Extreme times call for extreme action, and state officials are now implementing emergency plans such as bringing water in by truck to rural communities, drilling new wells to tap into the groundwater supply, and enforcing obligatory water conservation methods on residents and businesses.

Widespread implications have arisen. These include the inability to grow crops or harbor livestock, a completely exhausted river system, salmon populations in danger of collapse, extreme risk of forest fires, diminishing health of state wildlife, and dangerously high levels of particulate matter, or smog, in the air around the Los Angeles basin.

The Sierra Nevada mountains, whose snow pack normally feeds the river systems of California, has only 12% of its usual snow pack.