A birds eye view of the current situation in California. LINKS: CDEC Map: cdec.water.ca.... NID Data: nidwater.speci... Patreon: www.patreon.co... Stills Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images SFGate www.sfgate.com...
@@sunnyofabish7835 an opinion given by someone ignorant of the facts is still considered an opinion, unfortunately. o·pin·ion /əˈpinyən/ noun a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.
Most people don't know about snow pack. They think rain is what's needed, but it's really about how much water is stored naturally by snow on the mountains that slowly melts into our watersheds. I really wish natural resources would be taught in schools so kids grow up w healthy understanding of what's needed for their real futures.
Anyone else notice that RU-vid is so heavy-handed with what they ignorantly call “inappropriate content” while blatantly running truly inappropriate advertising. They really discredit themselves with it.
I like you tube only for watching my favorite tubers. Yet they are the ones getting targeted for their content. Which is the truth. So I'm guessing YT does not want true great creators anymore. What a damn shame! Hate seeing one after another getting demonized for good content. The world has gone crazy!
Our dams dry up completely in South Africa. We use drilling to find underground water to keep communities going. The rains eventually fall.... sometimes causing flooding.
It's called punishment for all her evils and sins. Droughts happened to other wicked nations or kingdoms around the world before they were ultimately destroyed, what makes you think that it won't happen to this one?
@@brazillo19 Brazillo I would say it's because she is nether evil nor has sinned, and is simply smarter. By the way it's neither a nation nor a Kingdom but a state. Are you comfortable where you live?
Growing up in Shasta County, CA, I vividly remember being in 1st grade for the great drought of 1976. We were given stickers that said "save water" and asked to give them out in the neighborhood. We also took trips to Shasta Lake to see the construction towers sticking out of the water. These had been cut off, but not removed, with the idea that they would never be seen again.
Thats cool, I lived in Shasta Lake City for many years, made almost daily trips to the Shasta Dam on my motorcycle.. good times were had,moved outta there in 08 when the whole state was on fire. But loved ridin to Mt Lassen and Mt Shasta. I do miss Cali.
You will see people leaving soon to get a drink of water or wash their clothes. Wonder how much additional tax revenue Newsom will squeeze out of Californians to use water?
Yes, scenery like rocks - really beautiful if you like rocks - part of northern Kalifornia is nothing but rocks - grey rocks with little or no vegetation - just rocks. Especially the high Sierra.
@No Liberal For Europe maybe, if the oceanic currents where to be greatly reduced, or straight up stopped by the ice melting at the north pole. But for America it will be the opposite.
@No Liberal So you don't know that there's a difference between weather and climate? Ever wondered why it's 2 different distinct words? Or why one of them is local, both on area and time, while the other is not?
Wish it would have been done before the disaster, and saved us half a billion. If only someone hadn't taken the witness stand and lied under oath that the spillway was built on bedrock, when questioned about it...
Operating Engineers Local 3 made that repair. Please support the right to Unionize and appreciate what the labor movement has done for our country. Your wages and safety are better because of labor unions efforts. Our future depends on all of us.
@@diamondkharness Police and teachers unions need busted and abolished. I also think right to work is better, and employees shouldn’t be forced to join unions.
Man oh man ... Born and raised in CA and I gotta say an aerial shot clarifies the meaning of the word drought. The minimalism of this video speaks loudly. For a guy who gives detailed researched videos you have done exactly the same in an entirely different way. Great job JB.
When they keep dumping water out of the lakes, naturally the levels are going to drop. They keep flowing it down to L.A. and leave us with little. 'Robbing Peter to pay Paul' is what they're doing. Then they charge US if we use more than they allow. MISMANAGED GOVERNMENT.
5:38 - Look at all that fire-scoured wasteland on the North side of Orroville Lake. For the souls lost in the Bear Fire, RIP. For the survivors, my condolences.
I lived in Sacramento at the time of that fire. Unbelievable, totally preventable loss of life and property. How a lot of officials didn't end up in front of a judge is amazing to me. Truly paradise lost out there, not just the town, but the promise of what once was the great State of California and I pray can be again. Good luck to you all. Sid, from the peak of a lost mountain, somewhere in Appalachia.
