California is completely drought-free for the first time in a quarter-century, a significant development in a state that has endured grueling years with insufficient precipitation.
Over the past 25 years, drought conditions in California have intensified the state’s wildfire crisis and created challenges for its large agricultural sector. But a few wet years and a recent spate of winter storms have helped pull the state out of drought.
A map released Thursday by the U.S. Drought Monitor shows no part of the state is experiencing drought or abnormal drought. The development came after weeks of above-normal precipitation that helped fill the state’s reservoirs, including Lake Shasta and Lake Oroville, well beyond their historical averages. The December holiday season was one of the wettest on record in parts of Southern California.
In 2005 and 2011, the state experienced periods with less than 1 percent abnormal drought, noted the National Drought Mitigation Center, an academic partner of the U.S. Drought Monitor.
This is the first time since 2000 that not a single square mile of California is dry according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, ABC7 meteorologist Drew Tuma said in a social media post.
“If you are 25 or younger, you have always lived in a world where California is entering or recovering from a drought,” Tuma wrote.
Intense and deadly winter storms hit California in 2023, flooding the state with rain and hurricane-force winds that toppled trees and flooded rivers, left thousands without power and led to more than 20 deaths. Just months earlier, the state was under significant water conservation rules. That year, the barrage of storms helped ease the state’s drought, but did not eliminate it.
Even in late December, abnormally dry conditions prevailed in parts of the state, including Modoc County in the northeast. This changed with the heavy rains earlier in the year.
But even though California has emerged from drought, it is not necessarily out of the woods yet. Recent snowpack measurements from Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada revealed that snow levels in California are currently about 70% of average for this time of year.
Snowpack, which melts into rivers and streams in the spring, provides about a third of the water used in the state. Hydrologists say it’s too early to draw conclusions about the state’s water supply for the coming year.
“The trend we’re seeing right now is that there’s more rain than snow,” David Rizzardo, head of the hydrology section of the California Department of Water Resources, told reporters last month. “We would like to see the snow accumulation increase between now and April 1 to get closer to the average.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report
