The Other Snowstorm in California Right Now, and a Water Problem of a Different Kind

The Sierra Nevada and Cascades are buried under record amounts of snow right now, but that's not the only "snow" falling in the state just now. More than a million acres of the state are covered in a blizzard of flower petals from blooming almond trees. The vast blanket of snow is a measure of the health of the water supply in California, but in a way, so is the blizzard of almond blossoms.

Almonds have become one of the leading cash crops in the state of California, which produces around 80% of the world supply. When world prices for almonds jumped a few years ago, agribusiness responded by putting in hundreds of thousands of acres of almond orchards, sometimes replacing other kinds of crops, and sometimes breaking new ground in less productive soils around the margins of the Great Valley. 25 years ago 400,000 acres were planted in almonds. Today it's 1.3 million acres, about 2,000 square miles. The problem is that almonds require a lot of water, around three to four feet per year. The new orchards in my county, several tens of thousands of acres, are getting their water from underground aquifers. The water they are tapping into will not be easy to replace.

I'm not sure we've adequately considered the conflicts of water use and almond expansion. People were paying a lot of attention during California's crippling drought of a few years ago, but those voices have quieted after a few wet years. The thing is, the trees in an orchard must have a fixed amount of water. One can't let a field lie fallow if water is in short supply like one can do with annual crops. The vast increase in almond orchards is adding to the "structural drought" in California, a situation in which even years of "normal" precipitation don't provide enough water to meet the minimum needs. Increasing temperatures related to global climate change will exacerbate the problem as we roll into the future. But as always, money talks.

Unfortunately, I don't see a good end to the haphazard and poorly planned expansion of almond orchards into the prairies of the Sierra Nevada foothills. The blooming trees that look so beautiful today may be abandoned snags before too long. The water is an intractable problem that will not be solved by the building of new dams. There aren't many good places left to put them, and there has to be enough precipitation to fill the dams and that's not assured in our changing climate.

But those trees are really beautiful right now!

POSTSCRIPT: I went up into the foothills today to do some birding and got some pictures of the almond groves covering many hillsides. It's shocking to me that the trees are planted in straight rows that have furrows leading downslope. It's an open invitation for very serious soil erosion, a lesson I thought we learned in the Dustbowl years.

A Different Kind of "Snow" in California, and a Coming World of Hurt

 There is a different kind of snow falling in California right now. It might look vaguely like that cold stuff that has been falling back east, but the resemblance stops at "white". The almond orchards of the Great Valley have been blooming for the last two weeks or so, and the flower petals are starting to fall to the ground as the buds break out into an explosion of green (green leaves now, and green piles of money later).

The almond blossoms are one of the earliest fruit and nut trees to bloom. The pink peach blossoms are just getting started. Things look great right now. The valley floor is green with grass and the ground is moist, because here in the valley, our rainfall totals are actually ahead of normal in some places. In Modesto so far this year, 10.70 inches of rain has fallen, when 8.45 inches is normal. Last year at this time, we had received a paltry 3.26 inches.

So this is good news, right? Not really. It's good that the orchards didn't need a February "drink" from the irrigation system. It's good that the ranches in the foothills have some of the best grazing conditions in a couple of years. But it won't last. The normal rainfall in our valley was not matched by normal precipitation in the Sierra Nevada, and that is where the precipitation counts. The snowpack in the Sierra is barely a quarter of normal right now, meaning very low runoff in the spring, and almost no irrigation water available for the hot summer months.

We are in a world of hurt. The state is in the fourth year of drought, and there are just not a lot of alternative sources of water to fall back on. We've used way too much groundwater, and it isn't being replaced at all. What are we going to do?

These are hard questions, and they will have to lead to some hard choices. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy my very colorful commute through the blooming fields and orchards. Spring is always a time of hope and rebirth, and there are still six or seven weeks left in the rainy season. Who knows what could happen?

A Different Kind of Snow...

There was supposed to be a snowstorm in San Francisco last night, the first in a very long time, and snow levels in our valley were supposed to reach as low as 100 feet or so, so we set out to see if any had fallen in the Sierra Nevada foothills above our home. If there was any, it melted early, but we found a different kind of snow on the almond orchards that cover the low hills: blossoms!

I can't help but think that the blossoms are blooming earlier every year, but it always happens, and my hay fever follows soon thereafter. Still, it is a beautiful sight to see thousands of acres of flowers and deliriously happy bees. California's Central Valley (we call it the Great Valley) is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world, but it rarely offers much to look at in a scenery sense, or in a geological sense for that matter.

But for a few weeks in the spring, it's a happening place, and is well worth a visit.