{"id":1970,"date":"2015-02-06T14:46:03","date_gmt":"2015-02-06T19:46:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/?p=1970"},"modified":"2015-02-06T14:46:03","modified_gmt":"2015-02-06T19:46:03","slug":"california-dreamin-will-the-next-rain-put-a-dent-in-the-drought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/2015\/02\/california-dreamin-will-the-next-rain-put-a-dent-in-the-drought\/","title":{"rendered":"California dreamin&#8217;&#8211;will the next rain put a dent in the drought?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The drought situation in California continues to be a concern to farmers across the US because of its impacts on fruit and vegetable markets as well as dairy. \u00a0In spite of hopes for a recovery this year due to El Nino and heavier than normal rainfall in December, \u00a0since then rainfall in California has been sparse; San Francisco recorded zero precipitation in January for the first time ever. \u00a0A number of news stories have covered the continuation of drought into its fourth year. \u00a0My related story on atmospheric rivers today discusses the potential impact due to the atmospheric river event which is currently hitting the West Coast.<\/p>\n<p><em>AgWeb<\/em> describes how farmers are coping with the drought conditions, which are the worst in the southern half of the state, in this <a title=\"4th year of drought impacts CA farmers\" href=\"https:\/\/www.agweb.com\/article\/california-farmers-cope-with-fourth-year-of-drought-NAA-betsy-jibben\/?smartid=&amp;spMailingID=47943717&amp;spUserID=ODQxODg4MTEwMDgS1&amp;spJobID=620336556&amp;spReportId=NjIwMzM2NTU2S0\" target=\"_blank\">article<\/a>. \u00a0Among those affected are rice, almond and walnut growers.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Los Angeles Times<\/em> published a <a title=\"LA Times compares 2014 to 2015\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/lanow\/la-me-ln-greener-california-shrinking-snowpack-20150203-story.html\" target=\"_blank\">story<\/a> showing how that California has greened up somewhat this year compared to last year but that snow packs have been drastically reduced, leading to concerns about water availability once the rainy period ends. \u00a0<em>AgWeb<\/em> also produced an <a title=\"CA lack of snowfall leads to worries about reservoirs\" href=\"https:\/\/www.agweb.com\/article\/californias-scant-precipitation-warm-temperatures-produce-weak-snowpack-NAA-dairy-today-editors\/?smartid=&amp;spMailingID=47935530&amp;spUserID=ODQxODg4MTEwMDgS1&amp;spJobID=620198680&amp;spReportId=NjIwMTk4NjgwS0\" target=\"_blank\">article<\/a> describing the impacts on the reservoirs in the state.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1990\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1990\" style=\"width: 404px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/02\/ca-compare-2014-to-2015.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-1990\" src=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/02\/ca-compare-2014-to-2015-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"Source: NOAA\/NASA\" width=\"404\" height=\"226\" srcset=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/02\/ca-compare-2014-to-2015.jpg 300w, https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/02\/ca-compare-2014-to-2015-246x138.jpg 246w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 404px) 100vw, 404px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1990\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: NOAA\/NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>One of the results of the drought has been the large increase in fields that are fallow due to lack of water. \u00a0NASA provided a comparison set of maps which show the increase in idle fields in the California Central Valley <a title=\"CA fallow fields\" href=\"https:\/\/earthobservatory.nasa.gov\/IOTD\/view.php?id=85199&amp;src=eoa-iotd\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1989\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1989\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/02\/fallow-fields-2015.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1989\" src=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/02\/fallow-fields-2015-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"Source: NASA\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/02\/fallow-fields-2015-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/02\/fallow-fields-2015-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/02\/fallow-fields-2015-138x138.jpg 138w, https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/02\/fallow-fields-2015.jpg 720w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1989\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The drought situation in California continues to be a concern to farmers across the US because of its impacts on fruit and vegetable markets as well as dairy. \u00a0In spite of hopes for a recovery this year due to El Nino and heavier than normal rainfall in December, \u00a0since then rainfall in California has been [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":1990,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,12,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-and-ag-in-the-news","category-crops","category-drought"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1970"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1991,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1970\/revisions\/1991"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}