44% of state falling back into drought

Severe dry conditions now exist in highly populated areas, a national monitor says.

PHILLIPS STATION, Calif. — California is rapidly plunging back into drought, with severe conditions now existing in Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties — home to onefourth of the state’s population — a national drought monitor said.

The weekly report by the U.S. Drought Monitor, a project of government agencies and other partners, shows 44% of the state is now considered to be in a moderate drought. It’s a jump from just the previous week, when the figure was 13%.

“It’s not nearly where we’d like to be,” Frank Gehrke, a state official, said after carrying out manual measurements of winter snowfall in the Sierra Nevada, which supplies water to millions of Californians in a good, wet year.

Overall, the vital snowpack Thursday stood at less than one-third of normal for the date.

California lifted a state of emergency less than a year ago, ending cutbacks that at the peak of the drought mandated 25% conservation by cities and towns, devastated generations of native salmon and other wildlife, made household wells run dry in the state’s middle and compelled farmers to dig deep, costly wells.

A rainy winter last year in the state’s north finally snapped the worst of that drought.

The new figures from national drought monitors came amid growing concern among officials about another dry winter. The dry spell is acute in Southern California. Los Angeles and some surrounding areas have had only one significant storm in nearly a year, and it triggered deadly mudslides. The region is now seeing record-setting heat.

The readings Thursday show the drought has worsened to the severe category in 5% of the state. But the figures were far better than those during the peak of the state’s epic dry spell, when 99.9% of California was in some stage of drought.