As water resources in California near a worst-case scenario where all surface water sources have run out, the ultra wealthy have yet to pull back on their usage. In response, counties all over the state have implemented water restrictions with hefty fines for those who go over their daily allotments. But those fines, often amounting to a small drop in the bucket for the more well off, have done little to curb use in high dollar communities.

Moreover, though California's sanctions purportedly aim to save water, large mega corporations like Nestle and Walmart are still pulling water out of the ground at fractions of pennies on the dollar and reselling bottled products for hundred-fold or more profits. It's been reported, for example, that Nestle puts a mark up of 53 Million percent on a single bottle.

So while California lawmakers argue that the new restrictions make water usage equal for all, the fact is that, as George Orwell so succinctly put it in his classic novella Animal Farm, "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

Reclusive North Korea said on Tuesday it has been hit by the worst drought in a century, compounding chronic food shortages in a country where the United Nations says almost one third of children under five are stunted due to malnourishment.

The North's KCNA news agency said paddies around the country including the main rice farming regions of Hwanghae and Phyongan provinces were drying up due to lack of rainfall. Paddies require enough water to keep rice plants partially submerged to grow.

"The worst drought in 100 years continues in the DPRK, causing great damage to its agricultural field," KCNA said, using the short form for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The U.N. resident coordinator for North Korea, Ghulam Isaczai, last month warned of a looming crisis due to last year's drought caused by the lowest rainfall in 30 years.

Police are warning for businesses and residents to start locking up their taps. California's drought has gotten so bad, people are stealing water.

Thieves busted the locks on the spigots at a popular Asian shopping center on Barber Lane in Milpitas, just to get their hands on what has become liquid gold.

Palo Alto resident Jason Zhur said he's shocked it has come this far. "But water's becoming more expensive than gas," he said.

Police say the thieves waited until the businesses were closed and returned in the middle of the night to steal their water — and lots of it.

Witnesses saw 3 or 4 water bandits prying open the small boxes that house the spigots. Then they filled up large containers with hundreds of gallons of water.

The businesses discovered the theft after the property owner noticed a much higher water bill and told them.

"It's an easy target," said shopper Sara Tang, "because no one is here at night after they're closed."

Many businesses here have surveillance cameras, but apparently they weren't a deterrent.

"I imagine it's come to that point because water rates are going up, everything is going up, now," said Zhur.

On June 1, water districts across the state began enforcing mandatory cutbacks on water consumption. Residents who don't comply risk steep fines.

An out-of-control wildfire raging through a Northern California forest as the state battles a devastating drought has forced authorities to warn about 250 people to evacuate or prepare to leave their homes in a remote town, officials said on Friday.

The fire in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest follows an outbreak of lightning-sparked blazes in neighboring Oregon that prompted authorities to warn residents that drought and low mountain snowpack could lead to a destructive fire season.

California's so-called Saddle Fire has charred at least 880 acres (360 hectares) since a lightning strike sparked it on Tuesday, officials said.

The bone-dry lake bed burned crystalline and white in the midday sun. Ecologist Bruce Wilcox hopped out of his truck and bent down to scoop up a handful of the gleaming, crusty soil.

Wilcox squeezed, then opened his fist. The desert wind scattered the lake bed like talcum powder.

"That's disturbing," Wilcox said, imagining what would happen if thousands of acres of this dust took flight. It's the kind of thing that keeps him up at night.

The Salton Sea is the largest lake in California, 360 square miles of unlikely liquid pooled in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. Now the sea is slipping away. The Salton Sea needs more water -- but so does just about every other place in California. And what is happening there perfectly illustrates the fight over water in the West, where epic drought has revived decades-old battles and the simple solutions have all been tried.

Whether it's a drunk camper diving carelessly into a river, or a mass of air rising over a mountain, the rule is the same: What goes up must come down.

With respect to the latter, the rising and falling of air also generates gravity waves. While such atmospheric changes usually only have a regional impact on the lower atmosphere, these ripples can stretch all across the globe in the upper atmosphere and their impact is far more dramatic.

