The California Flooding Drought, Can It End Now?

Having been under nearly continuous rain for a week or two, I’d really like the present “drought” to end before it drowns me.

The Drought View:

We saw an earlier version of this map in the prior Flooding Drought posting.

This is an “updated” version that doesn’t look a whole lot different. From:

http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/

8 March 2016 “Drought” monitory page

Note that the angry deep red continues throughout the northern Central Valley and up into the mountains. Note, too, the “abnormally dry” yellow over east Texas and Louisiana where the current news is of flooding of Biblical Proportions rather than drought.

Now the question I have is simple: IF we are supposedly in a drought of Biblical Proportions, just WHY am I suffering from so much rain and just WHY are the stream gauges running near full? Can’t we call it an end to the drought when we’re flooding? Here’s the hazards map from http://www.nws.noaa.gov/largemap.php

Weather Warnings and Hazards 13 March 2016

The light salmon color is winter storm warnings while the greens are degrees of flooding.

Here’s the Weather Channel weather for the area:

Weather Channel West Coast Storms

Just so you can see that it isn’t just one source saying we’re all wet. And will continue to be.

Oh, and just for grins, here’s the Stream Guage readings. Note that the green is normal(ish) while the blue is way too much water at greater than 90th percentile. From: http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/rt/

California Stream Gauges Real Time 14 March 2016

Look carefully and you can find some drought down near Los Angeles (that is in a natural desert). But pretty much everything in the northern 1/2 is flooding (with a few merely “normal” spots…) while even in the South, there are a bunch of ‘normal green’ dots.

NOAA lets you make custom time interval maps from the bottom of this page: http://water.weather.gov/precip/. Here’s first, the 2015 full year map, then the present month map:

2015 USA Precipitation Percent map

Note that grey is normal to 110% of normal, while yellow into deep red goes to zero percent, and the greens blue dark blue to to 300% and the purple bands goes to 600% of normal. While I might expect “normal” to be from, oh, 90%-110% or 95%-105%, they think you can only be normal if you are over 100%… Here’s January of this year:

USA precipitation percents January 2016

March is not yet ready, and while February was dry, March has been worse than January as we’ve been having our “Atmospheric River” events again. (They happen every few years…).

So my questions are simple. IF Global Warming was supposed to be causing the drought in Texas, how did it also cause the 2015 excess rain in Texas? IF Global Warming is supposedly causing our present “drought” in California, how come the stream gauges are at 90th percentile and we’re under storm watches and warnings with huge snowfall in the Sierra Nevada? Could it be it’s all just our normal dry-then-wet weather cycles?

From: http://www.cnrfc.noaa.gov/awipsProducts/RNOWRKCLI.php

I’ve bolded a bit. Note that PON is percent of normal for that period, so the first PON is % of normal for this water year to date:

California Climate Station Precipitation Summary

SRUS56 KRSA 140200
RR4RSA

CLIMATE STATION PRECIPITATION SUMMARY
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE / CALIFORNIA NEVADA RFC / SACRAMENTO CA
700 PM PDT SUN MAR 13 2016

 WARNING!! THIS PRODUCT IS AUTOMATED AND UPDATED ONCE PER DAY
           THIS PRODUCT CONTAINS PRELIMINARY CLIMATE DATA

 DATA REPRESENT PRECIPITATION ENDING AT 500 PM PDT ON 03/13/2016


                           SINCE    OCT 01-       OCT 01-       OCT 01-  OCT 01-
                           MIDNITE  MAR 13        MAR 13        MAR 13   SEP 30
CLIMATE STATION            TOTAL    2016     PON  2015     PON  NORMAL   NORMAL
-------------------------  -------  ------------  ------------  -------  -------

...NORTHERN CALIFORNIA...

MEDFORD OR                    0.12   16.52   129   11.42    89    12.84    18.35
KLAMATH FALLS OR              0.19    8.56    96    8.88    99     8.96    14.96
CRESCENT CITY                 0.92   60.27   127   31.03    65    47.53    64.03
EUREKA                        0.38   41.68   137   24.90    82    30.49    40.33
UKIAH                         1.05   33.19   112   22.95    77    29.63    37.35
MONTAGUE / SISKIYOU           0.14   11.95    99    9.99    83    12.08    18.47
ALTURAS                       0.11    9.27   113    5.65    69     8.22    14.17
MOUNT SHASTA CITY             0.74   35.27   108   30.25    93    32.59    43.21
REDDING                       0.35   30.13   113   20.32    76    26.59    34.62
SACRAMENTO EXEC AIRPORT       0.23   14.36    97   13.42    91    14.77    18.52
SACRAMENTO - CSUS             0.31   14.54    90       M     M    16.13    20.27
BLUE CANYON AIRPORT*          3.30   55.50   114   29.91    61    48.82    64.62
SANTA ROSA                    0.71   29.20    98   22.89    77    29.85    36.28
SAN FRANCISCO                    M       M     M       M     M        M    23.65
SFO INT'L AIRPORT             0.77   16.11    94   14.99    88    17.08    20.65
OAKLAND AIRPORT               0.53   14.60    87   13.24    79    16.71    20.81
LIVERMORE                     0.39   13.09   103   12.01    94    12.74    15.71
MOUNTAIN VIEW - MOFFETT       0.30   11.36    97   12.57   107    11.76    14.68
SAN JOSE                      0.50   12.71   104   11.84    97    12.19    14.90

Since in Northern California our “water year to date” (that starts in October) is pretty much absolutely normal or above average rainfall: Just why in hell are we being told “normal to flooding” is a drought and we have a map covered in red for severe drought? Note the number of “above 100” in that first PON column.

