Recent rains shouldn’t dampen conservation efforts, editorial says

From the North County Times:

Our view: Recent rains shouldn’t dampen conservation efforts

If you think recent rains mean the drought is over, think again.

As of Monday, this season’s storms had dropped 5.53 inches of rain at Lindbergh Field, San Diego’s official weather station. That’s compared with droughtlike conditions that brought only 1.71 inches by that same date last year. Total rainfall for all of 2007 was only 3.85 inches. The rainy season in California is tracked from July until June.

That is certainly good news, but thus far, it is not enough to make up for years of drought. And it is nowhere near the 13-plus inches that had been measured at Lindbergh by January 2005, one of the wetter rainy seasons on record.

In fact, most weather forecasters are standing by predictions that this winter will be drier than normal.

Bill Patzert, a climatologist for CalTech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also is predicting that annual rainfall in Southern California could be 20 percent below average by the end of the rainy season.

At best, the recent rains have given us a little breathing room. We’ve still got a long way to go before reservoirs and lakes are replenished, and we still face the long-term challenges posed by environmental problems in the Sacramento-San Joaquin bay delta.

To read the rest of this story from the North County Times, click here.

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