Photo Courtesy of Sophomore Isla Irwin.

  As a San Luis Obispo High School student might know California has a long drought history. Throughout their lives, they have been pressured to take five-minute showers, have yellow lawns, and not wash their car in one’s own driveway.

“I haven’t been drastically affected by it [drought], but throughout my childhood, my family had always been told to save water. I remember us not being allowed to water our lawns or wash our cars because we were trying to conserve it [water]. All three of my dogs were born during the drought; they have never experienced rain until the past few weeks, that was a change for them,” said freshman Faith Robertson. 

 Some SLOHS students might have noticed the rainfall lately, especially walking outside to get from class to class. As 2021 is coming to an end San Luis Obispo received a total of 20 inches of rain. Looking at past data in 2016 SLO got 15.59 inches of rain. At the end of 2016 40 percent of the state remained at an extreme drought level. 

 So this begs the question: is SLO still in a drought? Despite the recent rainfalls, we are still in a drought. To fully recover from the drought 140 percent of the annual California average is needed.

  The average national rainfall is 38.1 inches. Meaning SLO is lacking 18.1 inches, to be at the national average of46.2 percent of the United States is experiencing a drought.

 Although it may seem like the drought is over it is still a present and ongoing issue that every SLOHS student has to contend with.

Source: Bestplaces.net