Nearly 40% of California's 24.6 million acres of farmland are irrigated, with crops like almonds and grapes in some regions needing more water to thrive.
(Bloomberg) -- Almost three-fourths of the western U.S. is gripped by drought so severe that it’s off the charts of anything recorded in the 20-year history of the U.S. Drought Monitor.Mountains across the West have seen little precipitation, robbing reservoirs of dearly needed snowmelt and rain, said Brad Rippey, a meteorologist and Drought Monitor author with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The parched conditions mean the wildfire threat is high and farmers are struggling to irrigate crops.
It's time to ask, "Is this a drought, or is it just the way the hydrology of the Colorado River is going to be?" said John Entsminger, the general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
"It isn't sneaking up on us," Entsminger said. "Since 2002, our population has increased close to 50 percent, about 750,000 people in the last 19 years or so, and over that same time our aggregated depletions from the Colorado River have gone down 23 percent."
The good news, he said, is that per capita water consumption is down by 40 percent. Indoor water is recycled in southern Nevada, where residents are paid to replace grass with drip-irrigated landscaping.
Azothius wrote:I'm no expert on this either, but will mention,
1. That site uses Hectopascals, not mmb
the difference: https://weather.mailasail.com/Franks-We ... -Millibars
2. I"ve always found the 250 hPa view the most interesting, as it shows the jet stream. But actually, ranging from the surface view to the 250 hPa view can all be enlightening.
3. if you compare the 250 hPa view on earth.nullschool with the 2m temperature anomaly maps on climatereanalyzer, you can almost always clearly see how the waviness of the jet stream is bringing the weather that different regions are experiencing.
the sites:
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/w ... ,68.52,308
https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#t2anom
Following the adoption of the Pascal as the SI unit of pressure, meteorologists chose the hectopascal as the international unit for measuring atmospheric pressure. (1 hPa = 100 Pascals = 1 mb.) The millibar is still often used in weather reports and forecasts for the public, but the term hectopascal is increasingly being used, especially on the Continent in general and France, in particular. After all, Pascal was a Frenchman!.
ROCKMAN wrote:Test
ROCKMAN wrote:Test
vtsnowedin wrote:While I don't doubt that circulation patterns can and do change I have to think that they cannot fail completely. As long as the tropics are warmer then the poles and the earth is rotating under the atmosphere, air will circulate from north to south and back again with cyclonic patterns caused by the earths rotation.
I have lived long enough to see several changes over the years that brought droughts etc. to to a given region only to have the pattern change back after a few years and even over correct to balance out the long term averages.
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