We’ve been fortunate this season to pick up a beneficial amount of rain and snow across Northern California.
Of course, our current season does not near the 2022-2023 season, which had a record 33.56 inches of precipitation, but two back-to-back wet seasons never hurt a drought-prone Golden State.
The weather in the new year will kick off on an active note as a series of storms will travel from coast to coast, bringing heavy rain, snow and thunderstorms over the 10 days. The West will bear the brunt of each storm first, beginning with one arriving early this week, warn AccuWeather meteorologists.
California is enjoying fewer extreme wildfires than it has in years, which experts attribute to a combination of summer rain, calm weather and increased forest management.
The current ongoing two-year dry period in California, punctuated by the third-driest water year on record for the Central Sierra, is part of California’s overall arid fate so far in the 21st century, according to the state Department of Water Resources.
The Golden State’s hydrology now increasingly resembles conditions in the Colorado River Basin this century, where multiple, consecutive, drier-than-average years are mixed with an occasional wet year. California’s last wet water year was 2016-2017, the second-wettest on record.
The California Department of Water Resources has marked 2021 as the third-driest water year, a period marked from October to March, on record for the Golden State, potentially setting up another deadly wildfire season after last year’s record setting blazes.
