SACRAMENTO, California — State water officials warned Thursday that an emerging La Niña weather pattern could bring California back into drought after two above-average wet years.
State officials said California’s water supplies are in overall good shape, with reservoirs currently at or slightly above historic average levels despite one of the hottest and driest summers on record. But they stressed that adapting reservoir levels to real-time conditions, such as emptying them ahead of a wet and warm storm or keeping them high if the weather stays dry, will be particularly key to making it through this winter.
They issued the warning ahead of the Oct. 1 start to the new water year and cautioned that there’s still some uncertainty within the long-range weather forecasts and that climate change has made big swings between dry and wet more likely.
“We will have an eye towards how we carefully manage our existing reservoir storage to make sure if we are moving back into an extended dry period, we are using those stored supplies in the most focused and the most conscientious way possible,” California Department of Water Resources Director Karla Nemeth said in a press briefing.
