Sunshine burning-off some misty, thin coastal fog this Wednesday morning on California’s north coast as we continue unabated through some gorgeous weather — maybe tripled-digit temperatures away from the shoreline.
Despite bullshit-asshole The Donald proclaiming last Friday: ‘“They don’t understand — nobody understands it,” he said, declaring at one point: “There is no drought. They turn the water out into the ocean.”‘
(Illustration: Most-recent view of California’s drought (last week), found here).
Off the obvious, as depicted in the Department of Agriculture’s drought monitor (shown above-click to enlarge), which appears even more graphic when viewed on the countrywide version. If it can be believed, The Donald seems to be getting much-more delusional in his shit-for-brains tomfoolery, growing in turd-like fashion — a real sleaze.
Meanwhile, the drought and its consequences are real. Water problems are real, And way-most-likely, a situation that’s only to get worse — especially in our coming fire season.
A review from Slate:
Add climate change on top, and California is still heading toward drought disaster.
A warming spring season means the state’s crucial snowpack now melts much faster than in the past, creating a false sense of security before running out entirely.
So although this year’s snowpack was near normal on April 1, six weeks later it’s already down to just 35 percent of normal for late May.
In a few more weeks—at this rate—it’ll be gone entirely.
Basically, it was an “El Niño in the streets, La Niña in the sheets” kind of winter for the entire West Coast.
Seattle wound up with its rainiest rainy season on record, something unheard of for an El Niño year, which typically dries out the Pacific Northwest.
And then in some parts of Southern California, the drought’s severity actually ticked upward slightly since the start of the rainy season — and that’s what we’d expect with a typical La Niña pattern, not El Niño.
(We are currently in the transitional period between these two weather events.)
And the wooden key:
Whatever the reason for the weird El Niño on the West Coast, the result is Southern California remains locked into its worst drought on record.
Going into the state’s six-month dry season, for the near-term at least, fire conditions there are only going to get worse.
The drought has already had widespread ramifications.
By the U.S. Forest Service’s count, 40 million trees statewide have died during the five-year drought, 29 million in just 2015.
Dead trees are like matchsticks for forest fires—Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, told the San Francisco Chronicle that fire danger has markedly increased as a result.
“No level of rain is going to bring the dead trees back,” Berlant said.
“We’re talking trees that are decades-old that are now dead. Those larger trees are going to burn a lot hotter and a lot faster. We’re talking huge trees in mass quantity surrounding homes.”
A much-colorful, self-awareness, ‘nobody understands it‘…
(And if you notice the drought-map above, where I’m at hasn’t a trace of any-type drought — Humboldt, tiny Del Norte just above us, and land-locked Siskiyou off to the northeast).