House hunting in a hurricane zone

27 February 2014
By Karina Martinez-Carter

It’s been a tough couple of years for homeowners. Extreme weather events over the last 18 months have wreaked havoc on residential property around the world. Bushfires have raged across Australia, huge storms have slammed the United States and UK homes have been flooded.

New Jersey resident Elaine Burns saw her Little Silver home flooded with eight feet of water when October’s superstorm Sandy hit the US east coast. Still, she believes she was lucky. The storm “clobbered” many of their immediate neighbours’ homes, she said. Hers, at least, was still intact.

 “With all of this discussion about the sea level rising long-term, you have to wonder whether this a once-in-a-lifetime event, or something that happens once every so many years,” she said. “That’s the challenge here.”

Burns and her husband, like many others, have had to pour cash into protecting their house in case floodwaters surge again, such as hanging or elevating kitchen appliances. Her neighbours are lifting their home about eight feet off the ground with a new foundation — a lengthy, intense and extensive process that’s necessary both for future safety and more. Such precautions are becoming almost required if an owner in a storm-struck area ever wants to sell.

Yet there is a silver lining to catastrophe. People on all sides of the property fence, including the insurance industry and property agents, say they have become more nimble, experienced and efficient at responding to weather-related disasters. Homeowners, too, can benefit from the many lessons learned by those who have been struck by calamity.

Here’s a look at how real estate professionals, governments, buyers and sellers and insurers have adjusted, and what homeowners should do to protect their properties.

Real estate agents

Real estate agents now say they better understand how to protect vulnerable zones, and they are passing their knowledge on to buyers and homeowners.

For instance, following bushfires in Australia, Sue Swingler, a property agent in the arid state of Victoria, now advises clients to access local authority risk maps of their properties. No matter where homeowners live, reputable insurance companies should provide estimates for the area, as well as regional comparisons.

In many disaster-prone areas, agents are now required by law to say whether the area or property faces risky weather. Stay up-to-date on rules and regulations, which often change following a disaster, Swingler suggested. Consult property or insurance agents, or search online government resources.

Beware bargain hunters who seek to scoop up property after a calamity, agents say. “We worked hard to keep the land prices generally in keeping to the prices pre-fires,” said Swingler. Real estate agents discourage sellers from taking less than their property is worth.

Agents have also begun to take on more of an advisory role. That can be very good news for homeowners, who should seek to find these proactive advisors. “We will talk about the need for a fire plan and refer [prospective buyers] to the respective [local] authority for more information,” Swingler said.

Hands-on agents may urge buyers to consider whether there might be a more resilient property available in their price range and target area. Flood maps might show a home on one street as sitting in a higher danger zone than one for sale a street away.

Agents in fire-prone areas will tell sellers to look at the vegetation and water supply around a property, added Mark Sutherland, another property agent in Victoria. Agents have even begun helping residents in the wake of a crisis, including clearing away brushes and trees, aiding in obtaining new building permits or even relocating displaced owners.

Insurers

Insurance and reinsurance industries have also learned from natural disasters, said Dr Sebastian von Dahlen, economic counsellor for the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) in Basel, Switzerland.

For one, insurance companies are taking preventative measures at the sign of an impending storm or disaster. US-based auto insurance company Allstate, for instance, boosted its presence in threatened areas and deployed a number of mobile claim centres and response vehicles even before superstorm Sandy made landfall.

For property owners, insurance and reinsurance for disaster-apt property is still not prohibitively expensive, said Von Dahlen. Still, they should be aware of possible price fluctuations.

Purchasing appropriate insurance — while it sounds obvious — is more crucial than ever because disasters that aren’t covered by basic home insurance are becoming more frequent. The good news is that with the right insurance, you may be paid out for a claim quicker than in the past. The UK’S biggest insurance body, The Association of British Insurers claims the industry has distributed about £14 million($23.5m) in emergency payments since 23 December when severe flooding began in the south of the country.

Governments

Governments around the world are learning from others’ calamities and are better (in some cases) about stepping in with aid earlier.

After Sandy, the New Jersey government offered buyout plans to property owners across a number of affected areas, largely financed by federal disaster funds. It purchased large sections of land to create a natural buffer to protect against future disasters. The Canadian government enacted a similar plan in Alberta.

