Study Finds U.S. Drought Monitor Has Overstated Drought Conditions in California for 25 Years
Dear John,
For 25 years, the U.S. Drought Monitor has significantly exaggerated drought conditions in California, providing state officials with the pretext for a range of climate-change policies that have crippled the state’s water infrastructure, devastated farming, and punished its 39 million residents with skyrocketing water bills.
That’s the conclusion of Statistical Review of United States Drought Monitor, a landmark California Policy Center study published this week by researchers Edward Ring and Marc Joffe.
USDM is a federally funded team of researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Between the time it began issuing drought designations in 2000 through late 2025, the group has concluded that California has been under drought conditions roughly 61 percent of the time — a remarkable doubling of the drought rate in the previous 100 years.
That would be alarming if it were true. But using USDM’s own methodology, Ring and Joffe were unable to replicate USDM’s dramatic findings, and instead found drought conditions should have been designated only about 31 percent of the time using USDM’s framework. In their own independent analysis, the pair found that recent climate conditions are not significantly drier than those that prevailed during much of the 20th century.
CPC’s findings call into question the accuracy of the USDM and its outsized role in shaping California water policy, as well as potential methodological or institutional bias in its approach.
“The USDM’s claim — that droughts are hitting California twice as often after the year 2000 as they were in the 100 years before — is objectively false,” said Ring, CPC’s director of water and energy policy. “While USDM sounds scientific, its team could not provide us with an algorithm that would allow independent researchers to reproduce their weekly classifications. Instead, USDM admits that its employees use their discretion when assigning drought classifications.”
Ring and Joffe, a CPC visiting fellow, conducted an independent review of USDM reports from 2000-2025. The authors compared USDM findings to a century of climate records from dozens of California-based monitoring stations, including precipitation, snowpack, temperature, and reservoir storage records from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the California Department of Water Resources.
Ring and Joffe found that USDM’s drought designations in California – particularly in Southern California — have been dramatically overstated relative to historical data and actual water supply conditions.
When drought data is exaggerated, Californians pay the price. The state’s sweeping water rules drive up the cost of living and doing business in the state, including the cost of housing, food and utilities. By 2030, California residents face state-mandated restrictions on their daily indoor water use of about 40 gallons per person per day.
Driven by USDM data, state officials require local water districts to spend millions of dollars on staff and equipment to enforce water restrictions on customers. That starves the districts of capital that might be used instead to increase water supply and storage.
“Water policy has real economic and social consequences for millions of Californians, and the science behind these decisions matters,” said Ring. “When resources are diverted to address exaggerated drought conditions, we fall further behind on investing in new water supplies and the infrastructure needed to support long-term resilience.”
On January 8, 2026, for the first time in 25 years, the USDM declared the entire state of California drought-free. While long overdue, the designation is temporary. Without reform, the U.S. Drought Monitor is going to continue to overstate the frequency and severity of droughts.
Ring and Joffe call for a fundamental shift in how drought is defined and managed in California. They recommend the USDM implement immediate reforms, including improving transparency and reproducibility in its drought measurement to allow researchers to independently verify its designations.
>>> Continue reading to learn more about the study's key findings and recommendations.
Listen to Edward Ring discuss the study's findings on this week's Radio Free California podcast.
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Federal Investigation Finds California Department of Education Violated FERPA by Keeping Secrets from Parents
The U.S. Department of Education announced this week that its investigation into the California Department of Education found that state policies that pressure schools to keep secrets from parents violate federal law.
Specifically, the DOE said the “California Department of Education (CDE) is in continued violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)—a federal law granting parents the right to access their child’s education records—for policies that pressure school officials to conceal information about students’ ‘gender identity.’"
U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said the CDE “egregiously abused its authority.”
“Children do not belong to the State—they belong to families,” McMahon said in a press release. “We will use every available mechanism to hold California accountable for these practices and restore parental rights.”
The federal investigation was initiated in March 2025 in response to a complaint filed by CPC’s California Justice Center, which cited California Assembly Bill 1955 as evidence that the CDE was violating FERPA.
“We’re thankful that the Trump Administration has made it clear to California politicians that parent secrecy policies violate federal law,” said Emily Rae, president of the California Justice Center. “Parents have a legal right to access their child’s education records, including records that relate to changes to their child’s gender, and no state law can override that.”
AB 1955 was signed into law by Gov. Newsom in July 2024 to stop local school boards from adopting “parental notification policies” after school districts across the state had passed these pro-parent policies to protect students and parental rights.
As lawsuits challenging the state’s secrecy rules and defending parental rights policies made their way through the courts, Democrats realized they were on the losing side of the law, and quickly passed AB 1955 in an attempt to codify their secrecy policies and preempt a court loss.
CPC’s California Justice Center filed the complaint with the U.S. Dept. of Education on January 31, 2025.
The U.S. Dept. of Education’s Student Privacy Policy Office (SPPO) has offered CDE “the opportunity to voluntarily resolve its FERPA violation” by taking specific action, including notifying all school superintendents and administrators that “gender support plans” and related documentation directly related to a student “are considered education records under FERPA and are subject to parental inspection upon request” — and that there is no “unofficial records” exception to FERPA.
The CDE must also add FERPA training content approved by SPPO to state training for teachers and other certificated employees.
“Parents and school board members across California have taken a courageous stand to protect students and uphold parental rights,” said Lance Christensen, Vice President of Government Affairs and Education Policy at the California Policy Center. “Gov. Newsom and Attorney General Bonta should stop undermining those rights and follow the law.”
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Radio Free California #428 — Minnesota and the Battle of Century City
On this week's podcast with CPC CEO Will Swaim and CPC board member David Bahsen: In Minneapolis, Trump walked into a trap designed by California union activists and perfected in their bloody showdown with the Los Angeles Police Department in 1990: Provoke law enforcement into violent behavior, broadcast the images, and win political concessions. Bonus tracks: CPC's Edward Ring says the U.S. Drought Monitor's California reports have been wrong for 25 years, and CPC VP Lance Christensen reviews Newsom’s record of failure on K–12 education. Listen now.
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Reserve Your Spot for CPC's Parent Union Summit March 24-25 in Sacramento
Registration is open for CPC's fifth annual Parents Not Partisans Summit, March 24-25, 2026 in Sacramento! Join us as we celebrate the 10-year anniversary of CPC's Parent Union.
The annual summit brings together parent group leaders, education reform advocates, school board trustees and candidates from across the state to learn, train and build coalitions for success in 2026 and beyond.
Don’t miss this opportunity to build relationships with fellow advocates across one of California’s most effective networks working to strengthen California’s K-12 education system, protect parental rights and expand opportunity for students statewide.
Space is limited — we encourage you to register today to reserve your spot and book your hotel room through the conference room block.
Interested in becoming a CPC Parent Union Summit sponsor? Contact Sheridan Karras at [email protected].
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