Outside the window directly to my left, the sparse layer of snow is thinning fast, and last night the puddles never even froze.

The snow that usually blankets the mountains surrounding the house – and feeds a thirsty California the rest of the year – is disappearing fast, and more (much more) is needed.

UPDATE: It’s Winter for Chrissakes, but look at what’s ahead:

winterweather

Though nobody wants to say it out loud – and hope springs eternal in the California Water Project’s breast – but with precipitation already below normal and La Nina weather patterns suggesting a dry January and February, California could be facing a third consecutive year of drought.

That’s bad news for almost everyone – fish, fishermen, farmers, the Delta, and the whole of Southern California – and the only real winners might be newspaper editorial writers, who are guaranteed a steady supply of controversy.

What do fly fishermen have to look forward to?

One year of drought actually makes the Upper Sacramento more fishable, and without a lot of runoff, spring fishing can be unbelievably good. But after two years, it gets a little dicey. The Upper Sacramento and McCloud rivers stay in pretty good shape (they’re essentially tailwaters), but some of my favorite small streams get hammered by low flows and high water temperatures.

While trout have survived droughts in tiny streams for centuries before we arrived to “manage” their habitat and populations, even tiny trout struggle to reach late fall’s cooling temperatures and intermittent rain.

More importantly – with California’s water wars already raging – a third year of drought is the equivalent of driving a gas tanker into a flaming house; any hope of avoiding a full blown political conflagration simply goes up in flames.

Salmon populations may be recovering some due to better ocean conditions, but over-pumping of the Delta, water diversions and crashing native species populations will likely force more concessions from water users, who view a third year of drought with the same joy you’d view a meteor heading for your house.

Of course, the drought isn’t causing all these problems – it just is what it is. Water in the West is almost uniformly overpromised, and as a nation, we’re discovering that unbridled greed is perhaps not the best basis for operating your financial system, energy policy – or a state-wide water project.

And while a wet winter would stem the bleeding for a while, maybe it’s best if we just confront this mess now like adults instead of letting a few shadowy figures hammer something out when nobody’s looking.

See you looking skyward for snow, Tom Chandler.

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