Mark Twain once said, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco". He likely meant that too. But, since about May this hasn't been very true.
For example by November we should have seen some of our coldest temperatures of the year around Thanksgiving but not this year. Right now the temperature should be between 40 to 50 degrees in February on average. But not this year. I'm not even sure we get below 50 during the nights and most of the days are above 60 and on up to 70 degrees Fahrenheit. This kind of high temperatures is also why there isn't much snow pack in the Sierras or Southern Cascades like Mt. Shasta. For example, snow level is above 7000 feet for sure and many places still above 8000 to 9000 feet all the way up to southern Oregon or beyond.
The problem for California is we desperately need snowpack of 6 feet or more during this time of the year so it slowly melts into rivers feeding dams and lakes so we can make it through the summers in all or most of California this summer and fall until more rain arrives hopefully sometime after September or October. But, this snow pack (and skiers below 8000 to 9000 feet) also doesn't exist this year and it is already February.
For example in the 1980s I have skied on (many times) snow that is 20 to 40 feet deep on Mt. Shasta and this was usually between 5000 feet and 8000 feet. Well, there is almost no snow at all lower than 8000 feet anywhere up there in the region right now. So, you can see how bad this is when we get 3 to 5 years of this not happening like now.
So, desalination at the ocean but what are people going to do inland is what it looks like we are all heading towards now.
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