The Seattle Times reports that Washington State is suffering from a severe drought. Is this right?
It’s a little more disturbing when a major regional newspaper (the Seattle Times) provides weather and climate information that is clearly inaccurate and misleading.
But yesterday, the infamous Seattle Times Climate Lab did it again.
The first lines of the article describe the past year in apocalyptic terms:
Virtually every aspect of life in Washington was affected during last year’s drought.
Groundwater wells are depleted, fields produce less crops, more trees die, and fish face disease and famine.
And the next paragraph paints a very dark picture of our future:
Currently, these industries are preparing for another year of water shortage due to the El Nino phenomenon. complicated by climate change, produced below normal snow levels. The state also recently achieved record high temperatures for this time of year.
The state’s water woes will continue and even worsen in the coming decades.
Is the state experiencing a terrible drought that is severely impacting agriculture, leaving fish facing starvation and causing water shortages in the region? And are the other claims of this article true, such as that high temperatures caused terrible damage to the State’s cherry trees?
Most of the claims are factually false.
Attached to the article is a picture of Rattlesnake Lake that looks like a scene on the moon. They don’t mention that this is a man-made lake controlled by Seattle Public Utilities.
So are we facing some terrible drought that is causing state agriculture to fail?
Absolutely not. The state’s 2023 apple crop is huge in near-perfect conditions (28% over 2022). Apples are the state’s number one crop.
WA’s number two crop is dairy and 2023 has already reached record levels in 2022.
The number three crop in WA is potatoes, which saw a 9.5% increase over 2022.
It seems like the agricultural sector is not too affected by the drought as per the Seattle Times.
But what about the cherry crop you asked about? The Seattle Times said:
Turns out the truth is a little different. Washington State’s cherry crop is large and of high quality. The problem is that cool, wet weather has led to a bumper crop in California, which has depressed prices.
So low that cherry farmers in Washington leave a lot of fruit on the trees. So it is the REVERSE drought in California that is causing problems for Washington State farmers. Lots of snow and rain in the “Golden State”
The Seattle Times describes a period of fish famine, but salmon returns in all areas of Washington State are still INCREASING.
So are we in a drought right now?
Cumulative precipitation in Seattle over the past year is almost normal (this year green, brown is normal):
Portland is wetter than usual.
What about Yakima on the eastern slopes of the Cascades? Nearly normal.
It doesn’t seem much like a drought. Yes, there was less snow this year because the temperatures were warmer than normal for a while (due to El Nino, NOT climate change).
But the amount of water falling from the sky is almost normal, and many reservoirs hold more water than usual.
Seattle’s reservoirs are above normal levels (see below)
And the same is true of Everett’s vast Spada Lake reservoir:
Certainly, if the Seattle Times is correct, the river level will be at very low “drought” levels.
Maybe not. Streams on the “dry” eastern slopes of the Cascades are rising (see below). Flow conditions were near normal on the western flank of the Cascades. The only streams that are drying up are around the South Sound area.
In short, the Seattle Times ClimateLab articles do no one any favors by telling myths about drought and climate change. Currently, El Nino conditions are evident, with low snowfall but near-normal precipitation. Agriculture does not collapse Rainfall is almost normal.
