With Santa Barbara County starting the water year slowly, the most recent California drought map shows the region is designated “abnormally dry.”
“It has been the driest beginning of a water year in the last 20 years,” county Water Agency Manager Matt Young said Tuesday. “Just because we have had a slow start doesn’t mean it will be all dry.”
The latest U.S. Drought Monitor map, released Nov. 25, shows all of Santa Barbara County as “abnormally dry.”
The dryness category is “used for areas showing dryness but not yet in drought, or for areas recovering from drought,” according to the drought monitor program, a partnership between the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Santa Barbara County and the Central Coast are considered in the first of five increasingly dire levels in the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Most of California is in some stage of drought or abnormally dry, besides a sliver along the coast near San Diego within Southern California, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
In January 2019, the county was listed in a “moderate drought,” the second level of the drought monitor.
The U.S. Drought Monitor map is issued weekly.
As of Tuesday, the county was at 12% of its normal-to-date rainfall, and measured at 2% of its normal water year rainfall that began Sept. 1 and ends Aug. 31.
“It’s certainly troubling we have only received 2%, but we have had water years start badly before and then had significant precipitation,” Young said.
Lake Cachuma was at about 65%, Montecito’s Jameson Reservoir was at about 77% capacity and Santa Barbara’s Gibraltar Reservoir was more than 16% full as of Tuesday, according to the Santa Barbara County Flood Control District.
“The rainfall and reservoir summary is a good snapshot of where we are,” Young said, adding that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has given a full water allocation for this year. “We have adequate current water supplies, but we are closely watching to see what the rainfall looks like.”
Gibraltar Reservoir is upstream from Lake Cachuma, and water at Jameson Reservoir is used by the Montecito Water District.
Lake Cachuma, a historically essential source of water on the South Coast, was at about 14% of normal for its monthly precipitation in November. Santa Maria also had about 14% of the rain it normally receives in November, while Santa Barbara had about 3%.
In November 2019, Lake Cachuma was listed at about 96% of normal for its monthly precipitation, while Santa Maria was at nearly 150% and Santa Barbara was at about 94%.
Monthly and seasonal precipitation summaries for selected recording sites across Santa Barbara County show the normal rainfall in November is 1.58 inches at Lake Cachuma, 1.33 inches in Santa Maria and 1.55 inches in Santa Barbara.
The monthly and seasonal totals for the region are very low at this time, said Jayme Laber, a senior hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.
December through April are usually the months that bring rain in Santa Barbara County, with January, February and March being the three wettest months, Laber said.
“There is no rain being forecast in at least the next week,” Laber said. “If this dryness continues, I wouldn’t be surprised to see further drought degradation showing up on the U.S. Drought Monitor map in our region.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Brooke Holland can be reached at bholland@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
