!0:!1;var I={},J=function(a){var b=a.toString();a.name&&-1==b.indexOf(a.name)&&(b+=": "+a.name);a.message&&-1==b.indexOf(a.message)&&(b+=": "+a.message);if(a.stack){a=a.stack;var c=b;try{-1==a.indexOf(c)&&(a=c+"n"+a);for(var d;a!=d;)d=a,a=a.replace(/((https?:/..*/)[^/:]*:d+(?
"s":"")+"://pagead2.googlesyndication.com"+c,d=d.substring(0,2E3);w(s,d)}}catch(e){}},P=function(a){var b=a||{};t(I,function(a,d){b[d]=s[a]})},R=function(a,b,c,d,e){return function(){var f=arguments;return M(a,function(){return b.apply(c,f)},d,e)}},Q=function(a){var b="";t(a,function(a,d){if(0===a||a)b+="&"+d+"="+("function"==typeof encodeURIComponent?encodeURIComponent(a):escape(a))});return b};A=function(a,b,c,d){return R(a,b,void 0,c,d)};z=H;l("vu",R("vu",function(a,b){var c=a.replace("&","&"),d=/(google|doubleclick).
uDuring four years of drought 37.5 percent of all wells in the state dropped 10 to 49.9 feet with another 12 percent falling 50 feet or more.
uIn normal water years, 38 percent of the state’s water supplies come from groundwater.
During the drought we took 60 percent of our water from aquifers.
If the loss were a third of average for ever year that would translate to 20 million acre feet of water loss in reservoirs from 2013 to 2016. uWhile one heavy year of snow and rain as we are now experiencing can bounce surface water reservoirs and lakes all the way up to the brim, it takes years to decades for underground water to be replenished according to the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis.
Lathrop relies on ground water mixed with surface water year round with the added problem that dropping ground water increases salt water intrusion from aquifers beneath the Delta.
While local groundwater tables sustained more modest drops — typically under 10 feet — they are not going to bounce back in one year.
This is the reason the Groundwater Sustainability Act was passed in Sacramento that created a mandate to various groundwater basins throughout the state to strike a balance between what is taken out of aquifers and what flows in.
That means even if surface water is plentiful, groundwater won’t be.

Gwinnett water officials urging conservation during drought.
The department issued a reminder of Gwinnett’s Level 2 Drought Response status on Friday.
“Lake Lanier is a large reservoir, fed by smaller streams that have been slow to recover from the drought,” water department spokeswoman Karen Shields said in a statement.
The corps’ website for the lake showed the lake’s midnight pool level was 1,060.94 as of Thursday night.
A full Lake Lanier level would be 1,071 feet.
North of Lake Lanier, up around where the Chattahoochee River’s headwaters are located in the north Georgia mountains, extreme drought conditions still exist, according to the United States Drought Monitor.
Because the drought response in place is in place, Shields said residents can’t wash streets, sidewalks or driveways, nor can they use water for decorative fountains or waterfalls, non-commercial pressure washing or non-commercial car washing.
That means car wash fundraisers are a no go as well.
Odd numbered addresses are restricted to before 10 a.m. and after 4 p.m. on Thursdays and Sundays.
“The Gwinnett County Department of Water Resources encourages residents to make water conservation a priority,” Shields said.

Under the Radar: Sri Lanka’s drought threatens credit downgrade.
With around half of national rice paddy acreage affected (1.5 million acres), the cost of this effort will account for between 0.1 and 0.2% of GDP; this does not include relief efforts for other crops.
In order to combat food shortages, the government has accepted food and water aid from India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Thailand as well as increased food imports.
To encourage imports Sri Lanka has cut import taxes on rice from 15 to 5 rupees per kilo.
Another issue are the government price controls on rice which, while fixing prices between Rs 70 and Rs 80 per kilo of various types of rice, risks unrest.
Having purchased rice at higher wholesale prices prior to pricing limits, millers are now being forced to sell at a loss.
On February 13th, some 120 leading millers refused to sell at government prices, calling for between Rs 80 to Rs 90 per kilo, and demanding to meet with President Maithripala Sirisena.
The drought has also led to an energy crisis in Sri Lanka, as reservoirs are only at 29% capacity.
The effects of the drought have derailed Sri Lanka’s efforts to tackle systemic overspending, with the government projecting a 17% increase in spending, versus a 0.6% increase in 2016.
As a result the drought is hampering Sri Lanka’s efforts to reduce the budget deficit to 4.6% – a key goal of the country’s $1.5 billion IMF loan.

