The weekly Drought Monitor report issued this morning lists the Frazier Park area as abnormally dry. Last week that region was still on the line between Moderate Drought and the ranking of Abnormally Dry. The biggest headline this time last week was that most of the county, including Bakersfield, the Lake Isabella region, the Tehachapi Valley and even the desert cities of Mojave and Ridgecrest were removed from the drought ranking all together, meaning we have officially recovered from the drought.

The statewide drought emergency won’t end however until Governor Jerry Brown says so, and that is unlikely as portions of the state remain in moderate to severe drought and we are heading into the dry season. So water restrictions will continue here in Kern County.

California has seen this remarkable improvement thanks to our unusually wet winter. So how much rain did we get to provide that improvement? Well here in Bakersfield our February rain total was officially 1.46 inches, just above our monthly average of 1.20”. But we’ve actually collected 4.22” since January first, well above our average of 2.36”. As for the water year, which began on October 1, we have collected 10.01” which is already way over our annual water year average of 6.47” and we still have until September 30 to add more to that total!

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