Image taken from the U.S. Drought Monitor website on March 21st 2014
In the last six months, California has seen a rapid decrease in water reserves, very little rain, and a sharp rise in costs among farmers across the state as they battle to keep their crops alive and producing enough to meet demand. The image above is one I previously posted from the United States Drought Monitor, a department of the government that measures available water versus demand throughout the entire country. That image was captured on March 21st, 2014 – just over seven months ago.
Below is the most recent drought map for the state of California, created October 28th, 2014.
Comparing the two maps, shows just how rapid the water reserve decline has been in California. Farmers have been the hardest hit, with large numbers now finding they are unable to water their fields unless they want to spend large amounts of pocket money to import water from other states. The effects of the drought can even be seen from space, as less rainfall also means less snow cover on the mountains.
After this long without rain, even a small shower could mean serious damage due to mudslides. Topsoil that is dry to such an extreme will, instead of absorbing the water, turn into a thick mud on the top layer and gravity will dump it down the hills onto the fields and towns below. Already a small localized storm near Los Angeles, that only dropped about 3-4 centimeters of water, caused a mudslide that forced 11 people from their homes and one person to be buried in house before he was rescued.
NASA has issued a warning that should circumstances continue, the entire United States may be facing a food shortage not seen since the 1930’s dustbowl, when a series of dust storms covered the prairie, destroyed over one hundred thousand acres of crops, and forced tens of thousands of farmers to abandon their farms and migrate to the coasts to look for work.
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