SACRAMENTO – California’s drought disaster is real, and could cascade through several levels of the state’s infrastructure. Here’s what could happen:
1. A cutback of 95 percent of water for some farmers and 20 percent for Southern California cities;
2. A resulting loss of hydropower from pumped storage reservoirs;
3. Wildfires.
Throw in the shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, which isn’t caused by the drought, and the electricity crisis could be even worse.
To begin with, an untimely high-pressure “ridge” in the Pacific Ocean about four miles high and 2,000 miles long has caused a three-year drought. As National Geographic described it, “Storms that would normally soak a parched state — and build up California’s snowpack — are bouncing off the dome of high pressure, heading into southern Canada, then riding the jet stream south into the U.S. midwest.”
This high-pressure ridge has diverted the monsoon rainstorms that California depends on for snowpack in the Sierra Mountain Range that fills water reservoirs.
The U.S. Weather Service Climate Prediction Center has forecast that the present drought will last another three months. The 90-day rainfall forecast has been correct about 60 percent of the time in the last 20 years.
The prospects for what Californians call a “March Miracle,” where sudden monsoon rainstorms appear late in the rainy season, are not high. The last time California experienced a “March Miracle” was in 1991.
NORMAL DROUGHT
In California, drought is normal. What California depends on is a wave of monsoon rainstorms in a single year occurring every three to five years to fill reservoirs. When weather conditions result in a skipping of one cycle of monsoon rainstorms, the result in an official drought emergency.
However, a drought crisis also occurs because California has not built any new water reservoirs since 1973.
Full story by Wayne Lusvardi at calwatchdog.com.