Enjoyed that flight very much Juan. 👍👍 Hard to believe the suspense and near-disaster of Oroville was 4 years ago. I'm half a world away, but seems like only yesterday I was waiting nervously for updates from you and the broadcast media as events transpired.
been here my whole life 80s was a bad time one el nino and everything changed mid 90s also same thing never saw so much water in utah and nevada and california 30 ft of snow its a never ending cycle but desalination is starting to look better and better as a back up plan and i live in sfba so i know from personel experiecne
That dam, that entire project is an AWESOME, AMAZING feat of engineering, construction, logistics, maintenance, everything! People can do incredible things when they decide to do them. Great video!
WOW!! That looks like a desperate situation in that area. This summer is going to be tense to say the least. I fear fire danger will be horribly high!! And the lack of water in Oroville will affect people all the way down to Schlager's rice fields!! This was a fantastic report. My thanks and compliments to the editor in chief here. Made for an informative AND enjoyable presentation!! Love the mighty Luscombe but I'd prefer the Husky ANY day. I love dirt biking too. Thanks for the trip and the all important data on water conditions there. As always, superb reporting. Thanks again.
Hard to believe it was 2017 that we were all watching your amazing coverage of the Oroville emergency. Still here all these years later. Love the channel. Next time your in the UK come to Wales to see our Victorian built dams :)
@@danrkelly Actually I was posting CO2 at 415ppm in comments just the other day, looks like it's gone up another couple to 417ppm. Things change fast. Thanks for the link.
I After 36 years of federal service (most with the Forest Service) I retired on my 62 birthday at the end of October. Most of last year I was out on medical. It drove me crazy not being able to do my job (dispatch center manager) with all that was going on. No idea how I will deal with that this year. Yes I know I need to move on. It just drives me crazy to see so much going on and cant help. I worry about what this year will have in store for us. I know I will be watching a lot of the PGE fire cameras again. Thank you for the update.
Same with me on retiring, enjoy and you will be wondering how you ever got anything done. 😁 Work still calls when things go haywire for answers but other than that, enjoy life.
...old ATC guy myself...get you some radios to monitor your different stations ... and or ... control tower freq ... that will help assure you they really can ...
I have been retired for 20 years. At first, I was going out of my mind until I decided I had a skillset that was useful to my community. I slowly began to continue working by volunteering, and it gave me a great sense of self. The most important thing you can do is keep your mind and body in top condition. It is in this way you will actually become sharper than you were when you were working. JMHO.
@@BiffBifford Thank you. That was my plan but this medical stuff so far has limited me. As I recover and build body and soul back I will get going. I know there is a lot I can do. Take care sir.
@@willgaukler8979 Yep was doing that before retiring and it has helped a lot while I was stuck sitting. Sad thing is we get almost no emergency service reception here. Good thing is I can hear Nor Cal and Seattle. Hope to put an attena up and maybe that will help. Thanks,.
Thank you for the update!Much appreciated! We'll see how all of the devastated vegetation & ground soil from the fires react to the rain.Erosion and mud slides! Never ending for the residents of California! Very sad and frustrating!
Oh, Juan, being a native of the Northern Sierra's, this was tough to watch. I well know the impacts of the reservoirs being so low this early in the year. If you are all thinking "another fire year like last year", yes, but, that's only part of the picture. The other part impacts the entire nation! How? Lake Oroville and Lake Shasta directly feed into the Central Valley. California is called the "bread basket" of the nation for a reason. The majority of the fruits, vegetables and rice come from the Central Valley. (I'm going from memory, but the Valley is 600 miles long by approximately 50 miles wide - someone will correct me on this, I'm sure). That area is larger than many of our states. So, indeed, that a big part of the food supply. We can all surmise what the rest of 2021 will be like. The State, out of necessity, will have to use a lot of it financial resources on fighting the fires brought on by drought. Hopefully the federal government will help the farmers. Sorry for spelling out what Juan's video means, but this situation needs to be understood. I live on the East Coast now, so it's time to go buy some garden plants and some containers!