Somalia drought forces children out of school.
A third of children in Somalia’s drought-affected areas are at risk of dropping out of school, the UN says, as a shortage of food and water has left more than 6.2 million people needing urgent help.
The drought is threatening the lives of millions and almost three million are going hungry.
Three million children in the country are missing school and more than 100,000 could join them, according to the UN.
On Tuesday, Somalia’s newly-elected President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed declared a "national disaster" due to the drought.
The desperate search for water and food proving particularly difficult for children.
"I’d love to go back to school but I’ve been forced to leave because I’m the eldest child in my family and I need to work at home," Sadia Omar, a former student, told Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera’s Fahmida Miller, reporting from Dollow in southern Somalia, said severe drought was forcing families to migrate in search of help.
READ MORE: 40 percent of Somalis don’t have enough food to eat, says UN On Monday, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that Somalia was at risk of its third famine in 25 years.
The drought has led to a spread of acute watery diarrhoea, cholera and measles and nearly 5.5 million people are at risk of contracting waterborne diseases.

California drought shifting toward Midwest.
The areas of drought across the U.S. have changed dramatically in just the last two months.
Here’s a video where I show just how much the drought pattern has changed.
California’s several year long drought has ended in just a two month period between December 2016 and February 2017.
The upper air pattern that shifted to bring California heavy rain has put other parts of the U.S. into dry weather.
Now the main drought area in the U.S. is becoming established in the Midwest.
If this Midwestern drought area continues to grow, it will have an impact on the Midwest growing season.
For Michigan, if the dry area expands just to our west, it will be a factor that points toward a warmer than normal summer.
We will just have to keep an eye on the drought area for the next two months to see if it’s trending bigger and drier, or being cut down by spring rains.
Any questions or comments, please post below.

UN agencies supporting Kenyans in drought-hit areas.
3 March 2017 – The United Nations humanitarian chief today urged international support for the estimated 2.7 million people in parts of Kenya who urgently need food and water following the onset of a severe drought.
Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Stephen O’Brien, saw the devastating impact of drought on rural communities in northern Kenya.
“Crops are failing, food prices are rising, and families are going hungry.
The spectre of hunger and disease is haunting East Africa again.
We need to put a stop to this,” Mr. O’Brien said.
The office he heads, OCHA, is working with the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Food Programme (WFP), and other partners to save lives in the region, according to a press release.
“Our efforts should not only alleviate the current suffering brought about by this emergency, but should also aim to build the resilience of families and the capacity of local governments to deal with future droughts and other calamities,” the Representative of UNICEF in Kenya, Werner Schultink said.
UN efforts of support include dispatching 12,000 cartons of ready to use therapeutic foods for the severely-malnourished children, for example.
The President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, recently declared the drought a national disaster and has called for international support.

Sri Lanka’s drought won’t hit budget deficit, finance minister says.
The worst drought to hit Sir Lanka in 40 years may cost the government up to 40 billion rupees ($264.7 million), but shoud not worsen the fiscal deficit, Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake said on Friday.
Sri Lanka has already decided to import its staple food — rice — after local rice farmers were forced to abandon cultivation due to severe water shortages.
In a investor note on Thursday, Moody’s said weaker economic activity due to drought would weigh on government revenues and forecast the fiscal deficit to rise to 5.2 percent of GDP from and estimated 4.6 percent, "if the negative credit effect of the drought worsens or is not offset by other fiscal measures".
"We have drafted the budget factoring in those uncertainties.
We prepared this year’s budget with stable policies and we added some percentage for these types of incidents," he told reporters.
There are revenue increases taking place.
Achieving the 4.6 percent deficit target this year is one of the main goals under a $1.5 billion International Monetary Fund loan.
Karunanayake said the government has not considering for a waiver on the deficit target because of the drought.
Currency dealers say drought has raised imports in the absence of local food production while reduced exports of agricultural commodities have resulted in a decline of dollar earnings, putting pressure on the rupee.. ($1 = 151.1000 Sri Lankan rupees) (Reporting by Shihar Aneez and Ranga Sirilal)

