{"id":396610,"date":"2026-01-09T05:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T05:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/396610\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T05:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T05:10:10","slug":"california-completely-drought-free-for-1st-time-in-25-years-after-winter-storms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/396610\/","title":{"rendered":"California completely drought-free for 1st time in 25 years after winter storms"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN FRANCISCO — Incredible news for California’s water supply entering the new year – not a single square mile of California is categorized as dry for the first time in 25 years, according to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor.<\/p>\n

\"Map<\/a><\/p>\n

Map of California’s Drought Monitor showing dryness from North to South.<\/p>\n

As of December 30, 2025, California is effectively out of drought across almost the entire state, where 0% of the state’s total area is experiencing drought conditions, according to the California Drought Monitor on CalMatters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Final storms in December 2025 pulled nearly 100% of the state out of drought.<\/p>\n

As of January 8, 2026, measurements showed virtually no dryness remaining, marking an “exceptionally wet period” that has filled the state’s reservoirs to a healthy level. This news is the culmination of several years of strong rainfall.<\/p>\n

The Golden State was first declared drought-free in years in 2023 after a winter deluge of storms and atmospheric rivers soaked the state in November and improved forecasts for 2025.<\/p>\n

We have not had a similar scenario where there was not a single dry patch on that map for California since December 2000.<\/p>\n

This means if you’re younger than 25, you’ve always been living in a world where California is either entering or recovering from drought.<\/p>\n

Current systemwide reservoir capacity sees seven of 12 major state-owned reservoirs at 75% or higher capacity.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 KGO-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO — Incredible news for California’s water supply entering the new year – not a single square…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[191716,23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-396610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-191716","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}