Dust Bowl 2.0: California’s Historic Drought About To Get Even Worse As “Snowpack Melts Early Across The West”
It has been a bad year for California whose drought is rapidly approaching historic proportions: according to the LA Times, which cites climatologist Michael Anderson, “you’re looking on numbers that are right on par with what was the Dust Bowl.”
It is about to get even worse. According to the USDA, the west-wide snowpack is melting earlier than usual, according to data from the fourth 2015 forecast by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).
“Almost all of the West Coast continues to have record low snowpack,” NRCS Hydrologist David Garen said. “March was warm and dry in most of the West; as a result, snow is melting earlier than usual.”
It is only fitting that while economists blame a “overly cold winter” for sliding GDP, weathermen blame an overly warm winter for the California’s historic drought.
More from the USDA:
Historically, April 1 is the peak snowpack. This year, the peak came earlier. There was little snow accumulation in March, and much of the existing snow has already melted.
“The only holdouts are higher elevations in the Rockies,” said Garen. “Look at the map and you’ll see that almost everywhere else is red.” Red indicates less than half of the normal snowpack remains.
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