After drought, Zimbabwe seeks foreign help for flood victims.
Zimbabwe has appealed for international help for victims of floods that have left 246 people dead and displaced hundreds since December when torrential rains started pounding a country emerging from severe drought.
An El Nino-induced drought last year scorched crops in the southern African country, leaving more than 4 million in need of food aid, but Zimbabweans are now having to contend with floods after receiving above-normal rains.
Minister for local government Saviour Kasukuwere said floods had swept through villages in the southern and southwestern parts of Zimbabwe, destroying roads, crops and livestock and forcing people into temporary government shelter.
Kasukuwere said nearly 2,000 people were homeless, 74 schools were damaged and 70 dams had burst.
President Robert Mugabe’s cash-strapped government has struggled to manage the inundation, whose effects were most severe in the areas hit hardest by last year’s drought.
Urban areas have not been spared, with many roads badly damaged.
"I am therefore appealing to the development partners, private sector and general public, inclusive of those in the diaspora, to rally with the government to support the emergency relieve programs," Kasukuwere said in a statement.
The government is seeking tents, drugs and food for those displaced by the floods, he added.
(Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing by Ed Cropley)

Drought now classified as moderate in state.
The lawns of Mort Vining Road in Southwick may be covered in snow now, but according to the U.S. Drought Monitor they are the last in Massachusetts to be classified as under an “extreme drought.” Since Aug. 9, 2016 at least part of Massachusetts has been under an “extreme drought” as classified by the Drought Monitor.
Thursday’s update maintained that just a tick more than one square mile of Massachusetts remains under an extreme drought, though the Monitor’s map of the state does not reveal which square mile is the driest.
“I bet there’s just a smidgen of it right on that state line,” Richard Heim, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration meteorologist who wrote Thursday’s drought report for the Drought Monitor.
The Massachusetts border with Connecticut is fairly straight, except for a portion of Southwick that juts south into the Connecticut towns of Granby and Suffield.
After checking Drought Monitor data and maps, Heim confirmed that the 0.01 percent of Massachusetts still experiencing an extreme drought is located right on the state line where Southwick meets Granby.
“You can effectively say there is no D3 (extreme drought) in Massachusetts,” Heim said.
“The intent of that change three or four weeks ago was to pull D3 out of Massachusetts and into Connecticut where streamflows are the lowest and where there is long-term dryness.” Thursday’s update does not herald the end of the drought that has dehydrated Massachusetts for a year.
Almost all of mainland Massachusetts is under at least a “moderate drought” and about a third of the state is still classified as experiencing “severe drought” conditions.
Martha’s Vineyard and northwest Berkshire County are “abnormally dry” and only Nantucket is adequately hydrated, according to the Monitor.

Drought outlook improves but subsidence issues persist in places like Corcoran.
CORCORAN, Calif. (KFSN) — Between the year-to-year drought monitor maps showing significant improvements to California’s drought situation to the announcement that California’s snowpack is now 185-percent of average– there is relief and optimism among many in the state, including farmers.
Using radar technology, members of the jet propulsion lab revealed a subsidence bowl around Corcoran has grown wider and deeper.
That’s about the same amount officials at Tulare Lake Drainage District in Corcoran say their levee has dropped over the past year and a half, due to subsidence.
"And so the effort right now is to raise that levee up several feet in anticipation of the water that will come in the summer," said Kindon Meik, Corcoran City Manager.
Corcoran’s City Manager says crews are continually moving dirt to widen the base and increase the height of the levee, in case of a catastrophic flood event.
Subsidence has also put one of the city’s nine domestic wells out of commission for a few months.
But the hope is that subsidence will stop, or slow, if farmers choose not to turn on the pumps in the coming months.
And so with that water storage, there will be a lot more surface water that will be used over the course of the next few months for farming," said Both the drainage district and Corcoran city officials are urging residents to purchase flood insurance, in case of a severe flood event.
To see the subsidence report, click here.