This Might Be California's Worst Drought in Half a Millennium

You may have heard about the drought in California. It's shaping up to be the worst water shortage in 40 years. Maybe more. Some 90 percent of the state is racked by extreme drought. And the most terrifying part about it all is that many climatologists agree that this is a good forecast for what the state's water-strapped future looks like. So, to drive the point home, here's a quick tour of just how bad it is.

"With no sign of rain, 17 rural communities providing water to 40,000 people are in danger of running out within 60 to 120 days." That's according to the New York Times, which also notes that "the number was likely to rise in the months ahead after the State Water Project, the main municipal water distribution system, announced on Friday that it did not have enough water to supplement the dwindling supplies of local agencies that provide water to an additional 25 million people. It is the first time the project has turned off its spigot in its 54-year history."

But 54 years is nothing. This may be the driest drought in half a millennium. 

The LA Times explains:  "How extreme is this year in California's climate history? To answer this, we need to look back further than the 119 years we have on record, to the geologic past. Based on the growth rings of trees cored throughout the Western United States, AD 1580 stands out as the driest year in the last half a millennium, drier than 1976-77." It was so dry then, see, that trees stopped growing altogether. You can't count the rings on the record.

And yet. "If the current drought continues in California through Oct. 1, this water year will be the driest not only in our modern records but in half a millennium," The Times notes.

Which should be terrifying enough. But if you need visual aids to help absorb this insanity, NASA has you covered. This was California in January last year. It's what California usually looks like at that time, in a dry-ish year:

This was California in January this year:

This is California's soil moisture, mapped:

So that's the crisis on a macro level. Here it is on a micro level, as captured by an AP reporter who traveled to Wilits, California, one of the towns worst hit by the drought.

"We have been rationing severely. No plants get watered. That's over. Turned off the toilet. I haven't washed my hair for two weeks,' said Willits resident Andrea Onstad, who was washing her car Monday afternoon. A few blocks down at Gribaldo's diner on the city's Main Street, customers sat at tables with no water glasses. A sign on the wall warned of the drought emergency—water was only available upon request. Things are so scarce that the sheriff's office is on alert for water bandits."

Water bandits. It's so dry that there's a special alert out for water crime.

So the question is, of course, whether this is just the beginning of a slump towards a drier future. The answer, of course, is yes.

“The extra heat from the increase in heat trapping gases in the atmosphere over six months is equivalent to running a small microwave oven at full power for about half an hour over every square foot of the land under the drought,” climatologist Kevin Trenberth told the climate writer Joe Romm. “So climate change undoubtedly affects the intensity and duration of drought, and it has consequences."

Another researcher told him that, thanks to climate change, “The US may never again return to the relatively wet conditions experienced from 1977 to 1999.” Since we haven't reduced worldwide emissions one iota since the threats of a carbon-saturated environment became clear (drought, floods, sea level rise) we can expect the trend to continue. It may not come next year, or the year after, but more uber-drought is on the way.

The droughts are coming hotter and faster, and yeah, they're only going to get worse.