Yeah, semantics. Perhaps I should say the HUMAN water shortage is another matter. There's no water shortage except for how much we need in the reservoirs for too many humans.

The funny thing is that we only really had abnormally low rainfall in calendar year 2013. We had higher than normal in December 2012. We had low, but not abnormally low, in 2014 from January through the end of the rainy season. There is only a shortage of water because we have too many people to tolerate normally low periods of rainfall. Abnormally low really causes problems that last, but even normally low will now cause some panic. Unless changes are made in water storage, we need to average more than 100% of normal to be OK over the long haul, and that won't happen. Actually, with climate change, maybe it will, so we have to hope that increased precipitation from climate change offsets the negative impact of lower snow levels decreasing the amount of runoff going into reservoirs.

If the plants (outside of plants grown in areas that are naturally too dry without human created irrigation) and animals don't think there is a shortage, then I (along with at least some others) say there is no drought, but it is a matter of semantics.