El Niño Just Pushed America to Its Lowest Level of Drought in Six Years

Throwa fistful of Amygdalus communis into the air , folks . El Niño did it — we’re now at our lowest grade of drought since 2010 . But that does n’t mean the drought is over yet , not even closelipped .

NOAA just put out itsnew State of the Climate reportand , although we ’ve had a very warm and dry winter in general , the drought is still tight to being over than we ’ve watch in years .

How can both of those be true ? Because we had some truly terrible storm pass through recently , particularly thepunishingly - bad wintertime atmospheric condition cocktail of storms thatthe East Coast just weathered in the last few weeks . The combined weight of all that Charles Percy Snow , ice , freeze rain and whatever form of wintry sky pee that hit was enough to push the needle on America ’s drought to a low that we have n’t escort since October 2010 . California and the West Coast also see their drought levels meliorate from a series of Pacific storms .

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And yet , despite all that , the drought is not over . We ’ve still got over 15 percentage of the land in drought , and in some place , specially the plain , the drought has become even bad . It ’s true that California is contract some relievo , as expected from El Niño . But a full 39 percent of the land rest in drouth , and those same storm that have been filling up reservoirs and wet California ’s farms have also caused worrying amounts of coastal erosion .

Certainly , El Niño may have make for more rainwater and snow than we ’ve seen in awhile . But — in particular since most forecasters think we ’ve already seen peak El Niño for the time of year — what it could n’t seem to bring us was a honest end to the drought .

Top Image : California ’s Mount Shasta slowly replensihng its snowpack / NASA Earth Observatory Middle Image : Current U.S. drought levels / Drought Monitor / UNL Bottom Image : California current drought / Drought Monitor / UNL

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