California drought: State's water deliveries to be halted
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/California-drought-State-s-water-deliveries-to-5193699.php#photo-5738608
Due to the ongoing drought, receding waters at the Almaden Reservoir have revealed a car that was illegally dumped years ago and is now stuck in the lake bed, in San Jose
California drought: State's water deliveries to be halted
Kurtis Alexander
Updated 12:44 pm, Friday, January 31, 2014
(01-31) 12:20 PST Sacramento -- The California Department of Water Resources announced Friday that it expects to deliver no water from the state's vast network of reservoirs this year, the latest fallout from California's lingering drought.
Department Director Mark Cowin said at a news conference that if the dry spell continues, only carryover water from last year will be channeled to the farmers and several towns that get their water from the State Water Project.
Never in the State Water Project's 54-year history has there been zero water allocation.
"Simply put, there's not enough water in the system right now for customers to expect any water this season from the project," Cowin said in a statement to the press.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I think I need to expand the garden this year. and set up the rain barrel system I've been putting off. Up here in Oregon we're 10 inches below normal too. 
...can't last forever.
What cracks me up are the teabagger big ag signs that line I-5 up and down the Central Valley.
I'm surprised that they'd even ever want water delivered by socialist projects like the California Aqueduct and Delta Mendota Canal.
THIS EXCELLENT ARTICLE was just posted and is the most accessible explanation I've seen yet for just what is occurring in the west, where the natural El Nino (Pacific Oscillation) events are being heavily impacted by climate change--as predicted for the last 20 years.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/31/3223791/climate-change-california-drought/
---excerpt:
NOAA and Prof. Jennifer Francis of Rutgers have more recently shown that the loss of Arctic ice is boosting the chances of extreme US weather. Francis told me this week that “the highly amplified pattern that the jet stream has been in since early December is certainly playing a role in the CA drought.”
“The extremely strong ridge over Alaska has been very persistent and has caused record warmth and unprecedented winter rains in parts of AK while preventing Pacific storms from delivering rain to CA,” she explained. “But is this pattern a result of human-caused climate change, or more specifically, to rapid Arctic warming and the dramatic losses of sea ice? It’s very difficult to pin any specific weather event on climate change, but this extremely distorted and persistent jet stream pattern is an excellent example of what we expect to occur more frequently as Arctic ice continues to melt.”
If this drought continues in California and the west it will impact the entire country. Everyone should be paying attention to this. This is not just a regional problem.
CARBON POLLUTION = LOSS OF ARCTIC ICE = HIGH PRESSURE over the Pacific = DEFLECTION of jet stream/ weather systems to Canada and US East Coast = NO SNOW and SEVERE DROUGHT in the west. This is in addition to the usual factors causing periodic droughts in the west.