In many places, law now requires property agents to be transparent about disaster risks. For example, in the UK, property agents have “a legal obligation to inform buyers of anything that would affect their transactional decision,” said Mark Hayward, the UK’s National Association of Estate Agents managing director. In Australia, vendors must declare in the vendor statement if the property up for sale is located in a bushfire zone.

Buyers and Sellers—The Silver Lining

 As owners, buyers and sellers have seen nearby properties slammed by natural disasters, they have become savvier about how to protect their own.

For homes that might face flooding, even slight changes can help, such as raising electrical sockets, landscaping to create barriers to block water and replacing flooring with a water-resistant material. Such adjustments safeguard the property in the present and often lead to more affordable insurance premiums. Once a property is for sale, the measures also make it more appealing to buyers — and can set one house on the block apart from another.

Similarly, buyers are becoming more aware about what to look for in a property, from where appliances are situated, to what type of insurance is required and how close the property lies to a flood plain.

While Burns and her family have stayed in their home on a peninsula that juts into the Shrewsbury River, some of her neighbours have opted to sell. And the truth is, come hell or high water, many buyers will continue to covet those waterfront properties

Nível de reservas da Cantareira é o menor desde o início de suas operações - Brazil

FERNANDA GUIMARÃES - Agência Estado

O índice que mede o volume de água armazenado no Sistema Cantareira apresentou nova queda neste sábado, caindo para 17,5% da capacidade total dos reservatórios ante o nível de 17,7% registrado na sexta. Este é o índice mais baixo apresentado desde o início de operação do sistema, em 1974. 

De acordo com dados da Sabesp, a pluviometria ds região acumulada em fevereiro permanece em 48,7 milímetros (mm), o que representa somente 24% da média histórica de chuvas para o mês. A pluviometria de hoje, ainda de acordo com a Sabesp, foi de 0,1 mm, apesar de ter chovido forte em algumas regiões de São Paulo na tarde de hoje.

Conforme os meteorologistas do Centro de Gerenciamento de Emergências (CGE), as próximas horas ainda devem seguir com registro de chuvas na Capital, entretanto de maneira fraca e com eventuais pontos moderados. Para amanhã são aguardadas pancadas de chuvas a partir do meio da tarde. Na segunda-feira a partir da tarde estão previstas pancadas de chuva com intensidade de moderada a forte.

Freezing January for Easterners Was Not Felt Round the World

An abandoned farmhouse near Bakersfield, Calif., in February. California is struggling with a severe drought. David McNew/Getty Images

By JUSTIN GILLISFEB. 20, 2014

For people throughout the Eastern United States who spent January slipping, sliding 

and shivering, here is a counterintuitive fact: For the earth as a whole, it was the

fourth-warmest January on record.

It was, in fact, the 347th consecutive month with temperatures above the 20th-century average, the government reported Thursday.

That may feel plausible to Californians, whose state experienced temperatures 10 or 15 degrees above normal in some places last month, and especially to Alaskans, where the average temperature was almost 15 degrees above normal.

But on a map of January temperatures released Thursday by government weather analysts, the Eastern United States stood out as one of the coldest areas on the planet, compared with seasonal norms.

That is no surprise to anybody living east of the Mississippi River, of course — certainly not to the Atlantans who were caught up in two memorable ice storms that shut down the city, or the New Yorkers who are still picking their way through mounds of dirty snow.

But this might be another surprise: Despite all the weather drama, it was not a January for the record books.

By the time analysts averaged the heat in the West and the cold in the East, the national temperature for the month fell only one-tenth of a degree below the 20th-century average for January. January 2011 was colder.

No state set a monthly record for January cold. Alabama, also walloped by the ice storms, came closest, with the fourth-coldest January on its record books.

The United States covers only 2 percent of the surface of the globe, so what happens in this country does not have much influence on overall global temperatures.

Brazil, much of southern Africa, most of Europe, large parts of China and most of Australia were unseasonably warm in January, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Thursday. That continues a pattern of unusual global warming that is believed to be a consequence of human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases.

Even in the United States, more than a third of the country is in drought of varying intensity. Mountain snowpack in many parts of the West is only half of normal, portending a parched summer and a likelihood of severe wildfires.

“Today’s snowpack is tomorrow’s water in the West,” said Deke Arndt, chief of climate monitoring for the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., in a briefing on Thursday. “If it does not recover, this will have consequences for months down the road.”

