By Patric Hedlund, TME

A stunning historical snapshot of the drought weather of the past 10 years—compared to the record of the past 600 years in California—was released this week in a tree-ring paleo study by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR).

Jeanine Jones, a DWR civil engineer with a specialty in evaluating drought, told about the expansive study (conducted by the University of Arizona for DWR) that ran eight different tests of the new tree-ring data. This region’s 2012-2016 five-year drought proved to be the driest five-year event for Southern California since 1426 in seven of the tests. In the eighth test it was the second driest in those 600 years.

“Before 2017,” Jones added, “we had a decade with only two years that were not dry.” She finds other surprising results in the records. Jones said that California “has the greatest…(please see below to view full stories and photographs)

Photo captions:

A few lingering showers over the entire Mountain Community last Saturday left behind half an inch of rain in some areas and raised hopes that more rain and maybe snow will come our way in March before the beginning of spring. But Frazier Mountain Park pond is still bone dry (below).

March 12, 2018: Frazier Mountain Park pond is still totally dry.

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This is part of the March 16, 2018 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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