Drought In California Essay

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Drought in California
The drought in California has seriously impacted California in a negative way and will continue to impact California negatively if it continues. Drought in California has always played a huge part in California’s geography and without action to help prevent the affects of long lasting droughts California will continue to suffer severe negative effects, which can lead to serious negative impact on the rest of the country as well.
Drought has been occurring in California even before it was named a state in 1850, but the current drought in California has people worried that it could become a “mega drought”. A mega drought is a prolonged drought lasting two decades or longer, and the last mega drought to occur started in 1140 and ended in 1320. Since then the longest droughts in the last hundred years were 1987 to 1992 and during the great depression in 1928 to 1934. The mega drought of 1140 to 1320 lasted 180 years and the longest mega drought recorded was a 240 years long drought from 850 to 1090.
The drought in California is to be blamed on what is being described as “A vast zone of high pressure in the atmosphere off the west coast.” (Rogers 2014) researchers have learned that the high pressure is preventing all kinds of storms from reaching California and instead are actually going up to Alaska and British Columbia and even the east coast. The wall of pressure has been hovering around California for more than a year and no one can say why it is happening(Rogers 2014).
The rainfall levels according to the San Francisco Chronicle are way down this year in California due to the drought, for example in San Francisco the rain level has been about 8.5 inches and the normal level of rainfall for this time of y...

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...ny foods have already gone up largely because of the drought. The prices of meat, eggs, fruits, and vegetables and a lot more foods have been shooting up. In 2012 the drought had prices rising which led to it costing the U.S. economy about $30 billion; the only severe weather disaster that has cost more of an impact was Hurricane Sandy.
The drought in California as it stands doesn’t seem likely for it to be going away anytime soon and with the chance that it could last so long that it could turn into a what is categorized as a mega drought the citizens of California are going to need to start taking steps to help lighten the blow of the drought. There are many ways to help prevent the drought from having as devastating of an impact on the state of California. Some of the really simple things the people of California can do to help preserve the water supply are to

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