For the first time since 2011, California is drought-free
Thanks to a rainy winter, California is drought-free for the first time in eight years.
The U.S. Drought Monitor released a map on Thursday showing that there are no areas of the state experiencing prolonged drought, the Los Angeles Times reports. The last time the map looked like this was in December 2011. "The reservoirs are full, lakes are full, the streams are flowing, there's tons of snow," Jessica Blunden with the National Climatic Data Center said. "All the drought is officially gone."
At this time in 2018, 88.9 percent of California was considered "abnormally dry," and only 11 percent was experiencing normal conditions. Today, 93 percent of the state is under normal conditions.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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