California's 100-year drought. California is in the third year of one of the state's worst droughts in the past century, one that's led to fierce wildfires, water shortages and restrictions, and potentially staggering agricultural losses.
The dryness in California is only part of a longer-term, 15-year drought across most of the Western USA, one that bioclimatologist Park Williams said is notable because "more area in the West has persistently been in drought during the past 15 years than in any other 15-year period since the 1150s and 1160s" — that's more than 850 years ago. "When considering the West as a whole, we are currently in the midst of a historically relevant megadrought," said Williams, a professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University in New York.
Megadroughts are what Cornell University scientist Toby Ault calls the "great white sharks of climate: powerful, dangerous and hard to detect before it's too late. Megadroughts are defined more by their duration than their severity. California Nudists Stealing Water During Drought? The owners of a Northern California nudist resort called the Lupin Lodge have been accused of stealing water – a precious commodity now that California is in its third straight year of a historic severe drought.
The lodge is located off Aldercroft Heights Road in Los Gatos and just last week the lodge was in the news as one of several community water districts that had been put on the state’s drought list. In order for the nudist resort to continue catering to its clothing optional clientele, it had been forced to bring water in by the truckload at a significant expense. Now, the resort has been accused of stealing at least 280,000 gallons of water from a local waterfall and creek. Glyn and Lori Kay Stout are the owners of the Lupin Lodge and they claim that they have grandfathered water rights to the Hendrys Creek water source. The Stouts have owned the California nudist resort since the early 1970s. By Alana Marie Burke Sources: San Jose Mercury NewsDaily NewsLos Angeles Times.
California drought: Statewide water use drops. Deep into the third year of a historic drought, Californians are finally starting to take water conservation seriously.
Statewide, urban residents cut water use 7.5 percent in July, compared with July of last year, according to new figures released Tuesday afternoon.Those savings show progress from June, when overall water use was down 4.4 percent from the previous year, and from May -- when it was up 1 percent. "People are stepping up," said Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board. "It's not enough yet, but we are heading in the right direction. "The board's survey of 362 cities, private water companies and water districts -- the most extensive so far during California's drought -- continues to show Northern Californians are cutting water use more than Southern Californians. "In Southern California we have been doing conservation since 1991.
Strict rules help But cities with strict monthly water allotments saw massive savings. Fines allowed. California Drought Could Claim Quarter of Rice Crop. A Douglas fir affectionately named Yoda survived many a drought in its six-plus centuries of existence in a rugged lava flow in the El Malpais National Monument area near Grants, New Mexico, but it couldn’t weather the current extreme drought in the parched Southwest.
The recent death of the 7-foot-tall tree, estimated to be more than 650 years old, is a testament to the severity of today's drought, scientists say. A core sample obtained in 1991 established that Yoda had lived at least since 1406, but it likely had been alive since 1350 or so, Henri Grissino-Mayer of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, told NBC News. Yoda had survived a “megadrought” in the 16th century — an intense period of dry weather that plagued Mexico and North America for decades and caused major tree losses. Today, Grissino-Mayer said, “We’re seeing massive mortality in tree populations that is unprecedented.” California Drought: ‘Pop-up’ wetlands provide bird habitat.
YUBA CITY, Calif.
(AP) — For the swirling flock of migrating shorebirds banking to a landing in California’s Central Valley, a recently flooded rice field is providing a new kind of triage station during a drought that’s drastically reducing places where they can rest on their long journeys. The new arrivals to the field — hundreds of them — are dowichers, says conservationist Greg Gulot, standing on a dirt berm and focusing his binoculars to identify a wading bird that is one of the first to fly south in an annual migration that brings 350 species to California’s Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys.
With millions of birds on their way from the Arctic and subarctic and the drought cutting critical wetlands to as little as one-sixth, the field is one of the first to come on line this fall under a new program of “pop-up” habitats. Within hours of workers flooding the field two weeks earlier, hundreds of migrating birds appeared.