Way to true, our dependence entirely for food based on water storage on such a scale is very poorly understood. We need more diversity and less international companies in control of our destiny. Thanks for the great honest reporting. Would be nice to see more than one excellent journalist in North America! 👍🇨🇦
Thanks for sharing Juan. Western States are in serious shape with drought! This could be the worst wildfire season ever. I live in Michigan and also in low drought mode. We had half of snowfall and spring rainfall is down as well. Farmers and ranchers are in a tough spot.
It's really hard to judge scale when you're flying over a lake especially if you never get the privilege like Juan does, but the images of Orville are stunning and devastating without a doubt!
Thanks to the big California drought in the 70's, skateboarding became a big thing, as the "Lords of Dogtown" started shredding in empty LA swimming pools and the sport took a springboarding leap forward. Up until then, it was pretty damn tame. I was one of those kids on a fiberglass board learning to do 180's and "tick-tock" back and forth. We scoffed at the "losers" on Banana Boards - so uncool! Oh, we did build ramps, but that was later...
People who aren't in California don't know what a big deal the snowpack report is to us. I think 14 feet of snow is normal to store enough water to make it through the year. The reservoirs can't hold all the water we need so early rain or a hot spring that melts the snow is as bad as a drought.
There's no getting around it. We don't have a water shortage. Like everything else, no matter how much we have, we'll figure out a way to use more than we have. We're resource rapists that burn through the inventory until it's gone and then cry about it.
Yes but to be clear, they purposely never refilled Oroville Lake since the remodel. And then we’ve had this lack of rain. So the lake is down because of both things. Water is still running out at the same rate as both the Feather River and main canal are running at usual levels. And a side secret; Oroville will never get passed 75% ever. If it does, then the water dept. must send water down south. To keep control, they keep the lake below a certain level, always claiming not enough water or snow, just for control over the water. It’s to give that ongoing single finger to the Libs down south that won’t build their own new lakes or dams for some stupid “rare plant” in a valley somewhere! 🤣🤣
Yip I’m one of your followers that subbed at the time of the Oroville ‘disaster’. At the time it seemed it would take ages to repair the damage and now it’s years ago. Nice video Juan. Thanks for the update from Durban South Africa. 😎
It was a disaster. Inappropriate quotation marks there. My father and a great deal of my extended family were all stuck in a traffic jam. The spillway was expected to fail by midnight, and it was patched in the literal 11th Hour. More than 30,000 people would have likely drowned in their cars or been swept away if helicopter efforts to patch the 2nd spillway had failed. Your quotation marks make it sound like this was nothing.
Looks like central Oregon but most of our reservoirs are so low you can walk across them Prinneville reservoir is dangerously low, another dangerous fire season for west coast. Thank you Juan another great video as always.
Meanwhile we haven't had a week without a rain storm in months here in East Tennessee. I don't even know what dust looks like anymore. I can tell you all about mud though.
Its quite annoying that the weather does the opposite of what is needed!🤨 Need to devise a way to move the excess water during floods to the drought areas and fill the low reservoirs.💧
@@LindysEpiphany I know some companies that build huge pipelines to move liquid but it's not water. I wish they would do a big project like that for water, especially with the emphasis on infrastructure right now.
Take away states borders and you have a very large area of desert out there. it used to be a shallow sea. California truly straddles the desert. maintaining large communities in some parts is constant work against the brutality of the region. the pioneers who forged the way out there for American settlers knew it all too well. today we have some technologies to help, but how much does it really? and how famous is Death Valley? a guy who made it out of there named it.
That's why snowpack is so important. Most of the water comes from the winter snows. With higher temperatures and drought like conditions you get rain in the mountains, and not as much as normal times when it was snow. Plus rain goes quicker into the soil as it is falling. Snow can pile up 20 to 30 feet and then all of a sudden the thaw comes and it's going down the mountains into the rivers and creeks faster than it can be absorbed into the soil.
Wrong. We take an average of many many years to determine the “baseline”. Some years are above baseline, some years are below. Does it make sense? Drought doesn’t mean “dry”. Drought is when the year is way way below normal.
This lingering drought has been getting worse every year, the severe drought is affecting most western states......Even Oregon is starting to experience this drought. I've lived in California for 42 years and I have noticed hotter summers and longer droughts. 🤷♂️
There should be a half dozen de-sal plants along the CA coastline, only one in Cardiff supplying San Diego with 7% of its water need. What's holding it up? Israel has 4 de-sal plants.
