Deep snows ease California’s drought
UNITED STATES: Winter storms that have dumped snow several metres deep in parts of California during the past week have raised hopes the state’s worst drought in modern times is near an end.
Officials from the United States Drought Monitor said yesterday that well over 30 per cent of the state was no longer in a drought. Last week the figure stood at 18 per cent.
With further storms to come next week, optimism is growing that this winter could finally restore reservoir and groundwater levels across the parched region.
Since it began in 2012, the drought has damaged agriculture and forced the operators of lavishly irrigated hotels, tourist attractions and golf courses to alter their habits. Front lawns across southern California have turned brown under hosepipe bans.
In 2014, the governor declared an emergency, saying the state was facing ‘‘perhaps the worst drought that California has ever seen since records [began] about 100 years ago’’.
Some experts said it was the worst dry spell in more than 1000 years. However, the storms have changed all that.
There have been human costs, with some deaths, but the new drought map shows a swathe of northern California, where the rain and snow has been heaviest, out of drought altogether.
In the San Francisco Bay area and inland towards Nevada, thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes because of flooding rivers.
In Guerneville, Sonoma County, the Russian River, the second-largest in the state, burst its banks after a combination of melting snow and more than 30 centimetres of rain in the past week. The waters peaked at 11.5m, their deepest since New Year’s Eve 2005. – The Times