California farmers will suffer from this worst-ever drought.

[JonBailey64]

Why?  Because of all the stupid enviro-whacko Dem-Libs in Sacramento. I heard through the grapevine that many dams were torn down leaving many former reservoirs on empty. This idiocy was to "save a few lousy salmon".  The stupid nitwits could have used fish ladders, for Christ sake. 

The tree-huggers are no friend of agriculture. 

No water, no farms, no food. 

[r3020]

No. You are wrong. It is because of man made global warming.........excuse me........I meant to say climate change.

[gough whitlam]

I new this goose would eventually blurt out his party preference because he has found a comfortable home on this forum. Take some advice sucker. You will get plenty of support by all the paranoids like 3020 and BA but when dealing with Schubart and GTO, wear a crash helmet. Put your seatbelt on now because it gets a bit rough from here on.

[JonBailey64]

Incidentally, my grandfather was a Nixon Republican and a union hard-hat but hated animal cruelty just like me. He considered a dog a family member.  Gramps would never have condoned slamming baby piglets against the cement  but rather smartly dispatching them with a bullet between the eyes should they need to be put down for any reason.  The Dem-Libs get too stupid sometimes, however, and take animal rights too far. 

And I am correct about the great loss of dams and reservoirs in this state. I don't know if I buy all this crap ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING.

Cally has been drought-prone for centuries but plenty of dams have always gotten us through the dry spells in the past. Enviro logic "holds no water". 

http://www.myoutdoorbuddy.com/fishing_hunting_water_report.php?water=663

My firm belief is that plenty of dams and reservoirs carry farms and other water consumers through long, dry spells, by holding much water until the wet cycle comes again to replenish them. When it DOES finally rain in California every other blue moon it POURS HARD!  The state is heavily-populated and has a high water demand. 

The other stupid thing about Cally is the lack of fire breaks in forested and vegetated areas. No fire breaks mean fires get out of hand and destroy a lot of homes, animals, trees, and firemen. Fighting these things also consumes water we don't have and burns fuel like it is not expensine already. The spotted-owl idiots forgo fire breaks to save a couple trees and lose many more in the long run. 

No dams, no water, no farms, no food, no fire breaks...we starve to death, burn up or die of thirst...which will kill us all first? 

Smooth move, Sacramento politicians! 

[schnurrbart]

Polluted water, polluted air, no farms, no food, no farmers, no anyone else! Now do you have anything other than the ol' grapevine?
Here is the REAL for the water shortage. If they destroyed dams, that only reduces the amount of storage not the reduced amount of water! http://articles.latimes.com/2014/jan/26/opinion/la-ed-new-drought-20140126

"Southern Californians are facing not one drought but three, interconnected yet distinct, each bringing its own hazards and each requiring its own emergency and long-term responses.

The first drought is regional, caused by the lack of rain in our own mountains and our own backyards. In normal winters — or rather those we have come to accept as normal — storms blow south from the Gulf of Alaska, churning in a counterclockwise direction and keeping much of their stored water in the air until they move inland from the west and run smack into the San Gabriel Mountains. When they lack enough energy to push over the peaks, they dump their water — in torrents that rush down the mountainsides, feed seasonal rivers such as the Los Angeles, replenish groundwater basins and, occasionally, cause havoc.

The winter rain falls not just on the slopes but throughout the basin and the valleys that make up the geographic triangle outlined by the mountains and the coastline. That's the water that soaks into our backyards and landscapes and lessens the need for sprinklers. It's the water that also soaks into natural oaklands and scrublands, and when it goes missing — as it has for three winters now — the ground dries out, the trees and chaparral get dangerously crisp and wildfire becomes an increasing danger.

That's the hazard Southern California faces in the coming months. The recent Colby fire north of Glendora may have been started, as prosecutors allege, by three men carelessly smoking marijuana in the foothills, but it spread quickly and frighteningly because of the tinder-dry conditions. Without substantial rainfall in February and March, we can expect more fires like that one in the summer and fall fire seasons.

Other than extra caution by residents and vigilance and expertise on the part of professional firefighters, there is little Southern Californians can do about this regional drought beyond hoping for rain.

The second drought is different but related. The same Gulf of Alaska system that usually sends rain south of the Tehachapis also sends storms across the Central Valley and into the higher, colder Sierra Nevada, where the water falls as snow and forms California's greatest natural reservoir, releasing its water later in the year in manageable, and useful, seasonal pulses. More often than not, that's the water that comes out of the tap here, brought to Los Angeles households from Eastern Sierra snowmelt through the Owens River and the aqueduct for which the centenary was celebrated a few months ago; and it's the water that comes to us, and to all of Southern California, plus Silicon Valley, much of the coast and Central Valley fields and homes, from Western Sierra snowmelt that flows from the Sacramento River to the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and to the California Aqueduct.

