California Has Driest Year Ever -- And It May Get Worse
By Robin Wilkey Posted: 01/15/2014 10:10 pm EST | Updated: 01/16/2014 11:00 am EST
SAN FRANCISCO -- The shore of California’s Lake Oroville hasn’t looked this way in modern history. Cracked dry mud shatters the canyon floor, and buoys rest 10 feet up the side of a shale hill. The remains of two vehicles -- crashed long ago -- rise from the mud like shipwrecks at low tide. The lake is only 36 percent full [ http://www.orovillemr.com/news/ci_24914180/drought-california-blamed-high-pressure-lake-oroville-only ].
For California, 2013 was the driest year since the state started measuring rainfall [ http://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/opinion/10879/california-dryin ] in 1849, before it was a state, according to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, or UCAR, a consortium of 75 schools. Low rainfall has shattered records in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Shasta and on up to Eugene, Ore.
And if rain doesn't fall soon, the worst may be yet to come.
"As impressive as the 2013 rainfall records are, those who watch California weather will be even more focused on what happens over the next several months," UCAR wrote this week in an analysis [id.]. "[And] the 2013–14 water year is off to a rotten start."
The Sierra snow pack, where the state gets about a third of its water, was 84 percent below average [id.] as of Jan. 10.
"It's like the Sierra -- a mountain range just sitting off the West Coast -- only bigger," Bob Benjamin, a forecaster with the National Weather Service, told the San Jose Mercury News. "This ridge is sort of a mountain in the atmosphere. In most years, it comes and goes. This year it came and didn't go [ http://www.orovillemr.com/news/ci_24914180/drought-california-blamed-high-pressure-lake-oroville-only ]."
The consequences may be grave.
"Each day that passes without meaningful precipitation is another day when our long-term deficits grow measurably larger," wrote Swain [ http://www.weatherwest.com/archives/1085 ].