California’s record-smashing three-year drought will likely continue, state officials said Monday. Most of the state is in severe, extreme, or (the worst) exceptional drought. The ‘water year’ ending on September 30 saw precipitation at just 76% of average and reservoir levels at 69% of their historic levels. Despite the superlative-straining drought, not everyone is short for water, NPR reports. Farmers in Imperial County, California, currently pull more water from the Colorado river than the states of Arizona and Nevada — combined — water to which they are legally entitled due to a byzantine water rights system and land speculators who dug a canal in 1901. (NPR; Ongoing drought: AP, E&E $; Climate Signals background: Western megadrought)
