Western USA Drought

[George the original one]

By Sunday, August 1, Portland (Oregon) may hit 23 days over 90F. 25 days of over 90F will set a new record. 2009 was the year the current record was set.

[We're just exiting a week-long break in the heat wave that brought brief intense showers to some locations and light showers to other locations]

[jacob]

What's the corresponding humidity in Portland, OR? Consecutive 90F days at 5% humidity would be nice and you can wear Levis 501 with style... However, ditto at 70%+ humidity would suck a** and kill weak people w/o A/C.

[George the original one]

~30% humidity when we hit 90F. Today is 66% humidity at 64F with a forecast high of 87F.

[bryan]

~30% humidity when we hit 90F. Today is 66% humidity at 64F with a forecast high of 87F.

I think it hit the 80s with ~30% humidity in San Francisco today. Felt brutal.

[George the original one]

Effects noticed so far...

Wildfires have amazingly not run rampant. Several relatively small human-started blazes. However, there's still a month or two of dry season to go.

Salmon are suffering. Spring chinook had light kills (e.g. 10%?) due to rivers being too warm. Now estimates are that half the sockeye are dying. Have not heard or seen much effect on smolts. Long term effect will likely be poor returns in 2018-2019.

Crop of insects. Little black beetles have shown up around the garden this year and they're new to me. Likely they've always been around, but in small numbers and the weather this year favored them.

[Riggerjack]

Here in the Puget sound, burn bans have been pretty excessive, but fewer fires than in the past. I have my own well, a full size backhoe, and I still have to have a 10 foot clearance from vegetation to burn a charcoal BBQ. Drier counties have banned charcoal entirely. Well, I have forested land, and displaced Californian neighbors, so it's probably for the best.

I'm having friends over for a all day shooting festival in the back gully, and since there will be some black powder guns, I will be heavily watering down there. Black powder always has burning bits of wadding, unburnt powder, etc; so watering will be a good idea. Other than that we only watered our transplant rhodies this year. Dry years will kill off the weak vegetation making room for something more robust. It should thin the alders and make room for more conifers.

WA state only recently caved on rainwater catchment rights (proof that sometimes, hippies can have a positive impact!) WA DOE has had the concept of state ownership of water ingrained in the culture for decades. All wells must be metered. Nobody is checking meters, yet...

WA DOE does have their well logs online, in case anyone is interested in rural WA land, you can see the depth and ratings of your neighbors' wells, for an idea of expense.

[enigmaT120]

Oregon's well logs are on line, too (same page as the water rights). That's how I know so much about my unused well. I'm glad I didn't pay for it.

George, I dunked in my creek yesterday and it's still friggin' cold. That's an example of a river that's still running through forest land rather than the ag land down on the valley bottoms. Anadromous fish (I think I spelled it wrong, but my spell check wants to change it to "androgynous".) can't make it up to my creek to stay cool because the Falls City falls make a very effective natural fish barrier, but at least there's some cold water going into the river system.

No way am I doing any shooting on my property. There have been several fires in my area caused by shooting, and not all of them involved a .50 caliber with tracers. And I just read about a fire east of Salem that started from a guy mowing some tall dead grass, so now I have an excuse to not mow for the rest of the summer. At least I can limb trees.

[George the original one]

Little Luckiamute seems much cooler than Big Luckiamute on my visits. Necanicum at our house is always cool. Lewis & Clark and North Fork Nehalem have both been too warm, though. Measured 62F in the Lewis & Clark two weeks ago Sunday at 8am!

[George the original one]

Fishing halted in National Parks on Olympic Pennisula: http://www.katu.com/news/local/Latest-d ... 34391.html

[Riggerjack]

I don't know how it is in Oregon, but anglers are a distinct minority up here. As I've pointed out in other posts, closing recreational fishing happens without cutting commercial fishing, at all.
Chinook are commercially fished, closed to recreational fishing. Native steelhead is "endangered". Commercial fishing is fine, recreational fishermen who keep one are FELONS!

(For the rest of the world, steelhead are rainbow trout, one of the most common game fish on the west coast, that go into salt water. Fry from the same batch of eggs go both routes, some stay freshwater, others go into saltwater. The environmental lobby has extended the endangered species act to cover endangered behavior.)

So, closing fishing in parks doesn't surprise me. BTW, I haven't been fishing in nearly 30 years, I have no skin in this game.

[Riggerjack]

http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/weat ... 17850.html

The great western draught is so disastrous, it now comes with flood warnings!

And now back to your regularly scheduled programming...

