Recent rain heavily impacted California drought

Rainfall from recent storms has had a major impact on California’s drought, according to the latest state drought monitoring data.

This historic downpour is an example of what we like to call a weather whip. Climate change is causing intense droughts as well as periods of intense rainfall as warmer global temperatures add more fuel to storms.

The questions that arise after all the rains are: can there be both, a drought in the midst of a flood? Has all this rain wiped out the drought? Well the answer is it’s hard.

The western United States is suffering from a so-called megadrought: it is widespread and has been lasting for 20 years. And a wetter than usual season won’t replenish all of the state’s reservoirs or restore water tables deep in the soil.

All the recent rains help, but the research scientist who helps write the drought monitor explains further.

“When it happens so fast, we can’t catch it. Therefore, most of it does not seep into the groundwater,” said David Simeral, a research fellow at the Desert Research Institute in Climatology. “And it also depends on where the precipitation falls. Are they in areas where there are reservoirs to store this water. But the long term situation, in spite of all the floods you see, there are still long term tank storage issues that have yet to be resolved. And the groundwater situation, as I mentioned, is a much longer period of time in terms of groundwater recovery.”