drought

Snowmelt from the northern Sierra Nevada provides water for a large part of California during the warm months. An analysis by UCLA says that if greenhouse-gas emissions are not curbed, the snowpack that provides the water could be half its current size by the end of the century, reports public radio KPCC-FM in Pasadena.

The National Weather Service says rainy season is off to its wettest start in the northern Sierra Nevada in 30 years, with about twice as much precipitation as usual since the Oct. 1 start of the water year, says the Sacramento Bee. Even so, the state Department of Water Resources says customers of the State Water Project can expect to receive 20 percent of the water they requested for 2017.

After three years of drought and crop failures, nearly 850,000 people in Madagascar are experiencing alarming levels of hunger, with 330,000 of them on the brink of famine, says the Guardian. The outlet reported huge funding shortfalls for hunger relief work in seven countries across southern Africa.

Some 62 million trees have died so far this year in California, said USDA, blaming the losses on drought, warmer than usual weather and insect damage. The losses, up by 36 million from a survey earlier this year, are double the losses reported in 2015.

If the world does not reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, the U.S. Southwest is almost guaranteed to suffer decades-long megadroughts by the end of this century, says Mashable, citing work by a group of U.S. researchers.

A wetter fall has convinced California regulators to ease up on water restrictions for farmers and ranchers in the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta and its watersheds, says Reuters. A foot of rain fell on the northern half of the state in October, making it the second wettest on record in the northern Sierra Nevadas. The south remained dry.

Oil wastewater used to irrigate food crops in California’s Central Valley was found to contain carcinogens and other toxins in a preliminary report by scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of the Pacific, and the nonprofit PSE Healthy Energy.

October was "surprisingly wet" across northern California, with Sacramento getting four times its usual rainfall for the month, says the San Jose Mercury. "Meteorologists stress that it’s only the very beginning of California’s rainy season, so there are no guarantees that a wet October will bring a wet November, December, January or February."

In Weed, CA, population 2,700, a David-and-Goliath story is playing out over bottled water. Residents are suing Roseburg Forest Products, an Oregon-based timber company for monopolizing the town’s drinking water, reports the New York Times. Roseburg owns the forest where a pristine spring surfaces, bringing water from Mount Shasta.

At the same time rainfall is slaking drought in the Pacific Northwest, the southeastern quadrant of the United States faces intensifying drought, with the worst conditions in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and eastern Tennessee. Georgia's state agriculture director, Gary Black, is to take part in a rally to "discuss the drought facing Georgia's agricultural community and to pray for the rain Georgia so desperately needs" on Monday.

In California, so-called dry farmers say that they’ve avoided the worst of the drought and produced more flavorful crops by keeping their plants thirsty, reports Ari LeVaux in FERN’s latest story, produced with National Geographic's blog, The Plate.

"A parade of Pacific storms will march on through the weekend," says the Weather Channel, concluding one of the wettest Octobers on record in the Pacific Northwest and bringing additional relief to parts of drought-hit California. The heaviest rainfall is expected in Northern California and southwestern Oregon, with some rainfall in Los Angeles.

Hit hard by the worst drought in more than a decade, Northeast dairy and vegetable farmers are making difficult sacrifices. “Some private wells have dried up. Farmers face millions of dollars in lost crops, and federal agricultural officials have declared much of New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut a natural disaster area,” says The New York Times.

Growers "dug about 2,500 wells in the San Joaquin Valley last year alone, the highest number on record," says the Sacramento Bee, describing "a kind of groundwater arms race" to offset the greatly curtailed amounts of irrigation water from state and federal water projects.

On paper, Republican Rep. David Valadao should be at a disadvantage, running for re-election in a U.S. House district that is 57 percent Latino and where Democrats have a 17-point advantage in voter registration. Yet, in the Central Valley of California, "the nation's most productive agricultural region, the drought drives everything," says the Los Angeles Times.

“Particularly ill-suited” to climate change, the avocado might once again become a luxury item, says The Atlantic. Avocados do poorly under exactly the kinds of conditions — higher temperatures and drier weather — that are becoming more common in the plant’s growing regions worldwide.