2021 Western Drought

[Larry Caldwell]

We're semi dry farming our garden tomatoes this year. They get a few hours on drip emitters once a week. The plants are looking kind of peaked but they're producing a good amount of very tasty fruit. We dry farm canning tomatoes in normal years but we got less than half the normal rain fall this last winter and less than normal the year before so they got drip emitters this year.

Here's a good article on the causes of the current drought: What’s causing California’s drought?

The Sierras started the spring with a normal snow pack, but it evaporated instead of running off. I haven't seen much discussion of that, but to me it means a lot of dry winds above 5000'.

I have always been interested in atmospheric circulation. Hot air rises of the equator, dropping loads of moisture and creating tropical rain forests. The air then subsides in the subtropics, forming a band of deserts north and south of the equator and driving the trade winds as it sheds angular momentum. The polar subsidence zone forms the polar cold deserts, and the cold stratospheric air pushes strongly south, also shedding angular momentum. This is what is known as the "polar vortex." Lower atmospheric storms can push it off it's polar home, and if it lands where people live it gets really cold and windy.

In between the two subsidence zones are the mid-latitudes, where most of the human race lives. I suspect that a warming atmosphere might expand the subtropical convergence zone, and thus deserts, farther north. This is just speculation, but it makes sense to me. SoCal was already desert, irrigated with water from the north. If the north dries out, the water goes away. Massive floods may refill reservoirs, but the Pineapple Express is warm water and doesn't do anything for the snow pack that carries streams and rivers through the summer drought months.

 

[plowhog]

The Sierras started the spring with a normal snow pack,

No. It was only 59% of historical average this year. That's why everything is so dry, so early.

Final Survey Of The Season Finds California Snowpack At 59% Of Average

With rainfall well below average, the final snowpack survey of the season painted a bleak picture about the coming hotter months in California.

sacramento.cbslocal.com

 

[Solitary Man]

 

[Jstpssng]

If every quarter acre or larger lot in Temperate, non-Arid suburbia had a small vegetable garden the need for irrigation water would be drastically reduced.

I mention this here and a few other places occasionally, often in reference to helping teach people to feed themselves rather than just handing out cards and farm shares. The suggestion is always met with comments similar to what followed yours.
I'm too young to remember WWII and Victory Gardens but did learn about them in school. My mother also stills has a few leftover war ration coupons. We've always raised vegetable gardens anyways so it's easy for me to identify with them.

Yet it's much easier to poo poo and complain than to actually try to make a change.

 

[dirttoys]

Man o man.
I think we can get to the point where everything causes some kind of drain on natural resources.
Life has to be worth living aka “fun” to some extent, if that word is still allowed to be used.
We can’t all stay home under the covers and live in a prison of fear of shortages, germs, fires, droughts and phobias.
All these “news” media outlets do is succeed in scaring the crap out of everyone for ratings. Stop being so scared, try to enjoy your life. Turn off the “news” and take a relaxing walk or do some outdoor work or take a pill if your doctor prescribed them to you to take the edge off.
Cheer-up!

That right there is good advice.

 

[dirttoys]

It's not the news that burnt my parents property, nor the separate fire that threatened my CA property recently. Nor did the news cause this to be the first year since 1977 we have not irrigated our pasture in CA due to no water. And why our 1 acre pond is half depleted where I'm now wondering if our bass will survive. Or why the always-reliable irrigation ditch water in NV is turning off next week.... first time in decades.

Naaahhh ... I just watch the news too much!

Did I mention the smoke filled skies for the last 2 months, with ash raining down on everything?

In blistering drought, California farmers rip up precious almond trees

Crushed by a devastating drought and new water restrictions, Daniel Hartwig had no choice but to pull thousands of precious, fragrant almond trees from his California farm.

phys.org

I couldn't feel more sorry for those affected.

cali has had floods and droughts as long as I can remember. Populations have been allowed to grow without regard to resources. The forestry management practices that were inflicted on private property owners by people that had no idea which way is up are ridiculous in the extreme.

I think unfortunately many of the current challenges were predictable, but, I doubt that makes it any less painful in the moment.

Sorry,

ed

 

[dirttoys]

Over our dead bodies. People who want to live in the desert get to figure out how to survive without water, not how to steal it from more sensible areas to live.

While you would think that would make sense, that is not how history has played out.

 

[dirttoys]

Golf courses should be the very FIRST things cut off.

Hey, hey, there pick on your own hobby!!

Mostly kidding, but, golf courses are just another business, they expected to have water to run their business, and I bet some were even incented by their local gov to start the business.

Cali is a beautiful place, with about 3X more people per square inch than it can support. Poor planning by idiots in office, and corruption at a level most of us can't understand.

The irony, the poor people that have paid confiscatory taxes, and have no freedom to manage their own land, have now been manipulated into blaming everything except the evil folks that got them here...........

But, yea, kill the golf courses and life will be fine.

Best,

 

[dirttoys]

Apologies in advance.

I am so frustrated with climate change I will post this once (why in this thread I don't know), and have it out of my system, hopefully for life.

We are gravely concerned about rising sea levels. So much so, we are willing to let our elected officials force ridiculous changes on us without any real push back. Picking the winner of electric over gas by tax policy and environmental edicts. Changing the landscape of businesses that have employed hundreds of thousands of people over frequently greater than a hundred years. Limiting what we can do with our land, and in some cases our bodies.

If you are of the opinion we can even fully understand our climate, much less manipulate it. If you believe too many of our citizens are stupid enough to live less than 100 feet above sea level, and then too stupid to pack their bags when they wake up every morning and get their feet wet when they get out of bed.

Simple solution:


Take 50% of the money we are using for the green new deal (now called infrastructure), and use it to perfect desalinization technology. If we are too stupid to allow people to build fire breaks on their property, and allow nature to burn and replenish forest as it always has. If we are so stupid that we think just because we had to build the worlds largest aquifer to get water to a dry place, and we let the population grow without any check, we would surely never have an issue.

Perfect desalinization, we could flood the vineyards, water all the lawns and golf courses, and lower sea levels enough to save Florida and NY all at the same time.

Surely if you think we can control a system as vast and nuanced as the global climate, surely getting a little salt out of water should be a no brainer.

Done and again sorry,

ed

 

[bcp]

It would save lots of water to change those golf courses to rifle ranges.



Bruce