From K-QED.

You're listening to the Bay Curious State of Drought series.

I'm Olivia Allen Price.

A few weeks ago, we asked you, our audience, what you wanted to know about drought in California.

And there was one question that came in that really caught my eye.

It came from Nicholas Hardy.

Are we in the start of a drought,

or are we actually in the middle of a mega drought

with some wet years thrown in?

Mega drought.

The word alone sounds almost like a science fiction movie, something you'd spot at a video store alongside the movies Shark NATO and San Andreas, if video stores still existed, that is. But mega-drought is not fiction. It is a very real climate phenomenon.

Today, we find the answer to Nicholas's question and learn some fascinating things about our long-term

climate along the way.

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All right, so we're setting out to answer Nicholas's question about

mega drought. Here to help us out is reporter Amy Mayer. Hey Amy. Hi Olivia.

So looking around I see the hills are dry and brown but they're always brown this time of year.

Can you first explain how do we know it's because of a drought and not just seasonal dryness?

You really have to go back to the past winter. We didn't have a lot of rain here and especially in the mountains there wasn't a lot of snow. Plus parts of the state have really been hot this summer.

So those are some of the measurements that go into something called the

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