Pine Trees Dying From Severe Drought

oh dear they look terrible..do you think they will survive?

Yes, I do agree with Sandra . I do hope they survive.

It's highly unlikely these trees will survive. Even with the rains we had in December it's most likely not enough to bring them back. This is just a small area...there's another area of the park that has a huge area of old very tall Pinus canariensis (Canary Island Pines) which are dying, also. These pines are usually very drought tolerant. It's sad to see so many trees suffering from this HORRIBLE drought!
:(

I wish I could send you some of our Welsh rain.:-)

That's the problem with getting warmer. The warmer we get,the drier we get. When I was a kid,Monterey Pines were everywhere. You don't see many now. And most you do see look like Andy's photo. The Same for Monterey Cypress only worse in effect. One planting only. I tried them years ago and all it did was get mites and canker.
On the other hand exotic dry plants we never saw before in the SF bay area are now doing well.

when our weather says warmer in winter Stan it usually means we are going to get rain. Its around 3 or 4 degrees outside here tonight with a continuous misty rain. With sunshine forecast tomorrow the clear skys will give us a frost over night tomorrow of around minus 3 or 4 degrees.

Sandra:

I wish we could receive at least 10 inches of your Welsh rain. That would actually would break the drought for us...further north they need about 25 inches of rain to break the drought. Right now it's 77ºF (25ºC) at 3:30 p.m.
tomorrow is going to be much warmer. These warmer than average temps is what's causing the trees to dry out and die. If we had the warm weather with rain it would be perfect.

Stan, that's very true about the Monterey Pine and Cypress. They are only seen now right along the Northern California Coast. Monterey Cypress is virtually not seen below Point Conception. The air and water temps are much too warm for them. The only place I've seen a halfway decent looking Monterey Cypress is at La Jolla Cove. This is amazing because the water temp at the cove maintains a temp of around 80ºF (27ºC) or sometimes higher in summer (because the water is shallow).

Today was warm. I put on Weather Channel and it said 71f. amazingly,at the same time the valley was in fog and 49f.
We should set records tomorrow.
I feel like I'm in one of those end of the world from climate change, movies-lol.

It's pretty amazing! It's not that the temps are above normal right now. What's disconcerting is how much above normal the temps have been throughout the whole winter (last winter for example, it was like the middle of summer).

Tomorrow, the record high for the date in downtown San Diego is only 82ºF (28ºC). It's possible it could be broken there, also.

It's looking very bleak for the snow pack in the Sierra Mountains. All the snowfall from December has pretty
much melted away from the warmer than normal temps even there. Prepare for severe water restrictions if we don't receive any more snow in the Sierra. It does almost feel like one of those end-of-the-world, climate-change-movies!

Stan,

I saw Hayward had a high of 74ºF (23ºC) at the airport, it appears to be a record high for the date. It must have been warmer where you live.

It was 80ºF (27ºC) today, where I live and 79ºF (26ºC) in downtown San Diego...which was few degrees off the record high for the date.

An all time record for January. Even the news said it. Also unusual is that today (26) is we were at 68f with subtropical clouds streaming up from baja. The Weather guy said that was something we might get in late summer,whereas the normal would be Alaskan storms in January. True. Even that subtropical stream that soaked us for the month of December was..well,new to me.
I wish we could get a February repeat. I like water. I use it all the time...oh boy.

Yes, the weather is just so crazy! Those subtropical clouds are coming up from Baja, which is the monsoonal flow we get in the middle of summer. The weather people are just in awe because January is not July! A couple of weeks ago we another monsoonal flow. Twice in January very rare! We had a few warm showers this afternoon maybe a little more late this evening. The lows this morning were in the 60's throughout San Diego...extremely mild for this time of year.