Here's the effect of one entire year of drought in California, going from February 15, 2013, to February 16, 2014, as seen from NASA's Terra satellite. It's really scary to see the land die like this—especially after you read what NASA has to say about it.


Note: The white spots at the bottom of the 2014 image are clouds.

Here's another graphic highlighting the anomalies caused by the lack of rain and snow:


Pretty bad, right? It will get worst, says NASA Ames Research Center's Ramakrishna Nemani—a vegetation sensing expert:

In a normal year, much of the green areas near the mountains would be snow-covered... Since there is not much snow this year, the evergreen vegetation appears anomalously green. In fact, that is bad news for this time of the year.

Scientist agree that it will only get drier in the West, while areas that have been traditionally wet in America will get more and more floods.