Climate Scare Over: Heavy Rain And Snow End California’s 5-Year Drought
The recent onslaught of rain and snow finally brought much-needed relief to northern California, ending a punishing five-year drought, federal officials said Thursday.
“Bye bye drought … Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” tweeted the National Weather Service’s office in Reno, Nev., which monitors parts of the region.
Overall, less than 60% of California remains in drought for the first time since early 2013, according to the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor. A year ago, drought covered 97% of the state.
Stations up and down the Sierra mountain chain reported twice the amount of normal rain and snow for this time of year after snowstorms doubled the vital snowpack there that provides the state with much of its year-round water supply.
“It’s been a nice little miracle month after five bad years,” said meteorologist David Miskus of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who wrote this week’s drought report.
More than a foot of precipitation fell in the Sierra in the past week alone, leaving most major reservoirs at or above average levels, Miskus said.
Too much snow closes ski resorts in California, Nevada
Strawberry Valley, Calif., received 20.7 inches of precipitation, and the Heavenly Ski Area near Lake Tahoe picked up a whopping 12 feet of snow. The excessive snowfall even led to closures of some ski resorts because of blizzard conditions and road closures.
However, much of southern California remains dry, though most not at the most severe level of drought. Only 2% of the state is in that category of “exceptional” drought: an area that stretches from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara. Across southern California, reservoirs and underground water supplies remain below normal, the Drought Monitor said.
It will take additional rain and snow this winter, plus another wet winter next year, to pull southern California out of drought, Miskus said.
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see also
GWPF 21 May 2016: Did Global Warming Cause California’s Drought?
GWPF 3 April 2015: California’s Green Elites And An Engineered Drought
GWPF 9 March 2014: Drought Stokes California’s Class War
Andrew Montford: Droughts Are Not Getting Worse And They Are Not Causing Wars
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‘Permanent drought’ update: UC Davis Prof.: ‘We certainly don’t have a statewide drought right now’ in California
The powerful storms that soaked Northern California over the past week did more than trigger power outages, mudslides and flash floods.
They sent roughly 350 billion gallons of water pouring into California’s biggest reservoirs — boosting their storage to levels not seen in years, forcing dam operators to release water to reduce flood risks and all but ending the five-year drought across much of Northern California, even though it remains in the south, experts said Monday.
“We have to be careful about crying wolf here,” he said. “You have to maintain credibility with the public when there are critically dry years, so you have to call it like it is when conditions improve.”
On Monday much of the state began drying out from the weekend drenching that caused at least three fatalities and triggered flooding in Morgan Hill, Sonoma County, Yosemite and parts of the Sacramento Valley, even as forecasters said another storm system was coming in Tuesday.
The ‘permanent drought’ of California ‘is now virtually over in the northern half of the state’
There has been talk in recent years that this latest drought in California was going to be different this time and more of a “permanent” drought and there was also some talk that European winters would soon be lacking in snow – to say that both of these ideas are being seriously challenged this winter is quite an understatement. In California, incredible amounts of rain have piled up in recent days across low-lying areas of the state, mountains of snow have accumulated in the higher elevations of the Sierra Nevada Mountains – and much more is on the way.
California’s rain and snow
There has been so much snow in recent days across California and several other western states (e.g., Nevada, Colorado) that many ski resorts have been forced to close down. Up to ten feet of snow in the past several days has caused the closure of many roads leading to ski resorts such as Woodward Tahoe and Kirkwood in California and the most extreme snow report has come from Mount Rose where 25 feet has accumulated during the recent series of storms. Ski conditions in the Sierra Nevada will no doubt be excellent for weeks to come and more snow is on the way. Snowpack in the Sierra Nevada – and more specifically snowmelt – is crucial to California’s water supply during the rest of the year long after the snow has ended.
Reservoirs in California have seen a significant boost to water content, according to Mercury News, with upwards of 350 billion gallons accounted for as of the last round of storms. Since January 1st, Lake Tahoe has actually risen nearly a foot as a result of the heavy rain and snow according to the National Weather Service. The drought in California actually started to improve quite a bit during the last several months as outlined here and it is now virtually over in the northern half of the state. The first storm in the series arrived in the middle of last week and brought rain to northern and central California. A second storm occurred over the weekend (January 7 and 8) and brought heavy rains again to mostly northern and central California although southern California also received significant amounts. This second event led to widespread flooding, downed trees and mudslides; especially, in the Sierra Nevada where hurricane force winds took place and Interstate 80 was …
Tillerson: Climate change not ‘imminent national security threat’
Testifying before the Senate, Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson says that climate change is not an “imminent national security threat” as Senate democrats claim.
What Global Warming? Chart Shows Damage From Weather Disaster Is Sharply Declining
Damage from weather-related disasters is in sharp decline, according to data compiled by University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke, Jr.
The chart indicates that the cost of weather-related disasters as a proportion of the global economy is declining. Data for the chart comes from the the reinsurance company Munich Re, the United Nations and Pielke’s own research.
Damage from weather events in 2015 was much less costly than expected, according to a study by an insurance industry group.
