On January 5, 2026, for the first time in 25 years, the entire state of California was declared drought free. The source of this welcome news was the federally funded U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM), a collaborative effort involving experts from academia along with the USDA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Once per week, USDM produces a national map that shows where drought is occurring, and for most of the last few decades, large swaths of California have been tinted alarming shades of red to denote conditions ranging from “exceptional drought” to “severe drought.”
The fact that the US Drought Monitor has declared California to be totally drought free carries with it unusually high credibility, as demonstrated by a new study by researchers at the California Policy Center. The study, commissioned by Mesa Water District (serving Newport Beach and Costa Mesa), took the USDM’s historical assessment of drought frequency and severity in California during the last half of the 20th century, and compared that to their reports issued over the past 25 years. It found that USDM claimed areas within the state were experiencing some level of drought 61 percent of the time over the past 25 years, compared to only 30 percent of the time in the decades prior to 2000.
But was California twice as dry this century compared to the last century? To answer this question, CPC researchers examined reports from weather stations throughout the state, developing averages by year for rainfall, snowpack, temperature, relative humidity, dew point, and vapor pressure deficit. This source data indicated California has not been experiencing a greater frequency or severity of droughts in this century. In fact, the findings for the 21st century were nearly identical to the 20th century. Rainfall, temperature, and humidity were all virtually unchanged between this century and the last century.
The study concluded that USDM drought categorizations are statistically inconsistent with long-term climate patterns and not reproducible, because independently sourced climate data showed minimal long-term drying. Moreover, the USDM only measures “dryness,” not water availability. Researchers recommended the USDM should make their methods more transparent so independent analysis can reproduce their results.
These findings raise serious concerns about the USDM’s accuracy and its outsized role in shaping California’s water policy. While drought preparedness remains essential, an overreliance on the mislabeled and apparently inflated USDM categorizations has led to unnecessary water restrictions and missed opportunities to invest in long-term water resilience.
And yet even the US Drought Monitor now reports that California is completely drought free. It’s about time. Including our current season, the state has had above average rainfall for four consecutive years. Will the state’s powerful Water Resources Control Board take into account this abundance and increase farm allocations? Will the state legislature reconsider their “Making Conservation a Way of Life” laws that will limit indoor water use to 40 gallons per person per day?
Along with the narrative that we are experiencing unprecedented droughts, now revealed as a myth, is the narrative that somehow Californians waste water and “water wasters” have to be controlled. But total water diversions in California have not increased in over forty years. Urban consumption has remained flat at between 7 and 8 million acre feet since the 1980s, even though the state’s population has increased from 25 million to nearly 40 million since then. Water diversions for irrigation have also remained stable at between 30-35 million acre feet per year for the last 40 years, even though the value of farm production has roughly doubled.
These facts prove that Californians have already become very good at conserving water. Further restrictions on water use in the state are costly. Implementing the latest regulations on urban water use will cost billions, while eliminating incentives for water agencies to invest in additional water supply infrastructure – desalination, wastewater recycling, runoff harvesting – assets that will be necessary if prolonged droughts ever do challenge supplies. Continuing to cut farm water allocations is on track to fallow a million acres or more of irrigated farmland in the state, causing a devastating loss of jobs and economic productivity.
When even the US Drought Monitor, an organization that is demonstrably biased in favor of declaring droughts, says we are no longer in a drought in California, we should believe them. California’s legislators and water agencies should restore historical water allocations to farmers. They should increase pumping to the aqueducts during winter storms to allow farmers and water agencies in the San Joaquin Valley to recharge depleted aquifers, without those allocations coming at the expense of their contracted allocations for farm irrigation. And they should repeal legislation that enforces urban water rationing, at great cost, and instead create incentives for water agencies to invest in projects that will increase and diversify our supplies of fresh water.
There is no reason Californians cannot have abundant water. With better management of the water infrastructure we’ve already got, and smart investments in new water supply infrastructure, even if droughts eventually do challenge our supplies, we will have more than enough.
Edward Ring is the director of water and energy policy at the California Policy Center.