a subsidy to not grow than build more dams . Almonds alone use 10%of all the state’s water. Never mind all the other nuts grown for export. Almonds are so lucrative that grape acreage that use less water are being replaced by almonds.
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We are now in record territory. Probably will exceed 1982/3. This weekend. The next record is the all time 1952 record. 800”
Drought… no way
Longest coldest snowiest winter in my lifetime. Weather should be in the high 60s in the BA. Still in the low 50s
20 for a high at the Top of Heavenly
Uploading: 7CD8BA0C-1559-4C29-99FF-4C5444D36CBD.png…
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Arizona’s winter started earlier than usual and has dragged out longer than usual (still below freezing at night where I am) but precipitation has only been slightly above normal and absolute lows have been mild. Lowest this year was 25; two years ago it hit 7.
Freel Peak, 11,000’. shrouded by clouds viewed from the top of Heavenly today. Spectacular day of skiing. Never seen so much snow
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There really is no agreed upon definition of drought,” said Gleick. “Sometimes it’s, it’s a hydrologic drought – referring to how much water is available to nature. Sometimes it’s a meteorological drought – related to how much rain and snow we get. And sometimes it’s a political drought.”
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Should help recharge the groundwater. I remember 1983.
The Glen Canyon dam almost collapsed. Salt Lake City had massive flooding. Same in the BA… many landslides.
Drought officially over
Lake Tahoe has more water than all the other lakes in the state combined. 30 times more than the biggest reservoir Lane Shasta
“Hydoclimate whiplash.”
Well there’s a new one.
Gotta keep marketing Global Warming.
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You’re a few terms behind on lingo. Now it’s climate risk. I’m less worried about it now. It’s becoming obvious they’re going to use climate risk as justification to redline lending in heavily minority areas. This is all being led by democrats which is hilarious.
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The global warmer religious fanatics will always spin weather reports with an anti capitalist anti American agenda. It really doesn’t matter what the weather or the climate. Or the fact that we could have solved the “drought” issues with dams that have already been approved. Their agenda truly makes me puke.
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Shasta and Oroville are basically full. And will be full in June with record runoff coming from snow melt. From a once in 1200 year drought to record full in one year. I think we need smarter prognosticators
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See, not over yet!!! 