The signs are hard to miss. Along freeways throughout California, digital billboards caution drivers: "Serious drought underway. Conserve water." Beyond the highways, a closer look at the landscape reveals record-low reservoir levels, smaller amounts of snowpack on mountaintops and large swaths of barren earth.
California is in the midst of its third consecutive year of drought, and state officials are worried. "We were quick to move from moderate concern to very high concern during the months of December and January, when we received record-low precipitation in many parts of the state," says Mark Cowin, director of California's Dept. of Water Resources. "It's amazing how this year has revealed how dependent we are on two or three big storm systems every year, and we've got to wait for those storm systems to move through and drop their precipitation for snowpack, and they just didn't show up this year," he says.