[lacker]

The drought has some pretty obvious effects if you live out here in California. A small lake near me that I usually go hiking to with my little kids, Jewel Lake, dried up entirely this summer. That hasn't happened in years. (Well, I've never seen it dry up before, I don't know when the last time was.)

When I was a kid in the Midwest we had snow days sometimes and missed school. We don't have those here because it doesn't snow. But we have had smoke days in the past few years, where the air was too smoky for kids to go to school.

The California drought might seem like some exaggerated mainstream media junk to people on the east coast. But out here in California, drought vs non-drought is just a mundane, practical part of life. We root for it to start raining in the fall because that means fire season is over. We chat about the drought weather with people in town to make small talk the way I chatted about the Red Sox when I lived in Boston. I think you have just categorized this issue wrong - this is the sort of news that is actually relevant to normal peoples' lives.

[jyounker]

I can attest to what @lacker has written. In twenty years I've been visiting Jewel lake, I have never seen it completely dry. The stream running in has gone dry. The marsh under the boardwalk is bone dry. The ferns are now kindling. The turtles are gone.

On the fog-ward side of the hill (the wet side; also known as Berkeley) the succulents are dying. Until this year, growing a jade plant (and many other succulents) required no watering. The mist in the air was enough. They're now red and their leaves are shriveled. They are dying from the drought. I see this every day.

The media is not making things up, and they are not sensationalizing this. If anything the media is under-reporting how bad things are.