Drought in California. View over Ice House Lake in Eldorado National Forest, in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, California, USA. The water level is hugely reduced from normal levels, and has exposed a large amount of barren shoreline. California has experienced prolonged drought conditions, beginning in winter 2011-12, with low winter snowfall in the mountains. These conditions affected much of the USA over the next year or two before easing, but the dry period intensified in California, where 2014 was the third driest and also the hottest year since records began 119 years earlier. A state of emergency was declared in January 2014. On April 1st 2015, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains was measured at just 5% of its average level. Filmed in October 2014.