What determines a drought period?<\/p>\n
Drought periods are decided through water supply examinations and surveying how that may impact human life. As the water levels begin to decrease, the risk of drought increases.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As the drought continues, the impacts on humans and ecosystems can become worse over time, according to the United States Geological Survey<\/a>. For a state to be released from a drought period, the demand and runoff levels have to return to normal, or more than normal, according to the National Integrated Drought Information System<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n As of January 2026, California is no longer in a drought after records of more than 200% normal precipitation, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor<\/a>.<\/p>\n San Luis Obispo\u2019s history of excessive rainfall\u00a0<\/p>\n San Luis Obispo experienced atmospheric river warnings during the previous months. Mustang News previously reported that San Luis Obispo was expected to see four inches of rain during an atmospheric river in November. During Cal Poly\u2019s winter break, San Luis Obispo experienced moderate to heavy storms with high wind warnings, establishing a three-day flood watch, according to the City of San Luis Obispo<\/a>.<\/p>\n In January 2023, San Luis Obispo faced a shelter-in-place order because of an extreme rainstorm that left the streets completely flooded. This led to the first two classes of winter quarter being cancelled. San Luis Obispo County was declared a major disaster due to the dangerous conditions of the rain, according to past Mustang News coverage.<\/p>\n READ MORE: Shelter in place, flash flood advisories issued in SLO amid \u2018life-threatening\u2019 rainstorm<\/a><\/p>\n The extreme droughts in San Luis Obispo also led to risks of fires. In the summer of 2025, the Gifford<\/a> and Madre<\/a> fires blazed through San Luis Obispo county. Both fires reached record amounts of acres burned. They started due to dry grass and wind, according to previous Mustang News coverage.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now that California is no longer in a declared drought state, the fire risk will be decreased.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the first time in 25 years, California is no longer in a drought. This comes after the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2808,23186,7,9,8,642,56752,62,5079,19],"class_list":["post-130282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-atmospheric-river","tag-cal-poly","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-drought","tag-flood-warning","tag-rain","tag-san-luis-obispo","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_4920-1.jpg\")
<\/a>Tank Farm Road and Higuera Street flood in a rainstorm on Monday, Jan. 9, 2023. Credit: Megan Wong \/ Courtesy<\/p>\n