2011–2017 California drought
one of the worst North American West Coast droughts on record
The 2011–2017 California drought persisted from December 2011 to March 2017 and consisted of the driest period in California's recorded history, late 2011 through 2014. The drought wiped out 102 million trees from 2011 to 2016, 62 million of those during 2016 alone. The cause of the drought was attributed to a ridge of high pressure in the Pacific ocean—the "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge"—which often barred powerful winter storms from reaching the state.
By February 2017, the state's drought percentage returned to lower levels seen before the start of the drought. This change was due to an exceedingly wet pattern caused by atmospheric river-enhanced Pacific storms, which caused severe flooding.
In mid-March 2019, California was declared drought-free except for a small pocket of abnormally dry conditions in Southern California. This declaration followed a series of powerful Pacific storms during the first few months of the year, which coincided with the U.S. experiencing drought conditions in the fewest parts of the country since 2000.
History
2013
In 2013, the total rainfall was less than 34% of what was expected. Many regions of the state accumulated less rainfall in 2013 than any other year on record. As a result of this, many fish species were threatened.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “2011–2017 California drought” is one of the worst North American West Coast droughts on record. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through California, drought and worst, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q29075430. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2011, 2017, 2014 and 2016.
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This entry incorporates text from “2011–2017 California drought” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.