The Northern California drought does little to affect fire danger here but a great deal to affect the supply of water to homes and businesses. Southern California is unlikely to go thirsty this year because it has water reserves banked around the region. But it's worth noting that although the winter snowpack is down by 80%, Gov. Jerry Brown's drought declaration called for only a 20% decrease in water use.

It may seem counterintuitive to let lawns turn brown and gardens dry up in such dangerous conditions. But conservation is nevertheless crucial to address the problems caused by the drought in the Sierra.

The third drought is occurring across the Western United States, and especially in the Rocky Mountains, which feed the Colorado River and by extension the other major component, after the Central Valley, of California's agricultural wealth. It also forms a major part of Los Angeles' water portfolio.

Because these three droughts are interconnected, we rarely suffer from one without dealing with the others, and this year's situation is no different. The vast majority of Californians rely on water that falls in other parts of the state, or even outside the state, and although the multiple sources make water more secure for all of us, shortages usually come all at once.

Southern California must prepare for the future by recapturing more of the rainwater that in wetter years still runs, unused, to the sea. It must do even more than is already being done to clean and reuse urban water. We will likely need a storm water bond, tax or other measure. We may have to build new dams to store water for future use without drying up rivers and destroying the ecosystem, as dams in California historically have done. A statewide water bond, which voters will consider in November, should help clean up groundwater basins here to allow residents to rely more on local supplies and less on the Sierra — although distant snowmelt must always be a part of the entire state's water portfolio.

That means diverting some of the delta's water with pumps that do less damage to endangered fish and rely less on earthquake-vulnerable levees. The kind of system envisioned by the Bay Delta Conservation Plan would help all parts of California deal with global climate change and its inevitable result: precipitation that falls on the Sierra less like the snow that generations have come to rely on and more like the rain that comes, when it does, to Southern California in unmanageable torrents.

These measures are needed not merely for drought years like this one. But the trio of droughts serves as a reminder of the urgent need for action — to plan, to conserve, to store, to reuse, to transport and to share the state's most precious resource."

[4wd]

very short sighted, narrow minded trouble makers who know nothing about where food and energy comes from, and how bank payments are made.  They had everything give to them.

[r3020]

No storage = shortages in time of drought. That's why the dams were built in the first place. To stop floods during periods of heavy rains and store the water during times of dought.

[schnurrbart]

Without any water coming in, even the storage is running VERY low. In reality, it is --which came first, the chicken or the egg. Of course, I know you can't admit that that there is any kind of climate change going on so don't worry about it!

[4wd]

3020 in not alone in his beliefs of global warming being junk science being brain washed upon the American public by the news media and a select few struggling professors trying to make a name for themselves writing a junk research paper.  And lately, the movie makers have capitalized on the fear factor with production of their fiction movies .

[jput]

Researchers have documented multiple droughts in California that lasted 10 or 20 years in a row during the past 1,000 years.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — California's current drought is being billed as the driest period in the state's recorded rainfall history. But scientists who study the West's long-term climate patterns say the state has been parched for much longer stretches before that 163-year historical period began.

And they worry that the "megadroughts" typical of California's earlier history could come again.

Through studies of tree rings, sediment and other natural evidence, researchers have documented multiple droughts in California that lasted 10 or 20 years in a row during the past 1,000 years — compared to the mere three-year duration of the current dry spell. The two most severe megadroughts make the Dust Bowl of the 1930s look tame: a 240-year-long drought that started in 850 and, 50 years after the conclusion of that one, another that stretched at least 180 years.

"We continue to run California as if the longest drought we are ever going to encounter is about seven years," said Scott Stine, a professor of geography and environmental studies at Cal State East Bay. "We're living in a dream world."

California in 2013 received less rain than in any year since it became a state in 1850. And at least one Bay Area scientist says that based on tree ring data, the current rainfall season is on pace to be the driest since 1580 — more than 150 years before George Washington was born. The question is: How much longer will it last?

A megadrought today would have catastrophic effects.

California, the nation's most populous state with 38 million residents, has built a massive economy, Silicon Valley, Hollywood and millions of acres of farmland, all in a semiarid area. The state's dams, canals and reservoirs have never been tested by the kind of prolonged drought that experts say will almost certainly occur again.

Stine, who has spent decades studying tree stumps in Mono Lake, Tenaya Lake, the Walker River and other parts of the Sierra Nevada, said that the past century has been among the wettest of the last 7,000 years.

Looking back, the long-term record also shows some staggeringly wet periods. The decades between the two medieval megadroughts, for example, delivered years of above-normal rainfall — the kind that would cause devastating floods today.

The longest droughts of the 20th century, what Californians think of as severe, occurred from 1987 to 1992 and from 1928 to 1934. Both, Stine said, are minor compared to the ancient droughts of 850 to 1090 and 1140 to 1320.

-------------------  Drought in CA is nothing new,  and has no connection to "man-caused" global warming.   Liberals demanding wasting water to perpetuate some minnow is poor stewardship of precious water.