For the first time, researchers have found a way to observe what happens when gravity waves rise towards into the upper atmosphere. A team of researchers at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research led by Senior Scientist Hanli Liu improved upon the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model, pushing it to a resolution fine enough to pick up small gravity waves at their source.

Previously able to clearly view only phenomena that were 2,000 kilometers across, they are now able to view gravity waves when they are still relatively small—only 200 kilometers across—and accurately model how this activity appears later in the upper atmosphere.

If California's prolonged dry spell is eventually recognised as a megadrought, no one can say we weren't warned. Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the US, has hit its lowest level ever. Feeding California, Nevada and Arizona, it can hold a mind-boggling 35 cubic kilometres of water. But it has been many years since it was at capacity, and the situation is only getting worse.

"We're only at 38 per cent full. Lake Mead hasn't been this low since we were filling it in the 1930s," said a spokeswoman for the US Bureau of Reclamation in Las Vegas.

An estimated 12 million trees across California's forestlands have died over the past year because of extreme drought conditions, according to an aerial survey conducted April 8-17 by the U.S. Forest Service.

In San Diego County, 82,528 trees, mostly Jeffrey pines across Mt. Laguna, have succumbed to a lack of rainfall, with many more struggling to survive, said Jeffrey Moore, interim aerial survey program manager for the U.S. Forest Service.

There is "very heavy mortality, a lot of discoloration in the pine trees that probably will expire sometime during this growing season, as well as oak trees that are suffering," Moore said.

Moore was part of a team that surveyed the trees visually, using a digital mapping system while flying in a fixed-wing aircraft 1,000 feet above ground.

A tree's survival often depends on its proximity to other trees, he said.

"A lot of trees are competing for whatever available moisture there is in a drought situation," Moore said. "When you have too many trees in an area, it makes it hard on all of the trees."

We occasionally hear stories of the Great Dustbowl in America's grain-rich Midwest during the Great Depression of the 1930's when prolonged drought became so extreme as strong winds, drought and clouds of dust plagued nearly 75 percent of the United States. The Dust Bowl lasted for eight years from 1931 to 1939. Yet we hear little, especially in US national media of a new dust bowl which threatens to literally dry up the nation's most populous state, California.

The origins of the 1930's Dust Bowl went back to the introduction of large-scale mechanized agriculture across the Midwest prairie lands. In the early 1920's the Federal Reserve interest rate policies triggered a deep recession and to survive, farmers turned to mechanization and the new Ford tractors and other equipment. Between 1925 and 1930 more than 5 million acres of previously unfarmed land were plowed. US farmers as a result produced record crops during the 1931 season just in time to coincide with the collapse of living standards of the Great Depression. The result was severe overproduction of wheat that led to severely reduced market prices. The wheat market was flooded, and people were too poor to buy. In a desperate bid, farmers went into debt those who were able and expanded their fields in an effort to turn a profit, much as is taking place across the shale oilfields of North Dakota and Texas today for oil. The result was that they covered the prairie with wheat in place of the natural drought-resistant grasses and left unused fields bare.

Picture of a black blizzard of soil during the Midwest Dust Bowl in the 1930s

The new plow-based farming in the Midwest region caused loss of fertile topsoil that literally blew away in the winds, leaving the land vulnerable to drought. Then the rains stopped. By 1932, 14 dust storms, known as black blizzards were reported, and in just one year, the number increased to nearly 40, forcing millions of people to flee the region. It wasn't until 1939 when the rain returned that relief came.

The four year-old drought in California is causing an influx of rats and mice to seek sustenance inside homes and around public water sources during their spring breeding season, according to reports.

With less available water outdoors, rodents are using structural vulnerabilities and accessible lawn foliage to gain access inside California homes that provide the necessary water sources, CBS 13 in Sacramento reported.

"It's a very busy time especially with the drought situation," Kevin Carpenter of Good Earth Pest Control told CBS 13 of rodent breeding season.