A woman walks along a path as clouds hang over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in Emeryville, California, in January of 2016. El Nino storms lined up in the Pacific, promising to drench parts of the West for more than two weeks. The story begins by stating much of the state is “either abnormally dry or suffering from a moderate drought.
“The snowpack was less this year than normal. Well, we know why that is. There was a strong El Nino which they generally don’t mention. But this time they mentioned the very end,” Mass said. “So it’s not due to climate change or global warming that we didn’t have so much snowpack. It’s because of a natural phenomenon called El Nino when the tropical Pacific becomes warmer than normal.”“Some of the the junior water rights people had a a gap in their water.
“If you go to the analysis of where the crops are right now, it’s extremely favorable,” Mass said. “We may be a little bit drier than normal, a little less snowpack, but the cold, there’s some drought with a ‘big D’ and that’s kind of deceptive. But people think the word drought should only be used when there’s a serious negative impact on this lack of water or snowpack. But that’s not the case this year.