Thick-gray clouds on an early Thursday, hanging-low along California’s north coast — might be more fog than cloud, sometime hard to reckon, but whatever, supposedly should be clearing fairly-quickly this morning.
The NWS forecasts dry weather through middle of next week, but for today, a rare use of the word, ‘Breezy,’ with a small logo of a wind farm — calls for gusts close to 30 mph, but they always seem to underestimate that shit a lot, at least in the sound. So indeed, this afternoon could be that ‘word.’

In California as a whole-enchilada, the increasingly popular ‘word‘ is ‘drought,’ or maybe a Left Coastal hyphenated-word like ‘drought-water,’ as apparently reality has arrived for going dry —  a new survey released yesterday found 70 percent say the state’s water supply is our biggest problem, ‘…highest level of concern since pollsters began asking the question six years ago.’

And making a shitty thing even more shitty — this morning from Fortune:

A new report from the Brookings Institution that examined recent Census data found that Americans are flooding to areas affected by drought.
From 2000 through July 2014, the United States’ population surged by 45.2 million — 25.8 million or 57 percent of that growth happened in counties in some sort of drought, specifically areas in California and the Southwest.
Brookings reports that the influx of residents in these regions reflects the evolving labor and housing markets, but it also has “far-reaching implications for water infrastructure.”
…
“The largest population gains,” Brookings says, “have often been concentrated in the driest counties overall.”

You’d think, crazy, huh?
Especially since locals are just now catching the spirit of the drought’s severity — noteworthy numbers off that new survey via the San Jose Mercury News:

The Public Policy Institute of California’s poll found that 39 percent of Golden State residents believe the most important issue is “water and drought” — almost twice the 20 percent who are most concerned with jobs and the economy.
The concern varies widely by region: 53 percent of Central Valley residents mentioned it as the most pressing issue; 42 percent of Bay Area residents did so; and only 31 percent did so in Los Angeles, which is reliant on water brought down from Northern California.
…
And only 28 percent say people in their part of the state are doing enough to respond to the drought, while 60 percent say their neighbors are not doing enough.
“There’s still a lot of belief out there that it’s up to the other people in the region to do more than they’re currently doing,” said Mark Baldassare, the PPIC’s president and CEO.
…
Almost half of Californians — 47 percent — approve of Brown’s handling of the drought in general, while 38 percent disapprove and 15 percent say they don’t know; among likely voters, 44 percent approve, 47 percent disapprove, and 10 percent don’t know.

In this fashion, folks will become more acquainted with those couple of ‘words‘ exacerbating California’s drought — climate change.

(Illustration above: ‘California Water Map,’ found here).