The Arctic blasts of this winter do stand out in the weather records of this young century, even if they are pretty humdrum when compared with the 1970s and 1980s. Winters have been so mild over the past couple of decades — probably as a result of global warming, scientists say — that some young adults have never experienced cold waves quite so intense.

And the pain may not be over. Forecasters say the northern tier of the United States

may face still more cold blasts, storms and heavy winds right up to the doorstep of 

spring, albeit interspersed with bursts of warmth in some areas.

Over just the next few days, the Southeast may be hit by severe thunderstorms, high winds and even hail. The Midwest may have wind gusts up to 60 miles an hour. And the Northeast could see rain, snow or a mix of the two.

Temperatures across the eastern Great Plains, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley are expected to be below normal for the next month and into the spring.

But the cold weather in the East is being balanced, in a sense, by the bizarrely warm temperatures in the West. And that trend, too, is likely to continue.

The outlook over the next month is for continued above-normal temperatures in the West, the Southwest and parts of Alaska, as well as a continuation of the California drought, despite recent rains that have eased the situation slightly.

The extremes in January were directly related, experts said, with the two regions falling on opposite sides of a big loop in the jet stream, a belt of high winds in the upper atmosphere that helps to regulate the climate.

A dip of the jet stream into the Eastern United States allowed cold air to descend from the Arctic, while a corresponding ridge in the West allowed warm air to hover over California and to penetrate normally frigid regions to the north.

For those ready for the warmth to dip in their direction, mark a calendar: March 20, at 12:57 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

That is when the tilt of the Earth causes the sun to pass over the Equator and re-enter the Northern Hemisphere, bringing spring with it.

Science Linking Drought to Global Warming Remains Matter of Dispute - longstanding prediction that wet areas of the world will get wetter in a warming climate, even as the dry ones get drier.

By JUSTIN GILLISFEB. 16, 2014   NYtimes.com

In delivering aid to drought-stricken California last week, President Obama and his aides cited the state as an example of what could be in store for much of the rest of the country as human-caused climate change intensifies.

But in doing so, they were pushing at the boundaries of scientific knowledge about the relationship between climate change and drought. While a trend of increasing drought that may be linked to global warming has been documented in some regions, including parts of the Mediterranean and in the Southwestern United States, there is no scientific consensus yet that it is a worldwide phenomenon. Nor is there definitive evidence that it is causing California’s problems.

In fact, the most recent computer projections suggest that as the world warms, California should get wetter, not drier, in the winter, when the state gets the bulk of its precipitation. That has prompted some of the leading experts to suggest that climate change most likely had little role in causing the drought.

“I’m pretty sure the severity of this thing is due to natural variability,” said Richard Seager, a climate scientist who studies water issues at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.

To be sure, 2013 was the driest year in 119 years of record keeping in California. But extreme droughts have happened in the state before, and the experts say this one bears a notable resemblance to some of those, including a crippling drought in 1976 and 1977.

Over all, drought seems to be decreasing in the central United States and certain other parts of the world, though that is entirely consistent with the longstanding prediction that wet areas of the world will get wetter in a warming climate, even as the dry ones get drier.

What may be different about this drought is that, whatever the cause, the effects appear to have been made worse by climatic warming. And in making that case last week, scientists said, the administration was on solid ground.

California has been warming along with most regions of the United States, and temperatures in recent months have been markedly higher than during the 1976-77 drought. In fact, for some of the state’s most important agricultural regions, summer lasted practically into January, with high temperatures of 10 or 15 degrees above normal on some days.

The consequence, scientists say, has been that any moisture the state does get evaporates more rapidly, intensifying the effects of the drought on agriculture in particular. “We are going through a pattern we’ve seen before, but we’re doing it in a warmer environment,” said Michael Anderson, the California state climatologist.

The White House science adviser, John P. Holdren, said in a briefing last week: “Scientifically, no single episode of extreme weather, no storm, no flood, no drought can be said to have been caused by global climate change. But the global climate has now been so extensively impacted by the human-caused buildup of greenhouse gases that weather practically everywhere is being influenced by climate change.”

The drought eased a bit with heavy rains in Northern California this month, but many major reservoirs have only half the water expected for this time of year. “I think the situation is still pretty severe,” said Prof. Alex Hall, who studies climate at the University of California, Los Angeles.

