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published on February 8, 2017 - 2:47 AM
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After five years of enduring the worst drought in California’s recorded history, farmers, community leaders, manufacturers and others who depend on water have had reason to be excited in the last few weeks.

 

That’s because areas of the state, including the Central Valley, that had been listed as being in extreme or severe drought had their drought designations downgraded by federal officials thanks to heavy rainfall across much of the state.

In fact, experts say this past month was among the wettest Januarys ever recorded, and the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains is at about 200 percent above average levels for this time of year.

It’s a far cry from conditions last year, when the winter was so dry that the U.S. Drought Monitor map had most of California — including all of the Valley — colored in cherry red or darker, signifying extreme to exceptional drought conditions.

The latest map, citing conditions from Jan. 24, has most of the state colored in beige yellow or gold, signifying abnormally dry, moderate drought and severe drought conditions from Central California to Southern California, with only portions of Los Angeles and Ventura counties still in red.

And the northern part of the state is white, signifying drought conditions no longer exist there.

To sum it up, Fresno County Farm Bureau Executive Director Ryan Jacobsen, said this winter has been “phenomenal,” but neither he nor most Valley farmers take the high rainfall and snowfall totals over the past month and a half as a sign the drought is over.

Brian Ochs, a meteorologist and climate program manager at the National Weather Service’s Hanford office agrees.

“I know that our office and other weather offices in the Central Valley were getting a lot of questions from various people — whether it be the public or the media. They are asking if the drought is over. It’s not over,” he said.

Simply put, it might take five or six years of consecutive wet winters and springs to fix what has occurred over the last five years of drought, Ochs explained.

“We have to stop and think and put this in perspective. All of the past five years of drought are not going to be made up in one rainfall year,” said Scott Borgioli, a meteorologist and owner of WeatherAg.com, a Visalia-based forecasting service for the agriculture industry.

That’s if California doesn’t experience another drought in the next few years, he added.

And as wet as this winter has been so far — with a new series of storms that hit Northern California and extended as far south as Fresno late this week — Borgioli said current, long-range forecasts through the rest of winter and the coming spring give only 50-50 odds that the wetter-than-normal weather might continue.

And the odds are about the same on whether the spring will be warmer than average, which might result in large portions of the Sierra snowpack melting early and flowing down into the Valley ahead of when it’s most needed, in the dry summer months, Ochs added.

Not that the news is all bad, as the Valley’s soil has gotten a good soaking, which could result in less crop irrigation needing to be done during late spring and early summer.

Jacobsen noted that releases of surface water to farms and communities from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the Friant-Kern Canal should be at about 20 percent of normal allocations, which is well below what farmers want but more than last year’s allocation of about 5 percent and 0 percent the two prior years.

Still, that extra surface water will come in handy, as the recent rains may not have much effect on wells for farms and homes any time soon.

That’s because water is slow to move underground, so rainwater from recent storms could take a year to as many as 10 years to percolate into underground aquifers, so farmers and homeowners with dry or declining wells aren’t likely to see improvement this summer, experts say.

Near rivers, where the soil is coarsest, the rain water may percolate into aquifers by late this year, but on the Valley’s west side, it could take a decade, said Sargeant Green, a hydrologist and water management specialist at Fresno State.

And once those aquifers start filling, their capacities to hold water may have declined, as large portions of the Valley floor have sunk down as much as 10 feet in some places due to the shortage of water in the aquifers beneath them.

As such, “We do need to be careful in our water use, because our deepest water reservoirs are the deepest they’ve ever been drawn, and it’s going to take a long time to recover,” he said, adding that some areas where sinking has occurred aren’t likely to recover, even if years of strong precipitation follow this year.

As for the current wet streak, Green noted, “It could be turned right down again in the other direction” any time soon.

Farmers are acutely aware of this, said Jacobsen, adding that in his opinion, “California will forever be in a perpetual drought, simply because of the storm cycles we go through.”

So farmers aren’t likely to be slacking off in their efforts to conserve water any time soon, he said.


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