Monday Top of the Scroll: After another wet winter, is the West still facing a water crisis?
Time is running out for the West’s wet season, but recent storms have done wonders for the snowpack and the drought across much of the region, especially in California. ”The drought situation across the western U.S. has improved considerably as a result of a very wet winter,” Jay Famiglietti, a hydrologist at Arizona State University, told USA TODAY. In fact, both California and Nevada are “essentially drought-free” at the moment, which is “really unusual,” he said. Elsewhere, the giant reservoirs of the Colorado River Basin, Lakes Mead and Powell, are now about one-third full. … Specifically, only about 25% of the western U.S. is currently in drought conditions, according to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor, which is down from 51% this time last year.
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