is your area bracing for a drought?

[vash]

sorry, no disrespect for the fargo area.

i just chatted with the neighbor lady. she works for the water district. she said there are huge meetings discussing drastic water rationing.

how much does the average couple use in water anyways? i heard talk of 150 gallons for the average household. my yard will die, and i will save dishwater to water my veggies if it comes to that. scary.

[porsche4life]

I dont think we will hit the rationing stage. I think we may hit the fields so dry the spontaneously combust stage. But then again we were there about two weeks ago and got 1-2 ft of snow this weekend. So we are good for a few weeks.

[Jims5543]

Yup, same crap every year like clockwork.

My irritation is the fact that Lake Okeechobee in he middle of Florida supplies a lot of the water to the state. Every summer they dump the fresh water out into the estuaries and destroy them as they try to take the level down in fear it may get too high.

Every spring they are crying the water level is too low and everyone must conserve.

In 3 months they will be crying they need to dump all the extra water again.

[ckissick]

Vash, is that Contra Costa Water District or EBMUD? Either way, it's absurd that drastic water rationing would be necessary. The areas where both water districts collect their water are at about 80-85% of average rainfall for the year. The snow pack may be worse, but still.

Average rainfall means just that. Average. Some years, you get less, some years you get more. To get 85% of the average is normal. The water districts should be prepared for such circumstances. This should not be considered a drought of any significant magnitude. In 1976, we got 25% of normal. That's a drought.

I bet you can guess why the water districts are not prepared with adequate storage volume.

BTW, I don't have to worry about droughts. I live out in the boonies with a water well and plenty of groundwater storage.

[HardDrive]

Drought? Um......no.

[jyl]

I'm reading snowpack levels were only 61% of normal in Jan, not sure if the Sierras got enough snow in Feb/Mar to catch up - apparently not.

Vash, if you use gray water from the sink and shower to irrigate the veggies, that should be enough - I'm assuming you don't have a huge veggie garden?

Maybe look into some plumbing mods, I'm visualizing a big ball valve under the bathroom floor that would let you divert the shower drain to some drums outside. I'm sure its not code legal but who cares, you can always remove it later.

Guess you'd need to find out what kind of detergent/soap is veggie-friendly.

[RoninLB]

Nebraska has been at drought levels for years. It's also the cattle king of the world.
Last time I drove through it was on radio topic about every 1/2 hour.

As climate changes many other areas will be at risk or "in risk" already. In the valley around Palm Springs Calif water is almost affecting property values. La Quinta has its own underground water supply while surrounding towns are in scramble mode. The Colorado R water distribution had been a large political issues between big cities and between states forever but became a serious issue in the 1970s.

my town gets its water from a 1,400' deep classier ice ball left over from when the last ice age visited. We have at least a 200 yr supply at current usage. The rest of Long Island is a series of 20-50' deep wells that only get chlorinated before fed into distribution. Old info is that 15% of these wells grew contaminated from pre 1960s contamination. The curve was up.

my town is about 35,000 people with no water hungry industry. Except for summer invasion water usage is 4M/day. That's equal to 4 1,000gal FD pumpers working full blast forever.

[RoninLB]

Originally Posted by jyl

I'm reading snow pack levels were only 61% of normal in Jan, not sure if the Sierras got enough snow in Feb/Mar to catch up - apparently not.

when I was at the N Washington /Canada border area bald eagle sighting were dependent on how much water was flowing in the rivers. If low snow melt for whatever reason the hydro plants would grab and store most all the water to feed their turbines so no eagles feeding at the rivers.

[red-beard]

Austin is the center of a drought. We're on the edge. I need to check in a few days, when they update the maps, as we've had quite a bit of rain.

[imcarthur]

Source: US Drought Monitor

Ian

[legion]

I wish it would stop raining. We could use a break.

The ground has been saturated since November and even as much as an inch of water in 24 hours will cause flooding at this point. A couple of weeks ago we got three inches in a day when it had been below freezing the day (and weeks) before that. My back yard flooded, and turned into a river. Water was running between the houses across the street. The street was a river. I'd never seen it so bad.

Planting may be a problem this year as I've seen standing water in fields for months where I've never seen it before.

[ckissick]

Originally Posted by jyl

I'm reading snowpack levels were only 61% of normal in Jan, not sure if the Sierras got enough snow in Feb/Mar to catch up - apparently not.

We got a lot of storms lately. I did some research and found that Northern Sierra precip is 91% of normal, and Mammoth Pass has about 90% of the normal snowpack. This a drought?

[jyl]

I see, and you're right.

http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/reports/EXECSUM

I don't understand then. Why is there such a drought problem in CA this year?

[74-911]

The drought is already here. We are in the D4 section of the map. The farmers are at the critical planting time, either dry plant now and pray for rain or don't plant at all. Cattle herds are being culled as there is no grazing and what hay there is available is very expensive.

[onewhippedpuppy]

Western KS was in big trouble until most of the state got 10-20" of snow over the weekend. It came just in time to save this year's wheat crop.

[Scuba Steve]

I'm in the Exceptional area
Major water problems this year. It's the driest since 1918 with no end in sight. Area lakes are at record low levels.

[Zeke]

Hey, "unfixed" , you guys gots all the water up there, and your little rare fishies, too. I'll tell you where there's a drought and you can see it right there on the map. West San Joaquin Valley. Now known as Death Valley II.

In Long Beach, we pump 50% of our water from wells and water all the parks, etc. with treated water. We built that system years ago and it has turned out to be a good decision. That must have been to make up for buying the Queen Mary.

[johnco]

drought? the water came at least 50Ft up into the yard from the bayou last week at the job I'm on. back down to about 10ft today. at least 6 inches of rain last wed and thurs with 60mph winds and a little tornado down the road a bit. 90% rain today. 60% tonight. another 70% Thursday.. what's a drought?
every. time. I. dig. a. hole!

[vash]

Originally Posted by milt

Hey, "unfixed"

ok. ZEKE!

i just planted the last of my veggie garden. i'll keep it alive the best i can. i cant imagine running out of water.

[mattdavis11]

We received some much needed rain last night/early this morning in the DFW area. They'll ask us to cut back voluntarily eventually, maybe even mandatory this summer if it keeps going the way it has.

Here, we pipe water in from east Texas under a Jr. water right that was obtained years ago. Some cities have their own contracts with various reservoirs throughout the state, some are lucky to have an abundance of water. West Texas prays for rain while east Texas flaunts the fact that they have too much and won't sell it.

I used to lobby for the Coastal Conservation Association in Austin, and every legislative session we'd have to fight against inter-basin transfers. They would rather have had fresh water flows into the bays and estuaries than drinking water via a pipe from the Guadalupe river to San Antonio. We used to say that people in San Antonio would have to sprinkle Ozarka on their lawns just because CCA wanted water at the coast so fish could fuch. It was sad. It was a tough sell, drinking water for people's survival, or fish. Needless to say, we blocked the transfers and advocated for study committees on in-stream flows.

I couldn't fight that fight anymore, it was wrong, so I don't.

I can't remember exactly what the estimate is, but something near every 20 miles you drive west in Texas, there is a decrease of an inch of rain on average (yearly ave.)