The California Drought Has Ended -- Not a Bakken Story

Note: in the story below, it is noted that the snow pack in the mountains of southern California is 165 percent of normal. Folks are talking about keeping the ski lifts open through July. Seriously. So much for global warming.

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Anyway, I digress. Here's the story:

Three years ago, there was a precursor to the current "MillionDollarWay." With literally one click, I purposely deleted a year's worth of some pretty good posts. I wish I had been more selective and saved some of the better posts.

I'm reminded of that because of the story in the LA Times today that the drought in California is finally over (and has been over for quite some time, but the politicians finally got around to acknowledging it).

"Official pronouncements on drought always seem to lag common sense by about three to six months," says Keith Coolidge, spokesman for the Delta Stewardship Council, a recently created entity that will design a more reliable and fish-friendlier system for delivering water south.

But the drought is over. And much of the hype about the drought was politically motivated (I am shocked! I am shocked!)

Schwarzenegger's drought designation — which facilitated water transfers from haves to have-nots — stayed in effect through succeeding years of 83% and 104% spring snow packs, hardly meeting Webster's definition.

Certainly there was a court-caused drought, of sorts. Federal judges, trying to preserve the endangered tiny delta smelt and declining Chinook salmon, tightened the valve on San Joaquin Valley irrigation. It must have helped the salmon. They're roaring back.

The delta, where the snow-fed Sacramento and San Joaquin river drainages converge, is the largest estuary on the west coast of the Americas. It's also California's main water hub, the source of drinking water for 24 million people and irrigation for 3 million acres.

Finally last week, the drought tag no longer could hold water. State hydrologists measured the Sierra snowpack at 165% of normal, the deepest in 16 years.

Some media outlets were comparing the recent drought to the drought of the 1930's and that's what got my dander up. I even sent letters to the editors of some of these publications calling them out on that preposterous comparison.

By the way, how much water are we talking about?

One day last week, the Sacramento River system, including overflow into bypasses, was producing roughly 180,000 cubic feet of water per second. That's the size equivalent of 180,000 basketballs rolling by each second. Put another way, it's around four acre-feet — enough water to supply four families of four for a year — tumbling past Sacramento each second.

The story is similar to the current Missouri river, US Army Corps of Engineers, and fracking story in the Bakken.

So, some comments:

1. I am impressed that one of the most liberal-leaning newspapers has noted that there "was a court-caused drought, of sorts."

2. Another lost opportunity during the "lost decade" in which a proper perspective could have prevented much of the court-induced drought.

3. The drought ends during the period of time when global warming continued to worsen. I thought global warming was going to cause worse droughts.