California gets much of its water from snow in the winter along the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada. That means 38 million people and a $45 billion agricultural economy are critically dependent on about five heavy storms a year.

Dry Western States

Rain and snow in California have been so minimal over the last three years that 95 percent of the state is in drought. Neighboring states like Nevada have also been hard-hit.

If a ridge of high atmospheric pressure develops off the California coast, it can easily push moisture-bearing winds to the north, so that the water falls closer to Seattle than Sacramento. Just such a ridge has been parked off California for much of the last three years.

A decade ago, scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, published a tantalizing set of papers that predicted a greater likelihood of such a ridge. The lead researcher, Jacob O. Sewall, harnessed substantial computing power to run forecasts of what would happen in a future climate after a substantial melting of sea ice in the Arctic. The ice is already melting because of fast-rising temperatures in the region that many scientists attribute to human emissions.

Dr. Sewall expected some sort of disturbance in the circulation of the atmosphere, but he and his adviser, Lisa Cirbus Sloan, were not prepared for the answer they received. “The surprise jumped out that, wow, all of a sudden it got a whole lot drier in the western part of North America,” Dr. Sewall recalled.

His first study on the question was published in 2004, and was based on conditions that were expected by midcentury. Arctic sea ice then fell much faster than expected, hitting a record low in 2007 and then another record low in 2012.

He and several other scientists said the loss of ice has allowed extra heat to escape from the Arctic Ocean into the atmosphere in the fall and early winter, disturbing weather patterns over vast distances. That, they said, has made extreme weather events of all kinds more likely in the Northern Hemisphere, possibly including winter extremes like the cold blasts hitting the East Coast these days.

At the same time, the California drought, now in its third year, bears a striking resemblance to the atmospheric pattern predicted in Dr. Sewall’s computer analysis.

The resemblance is so uncanny that Dr. Sewall, who now works at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, suspects an element of coincidence, but he also calls the correlation “frightening.” If this kind of drought has indeed become more likely for California, that means the state — where some towns are now worried about running out of drinking water — is getting a glimpse of its future.

Since his studies were published, other research has come to somewhat different conclusions. Many of those studies have found a likelihood that climate change will indeed cause the American West to dry out, but by an entirely different mechanism — the arrival of more dry air from the tropics. And the most recent batch of studies predicts that effect will not really apply to the western slope of the Sierra. Climate projections show that the area should get somewhat more moisture in the winter, not less.

It may take years to resolve the scientific uncertainty. But with California’s growing population, the state faces increasing pressure to resolve tensions involved in apportioning its water among city dwellers, farmers, industry and an environment under increasing strain from global warming.

Dr. Seager of Columbia University pointed out that much of the Southwestern United States had been in a drought of fluctuating severity for 15 years. In some areas, moreover, the warmer climate is causing winter precipitation to fall as rain rather than snow, meaning less melting snowpack to help parched states through the hotter summers.

“It all adds up across the Southwest to an increasingly stressed water system,” he said. “That’s what they might as well get ready for.”

UK floods: Swollen Thames threatens thousands of homes

by BBC.com

Thousands of homes along the River Thames are threatened with flooding as water levels continue to rise.

Fourteen severe flood warnings are in place in Berkshire and Surrey, while two remain in Somerset.

Amid criticism of Environment Agency head Lord Smith, PM David Cameron - who is in flood-hit Dorset - said it was not the time to change personnel.

A minister will answer an urgent question put by Labour in the Commons on the flooding crisis later.

Speaking from Portland, off the Dorset coast, Mr Cameron said: "I am only interested in one thing and that is making sure that everything government can do is being done and will go on being done to help people through this difficult time.

"There will be time later on to talk about things. Right now everybody's got to focus on the job in hand."

Mr Cameron's comments follow a deepening political row.

Speaking earlier, Lord Smith said his staff knew "100 times" more about flooding than any politician and pointed out that they were bound by rules laid down by government.

He has insisted again he will not resign.

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles previously said ministers had been given bad advice by the Environment Agency over river dredging.

Meanwhile, Environment Secretary Owen Paterson and Mr Pickles are thought to be at odds over the performance of the Environment Agency.

No 10 did not deny Mr Paterson had complained about his colleague, who is standing in for him after he had an eye operation, but said both were doing an "excellent job".

Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who was in Burrowbridge in Somerset on Monday, said dredging should have been done over the last few years but added: "I don't think now is the time to point the finger of blame."

