High overcast and way-quiet this early Sunday morning on California’s north coast — we had some rain, and that some rain is gone.
Although we received a strong downpour for a little while yesterday, the rain storm really didn’t do much drought-wise, and the dry burning continues — according the National Weather Service for this area, we only received .01 inches of rain off this latest front, which don’t count for shit in the big, wet-less picture.
(Illustration found here).
As of last Tuesday, the U.S. Drought Monitor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln reported Humboldt County (where I live, California’s north coast, or Lost Coast, in the commercial-appeal), has been gripped in what’s considered a “severe drought,” which on the Palmer Drought Severity Index means -3.0 and -3.9 in rainfall has occurred during a given period, up to the point where it becomes obvious — most of the time in question depends on the region.
As of last October, Humboldt County was then 10.5 inches below normal for the year. And there’s not much since.
From the local, Times-Standard, this morning:
When asked how the arid conditions have affected production for local farmers in Humboldt County, dairy farmer John Vevoda laughed and asked, “Where do I begin?”
As an organic dairy and beef cattle producer, Vevoda relies heavily on his 800 acres of pasture land to feed the cows on his Ferndale dairy farm.
While he said the cows “love the mild weather,” Vevoda and other producers have been growing “a little nervous.”
“The problem is the pasture isn’t growing this time of year,” Vevoda said.
“If they get wet, we get an excuse to lock them up, whereas if they’re dry, like they are now, it’s a must that we turn the cows out to them.
“We can’t deny them food.”
And the drilling for the precious is also on an upswing:
Stuart Dickey of Rich Well Drilling and Pump Service in McKinleyville (where I actually live) said that he saw about a “20 percent increase” in calls to drill last year, with many coming from local dairy and cattle farmers.
“The calls that we’ve received are mostly that existing wells have gone dry, or the production was low,” Dickey said.
“For some of the older wells, they only put their wells down to about 25 feet, which up until a couple years ago, was plenty.”
Dave Fisch of Fisch Drilling in Hydesville said that he also had more calls during a season where drillers are normally “sitting around.”
“Customers are being smarter and calling in earlier saying that they’re worried about the spring,” Fisch said.
“If this goes on at this kind of rate, it will start affecting everyone pretty seriously.
And if you’re familiar with California’s coast, then you know a couple of miles inland can utterly shift how one lives his/her life — during the summer, three miles east of me can see a temperature rise of sometimes 10 to 15 degrees, or more.
South of me about two/three hours, down in Mendocino County, is the tiny town of Willits, located right on the 101, which currently is deeply-embedded in a water crisis — the drought has sucked up their local reservoirs and last Thursday, began water rationing, the strictest under the law.
From the Willits News:
The immediate effects of the declarations will require Willits businesses to reduce water use by 35 percent compared to the prior year and residential users to use no more than 150 gallons per day or six units per month.
All external watering and washing of hard surfaces is banned.
…
The city has 362 acre feet of water in its reservoir as of Jan. 6.
This is down from 389 acre feet on December 19 and 467 acre feet on Nov. 17.
City projections on how soon the reservoirs will be drained have varied based on the use of water by its customers.
While typical December water demand is typically about 1.5 acre feet per day, in early December 2013 water demand was nearly twice this rate.
The unprecedented string of cold days not only caused pipe leaks but it led consumers to run water to keep pipes from freezing.
According to the USGS, each American on average uses about 80 to 100 gallons of water per day — around 400 gallons a day for the average family of four.
Mendocino County residents are urged to contact a drought hotline before this Wednesday to gauge the extent of the dry conditions in preparation for possible state/federal aid.
From the Ukiah Daily Journal on Friday (Ukiah is Mendocino County seat, and south of Willits):
The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday declared a drought emergency and “imminent threat of disaster,” with reports of wells and other water sources drying up because of record-low rainfall.
