The California drought intensified even further in the past week, particularly in central and southern parts of the state, according to new data released on Thursday. In addition, updated climate outlooks continued to offer little reason for hope of drought alleviation across much of the West straight through the start of the dry season.
Storm systems over the past seven days provided only limited drought relief in northern California, according to the new U.S. Drought Monitor, and bypassed southern California, which is bracing for stringent water restrictions and battles between farmers, ranchers, and city dwellers for water rights during the dry season.
See also: High and Dry: 10 Devastating Photos of the California Drought
The drought has become severe enough to warrant the attention of the White House; President Obama visited Fresno, in the heart of the state’s agricultural belt, on Feb. 14.
“While drought in regions outside the West is expected to be less severe than in other years, California is our biggest economy, California is our biggest agricultural producer,” Obama said. “So what happens here matters to every working American, right down to the cost of food you put on your table.”
The weather pattern responsible for the drought has featured a massive and persistent high pressure area off the Pacific Northwest coastline, which has detoured storm after storm northward into Canada, and helped direct frigid air into the Midwest and Northeast. The ridge held on for yet another week, and is expected to continue to do so through at least Feb. 24, according to the latest drought outlook, which was also released on Thursday.

Image: Weatherbell.com

This high pressure area has been the Energizer bunny of weather features since late fall, persisting for week upon week. Meteorologists have dubbed it the “ridiculously resilient ridge,” after the shape of it on weather maps.
However, there are signs that relief — storminess — may finally limp toward southern California during early March, if long-range computer model projections prove correct. Both the main European forecast model, which has a track record of success in making medium to long-range weather projections, and the main American forecast model, known as the Global Forecasting System or GFS model, show the high pressure ridge breaking down for at least one week, before potentially redeveloping.
Then again, these models have shown such scenarios before, and they have not panned out. The official climate outlooks for the March through May period, released on Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), show that warmer than average temperatures and below average precipitation are likely to continue across the Southwest throughout the period.
"The odds are tilted towards a definite continuation into the dry season,” said Dan Collins, a meteorologist at the Climate Prediction Center in College Park, M.d., in a conference call with reporters.
For the water year so far, precipitation has been running at just 10 to 30% of average across southern California, with rainfall deficits of up to 12 inches during the past six months. “Exceptional drought” conditions, which despite sounding like a positive, is actually the worst category in the federal Drought Monitor, and was expanded into Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. About two-thirds of the state are currently classified in the two worst drought categories.
According to Deke Arndt, chief of the climate monitoring branch at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., California and much of the West has accrued a precipitation deficit over the past three years, not just during 2013-14. The steep deficit is forcing communities to take extraordinary measures to ensure their continued access to water.
The city of Santa Barbara, for example, is considering measures to continue to tap the water of Lake Cachuma, which provides 90% of its water, after the lake fell to a level so low that water is having trouble reaching the lowest elevation intake pipe. Among the measures under consideration include placing a floating barge that would draw water from the lake, and reactivating a desalination plant that had been shut down in the 1990s.
The Sierra Nevada snowpack, the spring runoff of which provides much of the water supply for central and southern California during the summer dry season, which typically starts in early to mid-April, continues to run well below average. As of Feb. 18, the Sierra Nevada Basin had a snowpack water content that was between 32% and 52% on average, according to the NDMC.
“Widespread heavy precipitation is badly needed in this state as the normal wet season nears its end by early to mid-spring,” the NDMC’s Drought Monitor update said.
One of the consequences of the drought has been a sharp spike in California wildfires during the winter season. California Fire, the main state agency that responds to wildfires, reported on Feb. 19 that it has responded to 600 wildfires since the first of the year, which is a 330 percent increase in fire activity compared to average. Wildfires have also spiked in New Mexico, which had its driest January on record.
While many climate scientists view natural climate variability, such as the pattern of sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, as a likely cause of the drought, there is evidence indicating that manmade global warming makes droughts like this one more intense by increasing background temperatures and causing greater evaporation. For example, a study published in 2013 found that global warming aggravated the Texas drought of 2011 and made it more up to 20 times more likely to occur compared to other years with similar global weather patterns.
Ultimately, California’s best hope for meaningful drought relief may lie in an El Nino event that could develop by next summer, Collins said. El Nino events, which are characterized by warmer than average sea surface temperatures in the equatorial tropical Pacific Ocean, tend to increase fall and winter precipitation across the West. The Climate Prediction Center said on Thursday there is a 50% chance that an El Nino event will develop by late summer, which is well above average, but still far from a sure bet.
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