I think you mean Carlsbad. It produces 56,000 acre feet a year, and it’s expensive. Even if it weren’t, it would have to run for 63 years to fill Lake Oroville.
For several reasons: 1. They are expensive, very expensive 2. They require a ton of energy to run. Desalinization is not passive, but it requires a lot of energy which increases the carbon footprint significantly 3.. Where on the coast can we build one? No one wants these big plants in their backyard. Who wants pristine coastline to be marred by these things. 4. Much of the coastline of California is owned by the state and federal governments as recreational areas, marine sanctuaries, and national parks. We cannot build there. 5. What do we do with the waste? Water conservation and wholesale revision of water rights in California are cheaper and better choices. Wastewater treatment and recycling is also cheaper, uses less energy, and can be built anywhere. Why do farmers who have first water rights plant wasteful crops like almonds or rice? Why do we have golf courses? Why do we have green lawns in all of the suburbs? We can live in a desert with less water, but Californians think they have some right to all the water they want.
@@SkepticalRaptor when the water dries up and you're thirsting to death, you won't care if it's in your backyard, how much it costs or it's carbon footprint www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2021/Q2/breakthrough-in-reverse-osmosis-may-lead-to-most-energy-efficient-seawater-desalination-ever.html&ved=2ahUKEwiBiumww-rxAhUTHc0KHfKiDIIQFjAAegQIBBAC&usg=AOvVaw19m-SJLvZQ3PU7dYlGWkLF
My take away. 1. Juan just completed a very important "heads up" public service about California's actual water shortage. 2. Imo Calif obviously lacks essential leadership resulting in the lack of water resource planning and related forest fire prevention and suppression. We the voters keep electing inept Governors who don't seem to realize that providing an assured water supply as being "the only thing" they we need them to do.
They are providing an assured water service. Unfortunately, it is not going to the people who need it. It's being channeled away by businesses and farms. Almonds and bottled water are more important than the public.
@@dlwatib no buddy. You don't grow Almonds in areas with little water resources, since almond farming uses alot of water compared to other crops. And the bottled water plants don't have their own resources. Look at the Nestle plant that is in Yosemite National park. That is public water that they are using and getting for free. There is a huge water wastage problem in California. And I agree that people should not have green grass on their lawns in a area that is pretty much a desert.
@@bubba842 You have the same problem as AZ. We are supposed to conserve, plant low-water landscaping, blah, blah. works out well enough, developers and government keep on building, and one day we will be at maximum, then have a major drought. Already conserved to the max, built to the max, now we're out of water. I don't think we're there yet but we're losing major amounts of colorado river water. SOMEDAY.
@@volvojohn9036 when shot hits the fan you can guarantee industry will not have to make concessions, no, it will be the average joe who will be told to conserve. All the while industry draws tens of millions of litres of water every minute. But you will be blamed, the people who are paying for it, not the industries who are getting it for nearly free. Remember, we can't let industry falter when their is no water, that's the capitalist way.
I've never been to California. It's such a beautiful state. It breaks my heart to see what's happening to it. Thanks for bringing us these images Juan. It tells the story better then any words could!
It's a thousand mile long stretch of paradise. Juan does it justice. The entire northern half of the state is wilderness, with a few towns thrown in, and still 40 mill live here. We've been in this pickle before. If we don't burn down, we'll make it through the summer, but will need at least a normal rain year starting in Oct.
@@johnleinen9409 This is not the normal climate cycle, Pal. There has only been one really wet year in the last 21 years. Entire oak forests in San Diego County are DEAD because of drought. I have lived here 68 years, we used to have regular El Nino/La Nina cycles about every 4 years... not anymore! The base climate changed with the turn of the millenia. A climate scientist said the same thing that I saw with my own eyes!