Central California is about the same:

...CENTRAL CALIFORNIA...

STOCKTON                      0.45   13.21   120    9.44    86    11.04    14.06
MODESTO                       0.79   13.36   133    9.35    93    10.07    13.11
MERCED                        0.51   10.88   114    6.01    63     9.53    12.50
MADERA                        0.39   11.28   121    4.26    46     9.33    12.02
FRESNO                        0.17   12.87   149    4.59    53     8.63    11.50
HANFORD                       0.06    7.41    95    4.05    52     7.78    10.10
BAKERSFIELD                   0.00    3.91    79    4.53    92     4.92     6.47
BISHOP                        0.00    2.00    53    0.73    19     3.80     5.18
SALINAS                       0.39   12.61   125    8.77    87    10.07    12.83
PASO ROBLES                   0.02    7.90    77    8.05    78    10.26    12.78
SANTA MARIA                      T    7.89    71    6.70    60    11.08    13.95

Though at the far southern end of it, you start to get a bit dry. There is a drought in Southern California, but that’s a far far smaller area than shown on the “Drought Maps”.

...SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA...

SANDBERG                      0.00    6.14    60    6.81    67    10.20    12.33
PALMDALE                      0.00    4.09    63    3.71    57     6.50     8.30
LANCASTER                     0.00    3.67    61    4.32    72     6.01     7.38
SANTA BARBARA                 0.00    9.65    67    8.82    61    14.36    17.76
CAMARILLO                     0.00    5.41    42    8.01    61    13.03    15.22
BURBANK - BOB HOPE               T    7.21    51    7.03    50    14.06    17.31
LAX INT'L AIRPORT             0.00    6.31    59    6.71    63    10.69    12.82
LOS ANGELES / USC             0.00    6.54    53    7.40    60    12.26    14.93
LONG BEACH                    0.00    4.76    46    6.86    67    10.29    12.26
FULLERTON                     0.00    5.05    43    5.33    46    11.70    13.88
IRVINE - JOHN WAYNE           0.00    4.61    41    5.74    51    11.28    13.33
OCEANSIDE                     0.00    6.07    55    5.88    53    11.12    13.66
RAMONA                        0.00   11.35    91    7.44    59    12.54    16.04
SAN DIEGO - LINDBERGH         0.00    6.83    82    6.50    79     8.28    10.34
ONTARIO                       0.00    6.09    49    8.43    68    12.38    15.04
RIVERSIDE                     0.00    4.69    46    4.78    47    10.23    12.40
PALM SPRINGS                  0.00    2.47    57    2.09    48     4.35     5.74
THERMAL                       0.00    1.63    68    0.77    32     2.38     3.20
CAMPO                         0.00    7.34    62    6.35    54    11.81    15.73
BARSTOW - DAGGETT             0.00    1.43    55    1.80    69     2.62     4.06
NEEDLES                       0.00    1.40    48    2.40    82     2.94     4.62

But not Nevada until you get down to the southern tip near Las Vegas (also red and yellow on the “drought” map)

...NEVADA...

RENO                             T    6.35   132    2.92    61     4.81     7.40
WINNEMUCCA                       T    6.83   157    3.79    87     4.35     8.28
ELKO                             T    7.08   130    2.78    51     5.44     9.91
EUREKA NV                     0.00    6.42   157    2.02    49     4.09     9.00
ELY                           0.00    7.30   177    2.05    50     4.12     9.76
TONOPAH                       0.00    4.83   203    0.92    39     2.38     5.24
DESERT ROCK - MERCURY         0.00    4.33   130    2.49    75     3.34     5.93
NORTH LAS VEGAS               0.00    1.76    52    2.28    67     3.39     5.37
LAS VEGAS - MCCARRAN          0.00    1.96    73    1.99    74     2.68     4.19
KINGMAN AZ                    0.00    2.86    61    4.83   103     4.67     8.39
YUMA AZ                       0.00    0.63    34    0.94    51     1.86     3.30

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PON IS THE PERCENT OF NORMAL FOR THE PERIOD
NORMALS ARE 1981-2010 AVERAGES

So we’ve got over 150% to 200% of normal rainfall and it’s a drought? Really?

Look, I’m sympathetic to the LA Folks having a water shortage, they live in a natural desert with sporadic rainfall. But that in no way justifies calling what is happening in the northern half of the State (or of Nevada) a “drought” when it just isn’t.

The “Drought” Monitor Map is broken, tells lies and loves Porkies, and needs to be ignored, thrown out, or fixed.

IMHO it is just another propaganda tool. Then again, maybe I’m just grumpy. Being kept inside for a few weeks from excessive rains can make a fellow feel grumpy when he’s being told it is a drought and he can go mow the lawn… (that is growing profusely without being watered, watering we’ve been told not to do since we’re in a “drought”…with slogans like “Brown is the new Green” on ex-lawn posters…)

Update

Down in comments, this graph was linked. It illustrates the “issue” rather clearly:

Northern California Precipitation vs prior high and low extremes 14Mar2016

Here we are in an above average rainfall situation, and the “drought monitor” is saying we are in a severe drought. That’s just wrong.

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