Drought emergency expanded The U.S. Drought Monitor shows most of California and the American West is in extensive drought just a few years after the state emerged from the last punishing multiyear dry spell Author: May 11, 2021 In this March 5, 2020, file photo, Hunter Maltz, a fish technician for the Yurok tribe, pushes a jet boat into the low water of the Klamath River at the confluence of the Klamath River and Blue Creek as Keith Parker, as a Yurok tribal fisheries biologist, watches near Klamath, Calif., in Humboldt County. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus, File) The U.S. Drought Monitor shows most of California and the American West is in extensive drought just a few years after the state emerged from the last punishing multiyear dry spell