Dr. Lund is more optimistic than I am. My prediction is that in retrospect, this drought will be considered a continuation of the 2006-2009 drought, the full extent of the damage we have done to the climate will start to become evident this year, and the innovation we’ll wish we had started sooner is managed retreat.
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The management problem should always be how to make the best of a situation. Optimism can be less accurate, but more useful. Pessimism is just depressingly self-fulfilling.
It is hard to make predictions on a drought that has hardly begun. Will this year be 1991 (started very dry and ended very wet), 1976-77 (a deep short drought), or the beginning of one of those persistent paleodroughts from the middle ages (200+ dry years averaging 40-60% of our historical flows)? It will almost certainly be something unique that we can only speculate on now. Our reactions to the drought might be more predictable than its hydrology (but now I’m verging on pessimism).