Red Dead Redemption: The Flyover - brought to you by Blancolirio. I'm sure Juan could chat right through this kind of video, but it shows his commitment to professionalism and safety, that he concentrates on always flying the plane, even when he's giving us 'his' view. There's maybe a lesson for all flying RU-vidrs here. Your safety is far more important than content for us mere mortals who cannot fly when the urge takes us. Even though aerial photography has been around a long time now, I never tire of just how beautiful this planet looks from the air. ❤
The eruption of Mt. St. Helens put more CO2, SO2 and NO into the atmosphere that the entire history of mankind up until that time. Now, think how many volcanic eruptions there have been since then. Stop drinking the BS koolaid. There has always been a cycle of drought and wet in the Western US. Additionally, California has not updated its water infrastructure for 40 years. We have a system designed for 20 million people. If it wasn't for Gov. Pat Brown suing the Sierra Club we wouldn't have the California water project. The genius of the system is was designed in phases and the third phase was for a population of 40 million. However, we are stuck on the second phase. LA has a 5 year reserve of water along with Bay Area having Hetch Hetchy providing an ample supply during drought conditions. It is the farmers and residents in the interior that pay the price.
Just got back to your channel...glad to see you're ok... was wondering about you with all those fires last year. Thanks again for videos... Kenny in Vegas
Great music choice and beautiful video thank you. living and farming in Kern county your area is the life blood of ag for us this update why I support you on patroon.
Great video Juan. They have great quality flyover vids and amazing stills. I wish i could send you some rain from Scotland but i hope the best for you guys.
I take steps to save & reuse water. I have three 55 gallon drums in the back yard to collect rainwater. I'm apparently 'breaking the law.' And since I'm in an old house without recirculating hot water, I save the water I run in used gallon milk jugs. Then use that water to refill the toilet tank and/or water the plants with it. Same with the water used to wash veggies & fruit. It isn't a lot (maybe 10 gal/day), but it helps. Multiply that times 40 million people and you now have "real" water! I don't leave the water on when it isn't needed. Rinse, lather, rinse, done in the shower! But don't get me wrong, I'm no fool when it comes to CA water. I know that agriculture uses 80% of our beloved and valuable water. And they waste a lot of it. And they choose crops that make money, not necessarily are the best choices for California. So while my garden dies, it's pretty lame knowing that farmers are still wasting below-rate water at EXPONENTIALLY larger amounts. Buncha bullshit! AND our farmers LOVE to trash the 'gubermint' while they suck down that TAXPAYER-SUBSIDIZED water, stored in GOVERNMENT-BUILT reservoirs, delivered in GOVERNMENT-BUILT canals to their farms! "Congress-created water shortage" and all their bullshit signs lining I-5 drive me crazy! Have some damn humility and be thankful we value water and agriculture! But stop being so arrogant and right-wing. Thanks to that very same big government you hate, you have cheap water to grow your crops! Oh and all the while, they're sinking more and more deeper and deeper wells, sucking our aquifer(s) dry. That's gotta change!
This collecting rain water law thing needs to be sorted out. For large agricultural users it make sense to have laws to stop the sequestering of water but for the home gardener, they need to allow people to collect and conserve. Stupid big laws with no sensibility for the general population!
You think you're oh so holier than thou by your pittance water savings that you spend so much energy on. But you're completely ignorant of the true situation of California's farmers. California farmers fully pay for the water they get, and still can't get enough because 3/4 of the water flows to the ocean without being used. You believe lies and propaganda and pass them on to others. You're a big part of the problem, not part of the solution because you're a leftist idiot that refuses to vote for a politician that will do something right and build another damn dam.
Thanks for the update Juan. Living in New England I am not surprised how little we hear about the water situation in California. The comparisons between the capacity and present level leaves one wondering how this fall will turn out with the wild fires. Scary.
Well California better issue an emergency declaration, and start building desalination plants pronto. Many people ask why build a desalination plan instead of a reservoir. Because in the last 20 years we have received normal to above-average rainfall only 4 of those years. The population is anticipated to increase to 45 million people in the coming years. It's also a far faster more cost-effective way to bring freshwater into the state. And quite simply all the best sites to build a new reservoir have been taken.
Oh it will be. We have two options in California: 1) "Well, folks it's been a really wet year, so vegetation growth is through the roof. Expect an extreme fire season!" 2) "Well, folks it's been a bad drought year, so vegetation is extremely dry. Expect an extreme fire season!" It's either 1 or 2 according to the media!