Among other developments:

• Environment Agency has issued 14 severe warnings - meaning "danger to life" - along the River Thames, in areas including Staines, Chertsey and Datchet
• Two severe warning are in place for the south-west of England in Salt Moor and East Lyng, in Somerset
• Large parts of Worcester city centre could be closed for a weekbecause of flooding, the county council has said. Twenty-nine flood warnings remain in place across Herefordshire and Worcestershire
• An earth bank has been built to protect the town of Bridgwater, on the edge of the Somerset Levels, from flooding
• Dyfed Powys police have found a body in their search for a kayaker who went missing on the River Usk on Sunday
• A meeting of the emergency Cobra committee will take place later. Mr Cameron will take part by phone from the South West.
• Essex County Council says it is releasing £1m of emergency funds to tackle road flooding across the county

Major incident

Homes in the Berkshire village of Datchet are underwater and thousands more along the lower River Thames are threatened by flooding.

Thames Valley Police have declared a "major incident" in the east of the county.

Howard Davidson, from the Environment Agency said he expects conditions in Berkshire to deteriorate as more rain falls over the coming days.

"We have issued flood warnings from Datchet down to Shepperton, and we urge people to take heed of the flood warnings. We are anticipating another three or four inches on the Thames over the next 24 hours."

Councillor Colin Rayner, from the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, said: "We need help here. We need the police, we need the Army. We've got 50 volunteers here, we've got the vulnerable people out of their homes, now we need to get everyone else out."

One resident in Colnbrook, Berkshire, Asif Khan told the BBC: "The whole street is under water. We've got water coming through our house now, it's got above the air brick level. Our garage is completely flooded. The fridge just went bang. It's something out of a horror movie. So we're now going to take two small kids somehow through the street to the car which we've parked on the other road, and go to our in-laws."

Another resident Paul Palmer, who lives in the village of Hurst told BBC Radio Berkshire: "I've lived here for 44 years and I've never known anything like it. Every entrance, every exit to Hurst is flooded now. We've had no use of our toilets since Friday morning, our sewers are completely blocked and it's starting to back up into the toilet. The council won't offer an emergency toilet unless you're a council tenant. It's like going back to the dark ages. You'd think they could get at least one chemical toilet cubicle at the local village hall or something."

Several Thames gauges are showing their highest levels since being installed in the 1980s and 90s.

Severe delays

The flooding has also caused severe delays on several train lines, National Rail said.

Robin Gisby, managing director of Network Rail, said his team were watching "several hundred" sites across England carefully.

"What I think is really significant, and it has got worse overnight, is Oxford down to the Thames Valley through Didcot, Reading, Maidenhead and into Paddington.

"This isn't now just flooding, this is groundwater. The land is so saturated we have got water rising up, just as much as flowing on to it. So it is difficult."

The main rail route into Devon and Cornwall via Bridgwater remains cut off because of problems caused by flooding and storm damage.

The line from Paddington to Exeter via Newbury is expected to reopen later following a drop in flood water levels at Athelney.

The line from Waterloo to Exeter via Yeovil, closed due to a landslip at Crewkerne on Saturday, has reopened.

More than 300 less serious warnings and alerts have been issued by the Environment Agency, mostly in southern England and the Midlands.

The Met Office has no rain warnings in place for Monday, but it is warning of ice across much of the UK.

But forecasters say another area of low pressure is expected to reach the UK on Monday night and into Tuesday, bringing more heavy rain.

Peter Sloss, of the BBC Weather Centre, said Monday would be the "driest day of the week" but he warned there would be 20-40mm (1-2in) of rain for many areas by the end of Thursday.

He said some showers would be wintry, with snow likely on higher ground in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England.

Sistema Cantareira corre risco de secar, mostra estudo. #costofcarbon #efeitoestufa

Estadão.com.br

 

Especialista da Unicamp alerta para a possibilidade de se entrar em período histórico de pouca chuva
CAMPINAS - O aumento do volume máximo de água produzido pelo Sistema Cantareira – que abastece 47% da Grande São Paulo –, a partir de 2004, agravou a situação de esvaziamento de represas, até chegar a um atípico verão sem chuva. Criados em 1974, os reservatórios do Cantareira chegaram ao pior nível (20,3% da capacidade) neste mês.
Um estudo feito pelo especialista em hidrologia Antônio Carlos Zuffo, professor da Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp), indica que o aumento de produção do sistema desconsiderou períodos históricos de pouca chuva. O Cantareira começou a ser construído com base em um período de poucas precipitações – que durou de 1935 a 1969. Nas duas décadas seguintes, no entanto, o volume de precipitações aumentou e a vazão subiu até 30%. "Com base nesse período de mais chuva, quando foi renovada a outorga, em 2004, elevou-se a capacidade de produção do Cantareira, porque viram que ele chegou a fornecer até 7 mil litros de água por segundo a mais."