[Riggerjack]

http://www.kmud.org/news-humboldt-calif ... -2014.html

Humboldt county is down to a mere 20-50" of rain. Granted, that is about half of average, but as a draught, well...

Southern California, on the other hand is an overpopulous desert. And it is suffering from overpopulation and, shockingly, desert climate, which includes extended dry periods.

[enigmaT120]

I used to say that a drought makes Western Oregon a halfway decent place to live. So long as my spring keeps running (and it's doing fine so far) I still say that.

My folks moved me over here from Central Oregon when I was 8. I'm 51 and haven't really adapted yet, but I'm working on overcoming my rain phobia by running and biking in it. Or, instead, by causing a drought.

[George the original one]

Portland new record of days over 90 degrees = 29. Old record (set a few years ago) was 24. Long term average is 12.

Fortunately for us, the fall rains started pretty much on schedule; I'm not sure how total rainfall is accumulating this month, but compared to the last couple years, we're doing much better. Oregon's wildfire season was reasonable compared to Washington & California and rainstorms this week should douse most of the remaining fires.

[DSKla]

Sierra Nevada snowcap at 500 year low.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2 ... /72097844/

[GandK]

I decided to dig into this issue this morning, and came across some good info:

Current US drought conditions for all states (click on your region, and then on your state to see more granular information): US Drought Monitor. This is from the USDA and the University of Nevada Lincoln, and the data on the web site is updated every Thursday.

Also, The Best Reporting on California’s Drought, from ProPublica.

On the answers side, an article on states experiments with leasing water rights from farmers, also from ProPublica. And in the same vein, the Aussies' (surprisingly functional) answer to this problem is examined: A Surprising Lesson from Australia's Drought: Politics Matter at waterdeeply.org.

The article that stirred the most emotion in me was the one under "Best Reporting" above that took aim at California's almond and pistachio industries. In a nutshell the point of the piece was that these plants are not staple foods, they're luxury items; growing them is all fine and good when there's plenty of water, but these trees are way too thirsty to be grown in such a drought-ridden region; and the effort to keep these trees afloat instead of planting more suitable crops is causing problems for other farmers and for citizens.

Fun facts to put this issue in perspective: it takes approximately one gallon of water to produce one almond, and California currently produces 80% of the world's almonds. (Source: Google) Almond growers, unsurprisingly, feel like scapegoats, and vehemently dispute those numbers.

I have competing libertarian and communitarian impulses on this issue. Probably if I were the farmer I would voluntarily plant something more suitable... from my armchair quarterback perspective this looks best anyway. But I strongly object to anyone being ordered to plant this not that on his own land as long as the crop is a legal one. Perhaps an economic incentive to switch for these farmers? Although this will probably benefit other states' and countries' growers the most no matter what happens in CA. There's no easy fix for any of this.

I keep thinking that someday I'll design and build a small/tiny house that primarily uses collected rainwater, but that presupposes rain. My options out west appear limited to nonexistent.

[enigmaT120]

I think tree nuts should be considered staple foods, though that doesn't mean they should be grown in unsuitable areas. We have an almond tree in our back yard that does OK but they're really hard to shell. Farmers are putting in many more acres of hazelnuts across the Willamette Valley lately, and they grow great here. They should, they're native. Mine are healthy and productive and the squirrels and stellar jays eat them all before they fall off tree.

[slimicy]

https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2015/08/ ... y-for-now/

“In May and June of this past year … we had unusually high rainfall in the basin,” said Tom Buschatzke, the director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources. He said it was the second-highest level of rain during that period in the past 108 years, trailing only 1983.

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http://www.scribd.com/doc/277311275/Bur ... ion-Report

A U.S. Bureau of Reclamation report released in mid-August on water levels in the lower Colorado River predicts that chances of a Tier 1 shortage in Lake Mead by Jan. 1 - which could trigger water reductions - has fallen to zero [from 33%]...

They also reduced the likelihood of a tier 1 event in 2017 from 75% to 18%.

[jennypenny]

Looks like El Niño to the rescue.

[George the original one]

Next up: complaining that the utilities have to spend a huge amount of money to fireproof the electrical grid (if such a thing is possible), thereby raising rates to a prohibitive degree.

I don't expect fireproofing the electrical grid is all that possible, but setting up a network to monitor & rapidly respond to electrical fires is the next logical step. Apart from the dry conditions, slow response and acknowledgement is what led to the massive impact of recent past fires. Note that "slow" is subjective and certainly open for interpretation, but now we have timeline experience and can start using that as a basis.