“Living here my whole life, I know a lot of our tributaries are not running, and we’ve had reports of people’s springs not running,” said 1st District Supervisor Carre Brown.
The environment has become obvious.
Drought has become common — the ‘new normal’ of life in the nowadays.
From the National Drought Mitigation Center last week on how this dry calamity now stands:
“Most of the recent increase in U.S. drought coverage has been due to a lack of cold-season precipitation in the West,” Rippey said.
“In particular, drought coverage has sharply increased in Oregon, from 38 to 88 percent between Dec. 10 and Jan. 7.
Similarly, Washington had no drought depicted on Dec. 10, but more than half (55 percent) of the state was experiencing drought on Jan. 7.”
“Western drought concerns are most acute in those areas—including California—moving deeper into a third consecutive year of drought,” Rippey said.
“According to the state Department of Water Resources, California’s 154 intrastate reservoirs were collectively brimming with water (125 percent of average storage) on Nov. 30, 2011.
In subsequent years, as drought moved past the one- and two-year marks, storage fell to 97 and 74 percent of average, respectively, on Nov. 30, 2012 and 2013.
Without a sudden reversal in California’s dry weather pattern from January to March 2014, there will be little snow in the Sierra Nevada to melt and feed the reservoir system.”
…
This week’s U.S. Drought Monitor author, Mark Svoboda, said in narrative accompanying the map that in the West, “There seems to be no relief in sight as the calendar flips over to 2014. …
[C]oncern for water supply, fire and other impacts grows each week the rains and snows don’t come.
In fact, many locations in California reported the calendar year 2013 as being the driest on record, smashing previous prior record dry years, including 1976.
One such example is Shasta Dam, where only 16.89 inches was reported in 2013, more than 11 inches below the previous record low of 27.99 inches in 1976.
Shasta’s calendar year average is 62.72 inches.
Upper elevation Sierra station snowpack and snow water equivalent values in California have been abysmal for the Water Year (since October 1) as well.”
And the whole scenario will only get worse. In a scientific study published late last month in Nature Climate Change, ‘Global Warming and Changes in Drought,’ seems to indicate a worsening effect as the planet heats — and this odd, not-so/so conclusion in the paper’s abstract: Increased heating from global warming may not cause droughts but it is expected that when droughts occur they are likely to set in quicker and be more intense.
Warming is not to blame, just the problem with the heat.
And speaking of water, I’m sure you’ve heard by now of the chemical spill/leak last week into the Elk River near Charleston, West Virginia, shutting down the town (the state capitol) and poisoning the drinking/bathing/living water for more than 300,000 people — and is still unresolved.
Also last week, our rich Congress at work:
The House passed the Reducing Excessive Deadline Obligations Act that would ultimately eliminate requirements for the Environmental Protection Agency to review and update hazardous-waste disposal regulations in a timely manner, and make it more difficult for the government to compel companies that deal with toxic substances to carry proper insurance for cleanups, pushing the cost on to taxpayers.
In addition, the bill would result in slower response time in the case of a disaster, requiring increased consultation with states before the federal government calls for cleanup of Superfund sites — where hazardous waste could affect people and the environment.
Sometimes, there’s just too much bullshit to comprehend.
And!
My post-title originally came from the way-well-known this: “The Rain in Spain stays mainly in the Plain!”
However, in an ironic tailspin, I saw this at Wikipedia: Spanish rain does not actually stay mainly in the plain. It falls mainly in the northern mountains. In Spanish, the phrase was translated as La lluvia en Sevilla es una maravilla (The rain in Seville is marvelous). Likewise, it is considered technically incorrect that hurricanes ever in fact happen in Hertford, Hereford, or Hampshire (in the UK), as the only hurricane force (?64 knot) winds occurring in these areas are due to extratropical cyclones which, in spite of having hurricane force winds, are not strictly speaking hurricanes due to their different physical causes and dynamics.
Rain falls where it falls, and where it don’t.