Background: The State of California has had a very long drought – over two years of drought, with rainfall and snowfall levels far below average. The Governor just declared a State of Emergency due to drought (). According to the Drought Monitor (), “A few of the impacts within the D4 [exceptional drought] area include fallowing of land, wells running dry, municipalities considering drilling deeper wells, and little to no rangeland grasses for cattle to graze on, prompting significant livestock sell off.”

The graph below shows the levels of water in California’s major reservoirs, in terms of the total capacity (how much water a reservoir can hold), the average amount of water in the reservoirs this time of year (labeled “Historical average for Jan 14”), and how much water is actually in the reservoirs now (as of Jan. 14 when the graph was made). Although there is no labeled axis with units, the units for this graph are “Acre-feet”. This unit of measurement tells you how much water there is (imagine a sheet of water a foot thick and an acre in area, which is just about a football field covered a foot deep in water, that would be 1 acre-foot).

Data Source: California Department of Water Resources, cited in Calaveras Enterprise courtesy of the LA Times;