No Rain in 4 Weeks. Drought Danger Again
The weather here has been a good news/bad news story the past several weeks. Good news: for the past 4 weeks we've had sunny or mostly-sunny days with afternoon high temperatures around 63 degrees (17° C). Bad news: This dry weather is completely unseasonable. We should be getting rain... and because we're not, we're at risk of worsening drought this year.
Recall that California has a Mediterranean climate pattern. Essentially all of our annual rainfall occurs between November and March. Earlier this winter we were off to such a good start. A few big rain systems- dubbed atmospheric rivers- in November and December gave California a big leg up on its seasonal rainfall/snowfall. I wrote about it a few times expressing hope that some of the damage of the past few years of drought would be reversed. But then, as a CNN.com article published today headlines, precipitation in January basically flatlined (3 Feb 2022).
The CNN article describes how a snow monitoring station high in Sierras measured 17 feet of snow in December- and only 9 inches in all of January. California went from being ahead of the precipitation curve a month ago to being behind now.
CNN provided this graphic showing areas of drought in the US:
As you can see much of California is in "severe drought" conditions- and other parts of the US West are worse.
Can we catch back up on rainfall and move to "moderate drought" or, better, out of drought entirely? Sure. If that gauging station measures just 8 more feet of snow this season we'll be at average for the year. (The "year" for precipitation tracking is July 1 - June 30.) That's just 2 big storms. We could definitely have 2 big storms later this month or in March.
But the problem is, no rain is on the horizon right now. A quick check of the local 10 day forecast shows 10 days of dry weather with high temperatures stretching from not just 63 degrees but up to 73 (23° C)!
If I were a religious person I'd pray for rain.
[This entry was cross-posted from https://canyonwalker.dreamwidth.org/184885.html. Please comment there using OpenID. That's where most of the action is!]
Recall that California has a Mediterranean climate pattern. Essentially all of our annual rainfall occurs between November and March. Earlier this winter we were off to such a good start. A few big rain systems- dubbed atmospheric rivers- in November and December gave California a big leg up on its seasonal rainfall/snowfall. I wrote about it a few times expressing hope that some of the damage of the past few years of drought would be reversed. But then, as a CNN.com article published today headlines, precipitation in January basically flatlined (3 Feb 2022).
The CNN article describes how a snow monitoring station high in Sierras measured 17 feet of snow in December- and only 9 inches in all of January. California went from being ahead of the precipitation curve a month ago to being behind now.
CNN provided this graphic showing areas of drought in the US:
As you can see much of California is in "severe drought" conditions- and other parts of the US West are worse.
Can we catch back up on rainfall and move to "moderate drought" or, better, out of drought entirely? Sure. If that gauging station measures just 8 more feet of snow this season we'll be at average for the year. (The "year" for precipitation tracking is July 1 - June 30.) That's just 2 big storms. We could definitely have 2 big storms later this month or in March.
But the problem is, no rain is on the horizon right now. A quick check of the local 10 day forecast shows 10 days of dry weather with high temperatures stretching from not just 63 degrees but up to 73 (23° C)!
If I were a religious person I'd pray for rain.
[This entry was cross-posted from https://canyonwalker.dreamwidth.org/184885.html. Please comment there using OpenID. That's where most of the action is!]