It is because the article uses data up to mid-January as noted at the bottom "The drought data shows data up to the week of Jan. 17, 2023. Precipitation data is recent as of January, 2023" despite the article being published this month (without the most recent 2 months of data).

The drought monitor is taking into account the lack of retained moisture in the soil. It takes years of good conditions to replenish the soil moisture. I think the estimate is 6 straight years of 150% precipitation to return to full normal.

It’s poorly written. Chatbot?

There was absolutely no reason for the article authors to use data lagged by over a month and a half. Pretty much every CA drought map site and water tracking site updates daily.

Almost all the reservoirs are over 100% of historical averages. The ski season has been extended to July so snow pack data is also in unknown territory.

Yes, I also commented that this information is out of date. A lot has happened since this data was developed.

And it’s looking like more storms next week!

Which is why this post shouldn’t have been posted to begin with

You're misusing the terms "accurate" and "incorrect". "Out of date" is the term you are looking for.

The article was published March 2, and a long article like this may very well have taken a couple weeks to write, illustrate, fact-check, and edit, which might explain the use of older data.

Aquifers aren't necessarily big underground lakes in a cavern. The water is often spread throughout the substrate kind of like a sponge. When you take the water out, it doesn't just leave empty space, the ground around it fills the void. To reopen and fill those voids would require pressure -which is costly.

There are things called recharge dams which sort of do this though. Problem here again though is cost. Usually other methods are cheaper which is why we don't see that kind of thing very much.

Flood water is contaminated.

Putting surface water into an aquifer would be a natural disaster and would actualy contaminate the ground water.

Aquaifer water is naturally purified as water moves down through the ground. You can drink it without treatment. (most of the time).

Now, if we used large, underground caverns to store flood water for future treatment, that would be something. But flood water is full of bacteria, and unfortunately a lot of man made shit like plastic, heavy metals and chemics which can't be easily filter or separated by conventional water treatment.

If you look at the data this article does not include any drought data since 1/17/23. It stayed at 99.36% until February.

I believe it comes down to retention of water rather than amount of rainfall or snow pack.

If you have an empty glass and fill it with ten times the amount of water it can fit, which then spills over onto the floor - you don’t have ten glasses of water, you still have one glass of water and the rest is on the floor (or in the ocean). There are currently only about five reservoirs with additional recharge capability and two to three more under way - meaning despite the amount of rain a significant amount is lost and when summer arrives the water retained will be used up as it typically would.

I think you also have to considered how the water cycle works as well as the soils in California, in which a number of areas most likely just see the water run off into waterways to the ocean, used by farms and high water sources like golf courses.

The problem is that people have been pumping too much groundwater and that takes a long time to replenish. In some places the wells have already run dry. Precipitation alone cannot solve that problem.

exactly. Why is California in a drought after they’ve sucked the ground completely dry of natural resources for tens of years. California’s natural resources can’t support the number of people they’re trying to house.

Yes came into say the same thing. The ONLY reason why we’re potentially still in a drought at this point is because we simply do not have enough infrastructure to capture all the rain/runoff. We are simply wasting opportunity at this point

You mean, continue expanding the capacity of some reservoirs. Because, as far as I know, we’ve already built all the dams that are really possible.

Unless you’re talking about Yosemite? 🤨

In terms of surface water, it’s over (for now). But groundwater is what takes multiple years to recharge, and even then some of the capacity has been permanently lost due to over-pumping, so no matter what there’s going to be less groundwater to fall back on when the next dry spell hits.

It does if you have sufficient reservoirs