California Drought Captured by NASA

As the West falls away deeper into the drought, the climate and water experts are growing more and more worried by California severely shriveling lakes.On Monday, the Shasta Lake, the largest reservoir in the state, held a limited 1.57 million acre-feet of water, as per the US Bureau of Reclamation, or around 35% of its capacity.

A series of images captured by NASA satellites show how intensely the water level has fallen.One image from July 2019 shows a fuller Shasta Lake, which has been surrounded by green banks. This year, that greenness has been changed into a tan “bathtub ring” outlining the lake bed, representing the degree to which the water has fallen.

A similar sort of pattern can be seen in the captured images of Lake Oroville, the state’s second-largest reservoir, which also has an experience of rash drop in its reserves and in the Sierra, which have seen a lessening snowpack this year.Jeffrey Mount, a senior associate at the Public Policy Institute of California Water Policy Centre, said that everyone should be worried about what they are sighting.

He added that the reservoir levels they are looking at are near the low record, with all the predictions that they will be recorded low by the end of this summer. The mountains have all dried out. The sponge is completely dry.According to the California Department of Water Resources, on Monday, the lake was set up just over 661 feet above sea level, or 28% of its total capacity.