Oficialmente, a partir de 2004 a Companhia de Saneamento Básico do Estado de São Paulo (Sabesp), que opera o sistema, recebeu da Agência Nacional de Águas (ANA) e do Departamento de Águas e Energia Elétrica (DAEE) autorização para aumentar o volume de produção de 33 mil litros de água por segundo para 36 mil litros.

Risco. Observando as chuvas desde 1910, o estudo da Unicamp indica que o Estado pode ter entrado em um longo período, de 30 a 40 anos, com precipitações abaixo da média dos anos anteriores. Isso vai colocar o Cantareira em colapso, caso não seja redimensionada sua capacidade de produção.

As conclusões do estudo, encomendado para o Consórcio das Bacias dos Rios Piracicaba, Capivari e Jundiaí, entidade que representa 73 cidades do interior de onde é retirada a água do sistema, foram apresentadas em junho. "Sem novos sistemas, vamos ter de conviver por 10 a 15 anos com os racionamentos, se tivermos entrado em um longo período de seca", afirma Zuffo.

Segundo o professor, estudiosos em hidrologia consideram a existência de dois fenômenos, denominados José e Noé – referências bíblicas aos períodos cíclicos de fartura precedidos pela seca no Egito e ao dilúvio, respectivamente. São fenômenos cíclicos e de longa duração em que fases de precipitações mais elevadas – como nos verões de 1982/83 e 1975/76 – são sucedidas por períodos de seca.

Para o especialista, o Sudeste entrou nesse longo período de baixas precipitações. "O problema é que o clima não obedece a interesse político. O que vão fazer se o Cantareira deixar de produzir os 7 mil litros por segundo a mais da época de mais chuvas?"

O diretor-presidente da ANA, Vicente Andreu, afirma que os cálculos do sistema foram feitos considerando uma margem de risco de 5%. Mas que, sem essa elevação, não teria havido aumento de oferta de água.

Nas propostas para a segunda renovação da outorga, que será assinada neste ano, a Sabesp solicitou que o volume total de água produzida pelo Cantareira para os próximos dez anos suba para 40 mil litros por segundo. "Se essa vazão for autorizada, terão vendido o ovo sem saber se a galinha vai botá-lo. Quem garante que vai chover nessa proporção?", indaga Zuffo.

Severe Drought Has U.S. West Fearing Worst - “We are on track for having the worst drought in 500 years”

 NYtimes
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and IAN LOVETTFEB. 1, 2014

LOS ANGELES — The punishing drought that has swept California is now threatening the state’s drinking water supply.

With no sign of rain, 17 rural communities providing water to 40,000 people are in danger of running out within 60 to 120 days. State officials said that the number was likely to rise in the months ahead after the State Water Project, the main municipal water distribution system, announced on Friday that it did not have enough water to supplement the dwindling supplies of local agencies that provide water to an additional 25 million people. It is first time the project has turned off its spigot in its 54-year history.

State officials said they were moving to put emergency plans in place. In the worst case, they said drinking water would have to be brought by truck into parched communities and additional wells would have to be drilled to draw on groundwater. The deteriorating situation would likely mean imposing mandatory water conservation measures on homeowners and businesses, who have already been asked to voluntarily reduce their water use by 20 percent.

 “Every day this drought goes on we are going to have to tighten the screws on what people are doing” said Gov. Jerry Brown, who was governor during the last major drought here, in 1976-77.

This latest development has underscored the urgency of a drought that has already produced parched fields, starving livestock, and pockets of smog.

“We are on track for having the worst drought in 500 years,” said B. Lynn Ingram, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.

Already the drought, technically in its third year, is forcing big shifts in behavior. Farmers in Nevada said they had given up on even planting, while ranchers in Northern California and New Mexico said they were being forced to sell off cattle as fields that should be four feet high with grass are a blanket of brown and stunted stalks.

