By Michael Graham Richard / Source: Treehugger

The last three years of drought in the U.S. West, and particularly in California, have been quite severe. How severe? Well, a new study published last week in the journal of the American Geophysical Union found that the region hasn’t experienced condition this severe in at least 1,200 years. That’s a while…

Analyzing tree rings that date back to 800 A.D. — a time when Vikings were marauding Europe and the Chinese were inventing gunpowder — there is no three-year period when California’s rainfall has been as low and its temperatures as hot as they have been from 2012 to 2014, the researchers found.

Meanwhile, some people in California are getting fines because they are not watering their lawn enough…

The scary thing is, nobody can know when it will end. In a different post we quote an expert who said (emphasis mine): “Dr Ingram points to paleo-climate data that correlate the thickness, or absence, of growth-rings in trees with annual precipitation. Such records show California has suffered two droughts over the past 1,200 years that lasted for 120-200 years.” So maybe it’ll end next year, or maybe it’ll last decades. Yikes!

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