“We’ve now had two dry years,” she said, but “this is all occurring in the context of a longer period, a couple of decades, of generally dry and much warmer conditions.” Jeanine Jones, the interstate resources manager for the California Department of Water Resources, said the current crisis exposes the need for drought forecasting and planning to consider the effects of climate change. Big cities aren’t likely to see major water shortages this summer, but running out of water is a real possibility for some rural areas, especially those that depend on wells. In some parts of the state, local officials have asked residents and businesses to start conserving water. At the California-Oregon border, the drought has pitted farmers against fish once more. Farmers have had to destroy some water-intensive crops in hopes of saving others. The agricultural sector in California has been particularly affected by water shortages, with federal and state allotments drastically cut. Much of the runoff didn’t make it to reservoirs and streams at all because already-parched soils sucked up the water. (You can think of snowpack as a sort of natural reservoir system that releases water over time.)īut in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California and other parts of the lower West, snowpack melted early this year because of higher spring temperatures and other unfavorable conditions. Usually, melting mountain snowpack helps to replenish reservoirs, rivers and soils throughout the spring and summer. The lake, which sits on the border between Nevada and Arizona, is under growing pressure from the prolonged drought, climate change and growing population in the Southwest.Īcross the region, reservoirs are struggling this year, especially in California. Lake Mead, the largest human-made reservoir in the United States, recently hit its lowest level since 1937, following years of decline. Recent snowpack levels are compared with the average for the period of record. For snowpack, available measurements are shown. For all other reservoirs, recent levels are from the end of May 2021 and are relative to the average for the data period of record.
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