Officials: More than 40 per cent of California out of drought
SONOMA, Calif. — More than 40 per cent of California has emerged from a punishing drought that covered the whole state a year ago, federal drought-watchers said Thursday, a stunning transformation caused by an unrelenting series of storms in the North that filled lakes, overflowed rivers and buried mountains in snow.
The weekly drought report by government and academic water experts showed 42 per cent of the state free from drought. This time last year, 97 per cent of the state was in drought.
Southern California, also receiving welcome rain from the storms, remains in drought but has experienced a dramatic reduction in the severity. Just 2 per cent of the state, a swath between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, remains in the sharpest category of drought that includes drying wells, reservoirs and streams and widespread crop losses. Forty-three per cent of the state was in that direst category this time a year ago.
California will remain in a drought emergency until Gov. Jerry Brown lifts or eases the declaration he issued in January 2014, while standing in a bare Sierra Nevada meadow that one of the state’s driest stretches on record had robbed of all snow.