why is California always in a drought crisis, but landlocked states in the Midwest are not?
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Those states get a lot more rain. [Here are last year’s totals](https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/regional_monitoring/12cpcp0.png), for example. The Central Valley – the main agricultural center of California – was significantly drier than Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Dakotas, or Montana (the main arid Plains states) and even drier still than the midwest in a narrow sense (states like Ohio). It was a dry-ish year for California, but even then, [the average there is lower than it is for most of the plains](https://external-preview.redd.it/KNZ4ti083qJ467Oj-ebG4toaZH4VsgeAsZxEd7RES9Q.jpg?auto=webp&s=659a4f978f5b748b204f0ec96c52a3688ede5e0c). California has also had lower than previously long-term average rainfall for much of the last 20 years.
Combine low rainfall with California having far, FAR more people than the plains states (California has 254 people per square mile, while Oklahoma has 57), and you put a lot more strain on water resources.
If you’re asking for why the rainfall is lower from a climate perspective, the reason is that north and easterly-blowing winds off of the Gulf of Mexico meet cold air coming south from the Canadian Prairies over the central US, resulting in some of the most severe weather to be found anywhere on Earth. Those intense thunderstorms drop a lot of rain, fueled by tropical moisture from the Gulf.
California, on the other hand, is bordered by the cold Pacific Ocean, which does not evaporate nearly as much moisture; even the famously wet and gray coastal Bay Area does not actually get that much total rainfall (it’s just foggy and drizzles a lot). Rainfall in California has to travel much further, via “Pineapple Express” systems originating near Hawaii.
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