PHILLIPS STATION, Calif. (AP) — California’s brief escape from severe drought ended Thursday after scientists declared more than 40 percent of the state in moderate drought and water officials confirmed lower-than-normal snowpack in the Sierra Nevada.
Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, which hold nearly a quarter of the state’s population, were rated in severe drought.
During a week of rainless skies and some record-high temperatures in Southern California, water officials also trekked into the Sierra Nevada on Thursday and manually measured the vital snowpack, which stood at less than a third of normal for the date.
In Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, which are about 100 miles north of Los Angeles, the lack of rain and dry vegetation fueled a December wildfire that grew to be the largest recorded in state history.
“I know we need rain, but another mudslide would be awful,” said Santa Barbara restaurant hostess Cayla Stretz.
Survivors in her area are still digging out homes, many beaches and roads are closed by mud, and business is down in the beach town, Stretz said.
Last year’s rain has most of the state’s reservoirs higher than usual, a bright spot, said Doug Carlson, a state Department of Water Resources spokesman.
During the peak of the state’s dry spell, 99.9 percent of California was in some stage of drought and nearly half fell into the very highest category.
The years of disappointing winters and competition for remaining water supplies devastated native species ranging from Chinook salmon to pine forests, dried many household wells in the state’s middle, and compelled farmers to plunge other wells deep into the earth in search of irrigation water.
In California’s Central Valley, the nation’s richest agricultural producer, government officials had to install water systems during and after the five-year drought for small towns such as East Porterville, after household wells dried.