Severe winter weather has caused most insurance industry losses in recent years. Global warming and El Niño — a weather event that warms up ocean temperatures in South America, causing the United states to get unusually warm for a year — abated these insurance costs, according to Munich Reinsurance America, Inc.
Historically, hurricanes are the insurance industry’s biggest weather-related expense, but no hurricane made landfall in the U.S. during 2015. Additionally, no major hurricane has made landfall in the U.S. in the last decade, setting a new record. Scientists, however, expect global warming will lead to fewer, but slightly stronger, hurricanes.
Deaths from natural disasters and weather also dropped significantly, according to the study and other sources. Natural disasters claimed 280 lives in the U.S. in 2015 and 270 lives in 2014, which is dramatically below the 30-year annual average of 580 deaths.…
Climate Activists Seek To Redefine What A Hurricane Is ‘So We’ll Have More Of Them’ – Every storm now will be ‘unprecedented’
…Latest On California’s Drought: Total precipitation in past 12 months up slightly above average
By Paul Homewood
Now that NOAA data for September has been published, we can look at Californian precipitation for the last hydrologic year, which runs Oct to Sep.
Total precipitation in the last 12 months ended up slightly above average. Prior to this, there was a run of four particularly dry years.
Maybe one reason why the recent dry spell has appeared to bee so pronounced is that the state had a number of unusually wet years in the 1980s and 90s.
But looking at the longer term trends, there have been similarly dry spells, notably in the 1920s and early 30s.
Reservoir levels across most of the state are either at or close to average.
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/resapp/getResGraphsMain.action
New Melones is the one which is significantly down. Yet, during the 1976/7 drought, it was effectively empty.
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/resapp/resDetailOrig.action?resid=NML
Statewide, reservoirs are 82% of the historical average, compared to 36% in 1977, based on September numbers.
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/reservoirs/STORAGEW
California could certainly do with a couple of years of good rainfall, but things now appear to be manageable.…
Flashback: Experts Blamed ‘Global Cooling’ For The Widespread Droughts Of The 1970s
How Global Cooling Led To The Widespread Droughts Of The 1970s
http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/journals/noaa/QC851U461974oct.pdf#page=5
In October 1974, the NOAA Magazine published this piece by Patrick Hughes about the detrimental effects of 30 years of global cooling (yes, the cooling that warmists insist never happened!)
http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/journals/noaa/QC851U461974oct.pdf#page=5
We are told that global warming has led to a worse climate, with more extreme weather.
Yet every account seems to bear out that the reverse is true, and that the warming experienced between 1890 and 1940 was actually hugely beneficial.
FOOTNOTE
Discussing Northern Hemisphere temperatures, NOAA state that “the total change has averaged about one half degree Centigrade” since 1940.
Yet, according to HADCRUT smoothed annual averages, the drop is only about 0.2C, between 1940 and 1973. (A simple year on year comparison shows that 1973 was actually slightly warmer than 1940).
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/diagnostics.html
Flashback 1981: Climatologists blame recurring droughts & floods on a global cooling trend that could trigger massive tragedies for mankind’
…Flashback NOAA 1974: ‘Extreme weather events blamed on global cooling’
In the 1970s, extreme weather events were blamed on global cooling
Interestingly, in the 1970s it was common for severe weather anomalies (for example, the deadly catastrophic drought plodding throughout the continent of Africa) to be linked to the global cooling occurring at that time. In 1974, NOAA acknowledged that many climate scientists had linked the drought and other extreme weather anomalies to the -0.5°C drop in temperatures that had occurred from the 1940s to 1970s.
“In the Sahelian zone of Africa south of the Sahara, the countries of Chad, The Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, and Upper Volta are enduring a drought that in some areas has been going on for more than six years now, following some 40 previous years of abundant monsoon rainfall. And the drought is spreading—eastward into Ehtiopia and southward into Dahomey, Egypt, Guinea, Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia, Tanzania, and Zaire. … Many climatologists have associated this drought and other recent weather anomalies with a global cooling trend and changes in atmospheric circulation which, if prolonged, pose serious threats to major food-producing regions of the world. … Annual average temperatures over the Northern Hemisphere increased rather dramatically from about 1890 through 1940, but have been falling ever since. The total change has averaged about one-half degree Centigrade, with the greatest cooling in higher latitudes. A drop of only one or two degrees Centigrade in the annual average temperature at higher latitudes can shorten the growing season so that some crops have to be abandoned. … [T]he average growing season in England is already two weeks shorter than it was before 1950. Since the late 1950’s, Iceland’s hay crop yield has dropped about 25 percent, while pack ice in waters around Iceland and Greenland ports is becoming the hazard to navigation it was during the 17th and 18th centuries. … Some climatologists think that if the current cooling trend continues, drought will occur more frequently in India—indeed, through much of Asia, the world’s hungriest continent. … Some climatologists think that the present cooling trend may be the start of a slide into another period of major glaciation, popularly called an “ice age.”
But, like now, there were still a collection of scientists willing to reconsider the common-knowledge “beliefs” of the time. For example, Boer and Higuchi (1980) investigated the “belief” that more extreme climate variability accrued as temperatures cooled, concluding that …