La Niña returns, governor declares statewide drought emergency

Kim Harris

Managing Editor

With the return of La Niña last week, water officials are predicting drought conditions will continue to worsen throughout the state of California.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency's Climate Prediction Center announced the development of La Niña in the Pacific Ocean Thursday, Oct. 14, saying it could last into next spring, signaling bad news for drought-stricken areas of the west, including California.

The announcement marks the second year in a row that La Niña, which usually results in a drier-than-average winter for those in the southwest, has developed, according to NOAA officials.

"Our scientists have been tracking the potential development of a La Niña since this summer, and it was a factor in the above-normal hurricane season forecast, which we have seen unfold," Mike Halpert, deputy director of NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, said. "La Niña also influences weather across the country during the winter, and it will influence our upcoming temperature and precipitation outlooks." 

This La Nina is expected to last through the early spring 2022. For the upcoming winter season, which extends from December 2021 through February 2022, there is an 87% chance of La Niña and that means bad news for Californians.

Nearly all California counties continue to suffer with extreme or exceptional drought, according to the Thursday, Oct. 21, U.S. Drought Monitor data and water experts have said that California isn't ready for what some are now says is the worst drought since record-keeping began in 1896.

"We are in worse shape than we were before the last drought, and we are going to be in even worse shape after this one," Jay Lund, co-director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at University of California at Davis, said.

Despite the warnings and lessons learned from the last drought, the state still isn't ready, according to Public Policy Institute Senior Fellow Jeffery Mount.

"The universal truism is that by the time you react to a drought it's too late to react to a drought," Mount said. "The majority of things you have to do to mitigate impacts have to be done before the drought."

Governor Gavin Newsom declared the entire state of California in a drought emergency Tuesday, Oct. 19. Previously all but eight counties, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, San Bernardino, Ventura, Imperial and San Francisco, were included in the declaration. The move came about after water conservation efforts failed to produce the hoped-for results.

"As the western U.S. faces a potential third year of drought, it's critical that Californians across the state redouble our efforts to save water in every way possible," Newsom said in a statement. "With historic investments and urgent action, the state is moving to protect our communities, businesses and ecosystems from the immediate impacts of the drought emergency while building long-term water resilience to help the state meet the challenge of climate change impacts making droughts more common and more severe."

When the original declaration was issued in July, Newsom issued a call for Californians to voluntarily cut back their water use by 15% below last year's level, something that could have saved the state as much as 850,000 acre-feet of water over the next year, or enough to supply more than 1.7 million households for a year. The latest state figures, however, showed that urban water use in August was cut by just 5%.

While household water usage has increased in some areas, it's still less than what was being used per capita before the last drought, CalMatters reported.

"Between 2013 and 2016, Californians on average reduced their residential use by 30%. Since then, per capita water use has ticked up, but Californians used 16% less water in recent months than they did in 2013, CalMatters said.

The emergency declaration requires local water suppliers to implement water shortage contingency plans to respond to local conditions and prepare for the possibility of another dry year.

The general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which manages water deliveries to 26 agencies in six counties, serving 19 million people, said conditions require a "united, statewide response."

"All of our communities across the state must do what we can to conserve our limited water resources," Adel Hagekhalil said in a statement. "Southern Californians have done a great job becoming more water efficient in recent years, and Metropolitan has worked alongside them to adjust our operations and increase our calls for conservation to ensure the region has water to get through this drought. But given the increasing severity of conditions, we all need to step up and immediately cut back our water use even more."

Hagekhalil said the MWD board next month will consider calling on its member agencies to implement mandatory conservation measures.

"These plans, which are specific to the needs of each community, will help promote the water savings needed to ensure that the entire state has the water it needs, should these historically dry conditions continue for another year," Hagekhalil said. "In addition, Metropolitan is taking steps in the coming months to expand our conservation programs, including offering new rebates to promote water savings in homes and businesses, so we continue to be your partners in saving water. And looking ahead, we are ensuring long-term reliability through our One Water approach, including increased investments in local water supplies such as reuse and recycling."

Much of the state has received less than half of average rain and snowfall since October with some areas seeing as little as a quarter, and with La Niña arriving that isn't expected to change.

For most of Northern California, the past two years have been the second driest on record.

Already, the water stored in major reservoirs is far below normal as some rivers' runoff has dipped below the last drought's levels. Lake Oroville, which stores water delivered as far away as San Diego, has dropped to just under half of its historic average for this time of year.

"We've had dry springs before, but that is just astonishing," Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles and The Nature Conservancy, said. "And we're still a few months out from seeing the worst of things."

Drought Monitor shows alarming data

The U.S. Drought Monitor weekly report dated Oct. 21, shows that much of the state is now in extreme to exceptional drought, with the percentage of the area in exceptional drought now at 45.66%. The percentage of the state in extreme drought now sits at 87.18% and the percentage of the state in severe drought remains at 93.81% as compared to one year ago when only 12.74% and 35.61% of the state were in extreme and severe drought, respectively.

In a nutshell, those numbers mean that all but 12.82% of the state is experiencing extreme drought, with little relief in sight.

Reservoir levels continue to drop

Water levels in major reservoirs have dropped far below historic averages according to data released online by the California Department of Water Resources. Over the past month, Lake Perris dropped from 85% to 83% capacity and reservoirs to the north such as Pine Flat Lake (20%) San Luis Reservoir (10%) and even Folsom Lake (22%) are dangerously low and with no measurable snow pack in the state, the likelihood of lake levels improving is virtually nonexistent.

For tips on saving water, visit www.saveourwater.com.

Learn more about current drought conditions, the state's response and informational resources available to the public at the state's new drought preparedness website, https://drought.ca.gov.

Kim Harris can be reached by email at [email protected].