These clouds dumped rain on San Luis Obispo off and on for over the last week. Photo courtesy of freshman Sean Williams.
Ninety percent of California was inflicted with massive storms in the past few days and last week, even shutting down San Luis Obispo High School for two days. Due to these storms, weather experts and news sources have been saying that these major storms are helping the drought. While this is true, some of the California reservoirs are full, so the improvement of the drought does not make up for the damage the weather has caused.
“In some ways [the storms are helpful] because our wetlands get more water to distribute but then it can also overflood crops and fields and it can flood residential areas,” said freshman Patterson Danciart.
On January 9, ninety percent of Californians were under a flash flood warning. A total of 17 people were killed in the floods as of January 11.
Part of Highway 1, in between Big Sur and Ragged Point, is shut down due to the destruction of mudslides. Parts of Los Osos Valley Road were full of water, a few offramps in San Luis Obispo were closed, and a chunk of Highway 101 North was also shut down. This made it difficult for many travelers to get back into San Luis Obispo from cities south of it, including Avila Beach and Pismo Beach.
In December of last year, 97.93 percent of California was under drought. After the storms, there was no place in California under an “exceptional drought”, or a D4 level drought, but before the storm a large part of the Central Valley was under a D4 level drought. So yes, the storm did help ease the drought. However, 95.4 percent of California is still under a drought. 46.4 percent is under an extreme drought.
This improvement of the drought is no reason to say the recent weather is a good thing. Some news articles online are saying that this rain is great for California. Californians certainly need the water, but the state isn’t even collecting as much as they can of it.
The Salinas Reservoir was at 109 percent capacity on January 11, and the Nacimiento Reservoir was at 82.9 percent. If the reservoirs in San Luis Obispo county are full, how will the water be captured to help ease the drought?
If people are going to keep saying these storms are great for California, then the government should build more or larger reservoirs, especially in our county. Or, if a reservoir is full, send the excess water to a county that still needs water or did not get any rain. Not taking full advantage of the storms does not make it worth it in any way.
Sources: ggweather.com, sanluisobispo.com, newsweek.com, smithsonianmag.com, drought.gov