![]() ![]() Two were taken to a hospital with hypothermia, fire department spokesman Brian Humphrey said. The Los Angeles Fire Department used a helicopter to rescue four homeless people who were stranded in the river’s major flood control basin. The Los Angeles River and other waterways that normally flow at a trickle or are dry most of the year were raging with runoff on Saturday. “Quite a remarkable storm the last few days with historic amounts of precip and snow down to elevations that rarely see snow,” the Los Angeles-area weather office wrote. Rainfall totals as of late Saturday morning were equally significant, including nearly 38.1cm at Los Angeles County’s Cogswell Dam and nearly 26.6cm in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles. Multiday precipitation totals as of Saturday morning included 205cm of snow at the Mountain High resort in the San Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles and up to 160cm farther east at Snow Valley in the San Bernardino Mountains. Or, as she likes to put it, “the extremes become more extreme.Snow blankets a home in Rancho Cucamonga, California, on Saturday. “As scientists think about the long-term effects of climate change, one of the expectations is that this variability will be enhanced,” Jones said. In an average year, three-quarters of the state’s precipitation falls in Northern and Central California, mostly in the Sierra, NASA experts say.īut Southern California has the highest annual variability of precipitation in the United States, meaning that any year could swing wildly from wet to dry conditions. Precipitation varies across California, and the dry Southern California climate is much different from the wet and snowy Sierra Nevada. Jeanine Jones, the interstate resources manager for the Department of Water Resources, said the state would need about 140% of its average precipitation to reset the water table. “It’s going to take a while … until we start getting some rain, and enough rain where we start recharging groundwater basins or getting enough rainfall that we start seeing water in our rivers and streams again,” Laber said. And though California eventually will get wetter, experts say an extreme weather change is needed to get the state back to normal. NOAA climatologists forecast the present drought to last into 2022 and potentially longer. “All those things add up to not looking good.” “We’ve already had this dry year, we’re in a drought situation, and then trends are that it potentially could be below the low rainfall season again this winter,” said Jayme Laber, senior hydrologist with the National Weather Service’s office in Oxnard. La Niña conditions that typically bring dry winters to California and the Southwest have emerged in the Pacific Ocean, NOAA reported Thursday. “The warm temperatures that have helped make this drought so intense and widespread will continue (and increase) until stringent climate mitigation is pursued and regional warming trends are reversed,” the study says.Ĭalifornia recorded its hottest summer this year, and the extreme heat has parched the landscape.Īnd as the newest water year begins, the state could be in for more of the same. ![]() Increasingly warmer temperatures have evaporated precipitation and melted snowpack much faster than in previous years, according to a recent study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. How bad is it?īut unlike in 1977, the drought effects have been worsened by accelerated climate change. Less rain has meant less water, especially in areas such as the Colorado River, an important source of imported water for Southern California.Ĭalifornia ‘Running out of options’: California resorts to water cutoffs as drought worsensĬalifornia resorts to unprecedented water cutoffs as drought worsens. Drought Monitor, a map updated weekly showing drought-related conditions in the U.S., indicates that over 87% of California is experiencing extreme or exceptional drought, with nearly half the state in the worst category. ![]() “There’s a lot of water, but it comes down to how it’s used.” “The history of California has been written in long droughts,” said Bill Patzert, a retired climatologist who worked for decades at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory studying the effects of climate change. Gavin Newsom has called on Californians to voluntarily reduce water use by 15%, and state officials say they may impose mandatory water restrictions if dryness continues this winter. The current multiyear drought has revived the same fears, as reservoirs are depleted and emergency drought proclamations have been issued in 50 of California’s 58 counties. ![]()
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