We used to race on Lake Orville, don't recall that much beachline... Side note: we did a 213 on the first pass, a 233 coming back. Blow the prop thus taking a 4x6 section of the boat out on that second shot. Expensive trip, but got us a 223 average. Damn I miss Bernie Little.....
I lost my home and business in the 2018 Camp fire in Paradise. A combination of drought and carelessness on the utility caused it. Puts things in better perspective like this.
My favorite Northern California dam is Whiskeytown. For no other reason other than my grandfather engineered it. Before the reservoir was filled in 1963 my grandpa took me back to see the Gold Rush mining camp of Whiskeytown before it was submerged. Apparently when the reservoir is low you can still see tops of buildings and stuff.
@@virginiatyree6705: The last time I was at Whiskeytown Dam they had just finished the "Glory Hole" overflow spillway. I have never seen the reservoir with water in it. In the late 1950s and 60s my grandfather would take me exploring abandoned mines, mining camp ghost towns, and Indian caves. I continued to explore abandoned mines till the late 1990s but no longer do it. I had enough near death experiences over the years that I figured I had pushed my Guardian Angel to her limits and should quit while I still could.
5 7 21 Hey again @@DFDuck55, Fun story about your grandfather. My. Mum's best friend is a lapidary. He did a lot of exploring in the central Sierras & found Indian artifacts & cool rock specimens. He has a great collection of beautiful stones. One story he told me was he started a redwood from a seed (supposedly found in a pyramid in Egypt) & of course it was cut down as the highway was enlaged. v
@@DFDuck55 , P.S.: Lucky your Guardian Angels knocked some sense into your "young & dumb" mind; he he. I only have one & they have been very patient with my inexperience (& dumbness) about the universe. They allowed me to think first, then I had to decide. Good too know of other humans being guided through life. 😙... v
@@virginiatyree6705: My grandpa got me into collecting rocks from most everywhere we visited. I continued that practice into the 1990s and had lots of rocks on my porch. For some reason people thought is was okay to take things like quartz crystals and garnets off my porch. About the only thing I have left is a large obsidian stone by my front door. And it was stolen at one point too. I tracked it down and reclaimed it. When we explored Indian caves we found skulls, bones, and artifacts, and always left them where we found them. I don't think any of those still remain in the caves because people somehow think they have the right to take them.
I was always amazed, flying over places like Yosemite, it looks like a small patch of green on some rocks, but on ground you hike through beautiful lush forests.
Much longer droughts than 6 years have happened in California before the 20st century (and bigger fires too). Let's hope the current regime of occasional wet winters continues.
You're not gonna wanna try. It will be a half inch thick crust and below that is mud the consistency of peanut butter a couple feet deep which is a nightmare to get stuck in.
@G.W.: Yeah, just have Juan drop a bunch of currency from one of his aircraft, they'll come a runnnin'!!!! First we'll have to set up a "GoFundMe" page though. 😁😁😁😁
@@Melvin.b.n.s the spillway was being eroded to the point that it would have compromrised the dam itself. There was a very real danger of the dam breaching. They don't evacuate over 100,000 people for nothing.
@@SuperAWaC helloI have even placed a column in a foreign English news paper saying that ANYBODYwhom believes thatANYBODY thinks they can change the weather needs to be CONFINED TO A MENTAL INSTUTION ! Cheers 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Fantastic footage! Rarely a water shortage in Upstate NY, pretty much ever. Has rained 2 out of 3 days for the past month, or so it seems. Here we do have snowpack melts, but they cause flooding when it melts too fast. Never a problem with not enough.
One note about california's longest drought - California had had droughts that have lasted much longer in the past. 2011 to 2017 is nothing in comparison to historical events
Sad to see Lake Oroville (Loafer Creek campground, and Bidwell Canyon marina), and Bullard's Bar reservoir in particular. Lived on Kelly Ridge when Oroville Dam was finished.
Great video. Thank You. I had a great uncle. He’s been gone for a while. Made millions in west Texas in the oil business. He told me one day water will be as valuable as oil. He said anytime someone drills a water well they will put a meter on it and it will go with the mineral rights of the land. Just like oil. Of course Corp. America has bought land in California for the sole purpose of drilling water wells. I am told for almond farms. Almonds are big big business.
