California’s drought continues to improve

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor released on Thursday March 2nd, only about 8.7% of California’s population is in a moderate to severe drought. That’s down from 95% last year and that’s a big change.

“To me it’s unprecedented to go from such a drastic drought over the course of five plus years to one year of normal rainfall to this year just getting inundated,” said Brian Garcia, Warning Coordination Meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

Garcia credits the improvements to all the rain we’ve received over the last two years. The winter of 2016 put the runners on base, and 2017?

“Essentially hit the grand slam, you know we got all the atmospheric rivers, got tons of moisture,” said Garcia.

But to stay out of a drought consistency in the weather is needed and the way the weather works in California, consistency is hard to come by.

“But if we continue to pull water out at exorbitant rates, we’re going to put ourselves right back into the drought,” added Garcia. “Especially if we don’t see rain the next couple of years, you know we could send it right back to where we were two years ago.”