Fishing and camping in much of California has been outlawed, to protect endangered salmon and guard against fires. Many people said they had already begun to cut back drastically on taking showers, washing their car and watering their lawns.

Rain and snow showers brought relief in parts of the state at the week’s end — people emerging from a movie theater in West Hollywood on Thursday evening broke into applause upon seeing rain splattering on the sidewalk — but they were nowhere near enough to make up for record-long dry stretches, officials said.

“I have experienced a really long career in this area, and my worry meter has never been this high,” said Tim Quinn, executive director of theAssociation of California Water Agencies, a statewide coalition. “We are talking historical drought conditions, no supplies of water in many parts of the state. My industry’s job is to try to make sure that these kind of things never happen. And they are happening.”

Officials are girding for the kind of geographical, cultural and economic battles that have long plagued a part of the country that is defined by a lack of water: between farmers and environmentalists, urban and rural users, and the northern and southern regions of this state.

“We do have a politics of finger-pointing and blame whenever there is a problem,” said Mr. Brown. “And we have a problem, so there is going to be a tendency to blame people.” President Obama called him last week to check on the drought situation and express his concern.

Tom Vilsack, secretary of the federal Agriculture Department, said in an interview that his agency’s ability to help farmers absorb the shock, with subsidies to buy food for cattle, had been undercut by the long deadlock in Congress over extending the farm bill, which finally seemed to be resolved last week.

Mr. Vilsack called the drought in California a “deep concern,” and a warning sign of trouble ahead for much of the West.

“That’s why it’s important for us to take climate change seriously,” he said. “If we don’t do the research, if we don’t have the financial assistance, if we don’t have the conservation resources, there’s very little we can do to help these farmers.”

The crisis is unfolding in ways expected and unexpected. Near Sacramento, the low level of streams has brought out prospectors, sifting for flecks of gold in slow-running waters. To the west, the heavy water demand of growers of medical marijuana — six gallons per plant per day during a 150-day period— is drawing down streams where salmon and other endangered fish species spawn.

“Every pickup truck has a water tank in the back,” said Scott Bauer, a coho salmon recovery coordinator with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. “There is a potential to lose whole runs of fish.”

Without rain to scrub the air, pollution in the Los Angeles basin, which has declined over the past decade, has returned to dangerous levels, as evident from the brown-tinged air. Homeowners have been instructed to stop burning wood in their fireplaces.

In the San Joaquin Valley, federal limits for particulate matter were breached for most of December and January. Schools used flags to signal when children should play indoors.

“One of the concerns is that as concentrations get higher, it affects not only the people who are most susceptible, but healthy people as well,” said Karen Magliano, assistant chief of the air quality planning division of the state’s Air Resources Board.

The impact has been particularly severe on farmers and ranchers. “I have friends with the ground torn out, all ready to go,” said Darrell Pursel, who farms just south of Yerington, Nev. “But what are you going to plant? At this moment, it looks like we’re not going to have any water. Unless we get a lot of rain, I know I won’t be planting anything.”

The University of California Cooperative Extension held a drought survival session last week in Browns Valley, about 60 miles north of Sacramento, drawing hundreds of ranchers in person and online. “We have people coming from six or seven hours away,” said Jeffrey James, who ran the session.

Dan Macon, 46, a rancher in Auburn, Calif., said the situation was “as bad as I have ever experienced. Most of our range lands are essentially out of feed.”

With each parched sunrise, a sense of alarm is rising amid signs that this is a drought that comes along only every few centuries. Sacramento had gone 52 days without water, and Albuquerque had gone 42 days without rain or snow as of Saturday.

The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, which supplies much of California with water during the dry season, was at just 12 percent of normal last week, reflecting the lack of rain or snow in December and January.

“When we don’t have rainfall in our biggest two months, you really are starting off bad,” said Dar Mims, a meteorologist with the Air Resources Board.

Even as officials move into action, people who have lived through droughts before — albeit none as severe as this — said they were doing triage in their gardens (water the oak tree, not the lawn) and taking classic “stop-start-stop-start” shower.

Jacob Battersby, a producer in Oakland, said he began cutting back even before the voluntary restrictions were announced.

“My wife and I both enjoy gardening,” he wrote in an email. “ ‘Sorry, plants. You will be getting none to drink this winter.’ ”