Yes, California will have another multi-year drought. California has immense hydrologic variability, with more droughts and floods per average year than any other part of the country. California’s water users, managers, and regulators should always be prepared for droughts (and floods). Eventually, California will have a multi-year drought worse than any we have ever seen.
Most Californians, it’s safe to say, can’t wait for 2020 to end. But the year is getting in a few parting shots on its way out the door.
With no rain in the forecast for the rest of 2020 — thanks to a La Niña weather pattern pushing storms north of the state — the probability of California entering a multi-year drought is increasing.
California is expecting its first rain of the season this weekend, a major shift in weather that’s likely to bring scattered showers and chilly breezes to the Bay Area, and freezing temperatures and snow to the Sierra.
California is one of the least vulnerable states to drought even as it faces record wildfires, according to a first-ever state ranking funded by NOAA. The “Drought Vulnerability Index” finds that Oklahoma is the most susceptible to extreme dryness followed by two other states — Montana and Iowa — with a “very high” drought vulnerability.
As historic wildfires continue to burn across California, Oregon and other Western states, government climate experts say much of the U.S. is likely to see persistent drought conditions and fire risk alongside continued above-average temperatures through the fall.
During a briefing Thursday, forecasters with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that while wetter conditions are expected to bring some drought relief to parts of the Pacific Northwest and New England in the months ahead, drought conditions are likely to persist or even worsen in Central and Southern California and across the Southwest.
Climate forecasters said Thursday that the world had entered La Niña, the opposite phase of the climate pattern that also brings El Niño and affects weather across the globe. Among other impacts, La Niña has the potential this winter to worsen what are already severe drought conditions in the American Southwest.
La Niña — which often means a busier Atlantic hurricane season, a drier Southwest and perhaps a more fire-prone California — has popped up in the Pacific Ocean.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday that a La Niña, the cooler flip side of the better known El Niño, has formed. Meteorologists had been watching it brewing for months.
A natural cooling of certain parts of the equatorial Pacific, La Niña sets in motion a series of changes to the world’s weather that can last months, even years. This one so far is fairly weak and is projected to last through at least February but may not be the two-to-three-year type sometimes seen in the past, NOAA Climate Prediction Center Deputy Director Mike Halpert said.
La Niña conditions were observed in the Pacific Ocean last month, and there is a 75% chance the weather pattern will persist through the winter, forecasters with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
California’s mega-drought officially ended three years ago but may have turned the Creek Fire into a monster. By killing millions of trees in the Sierra National Forest, the historic drought that ended in 2017 left an incendiary supply of dry fuel that appears to have intensified the fire that’s ravaged more than 140,000 acres in the southern Sierra Nevada, wildfire scientists and forestry experts said Tuesday.
