Crisp morning temperatures will make way for sunny skies across Southern California this week, but don’t stash those umbrellas and rain boots away quite yet. More wet weather is on the horizon.
The atmospheric rivers may have dried up as April began, but coastal San Diego County now has to contend with a heavy marine layer bringing cool weather and drizzle.
“Basically no clearing has occurred in the San Diego coast and valleys, with only partial clearing elsewhere from the lower coastal slopes to the coast,” the National Weather Service said in its Monday afternoon update. “As a result, it was another unseasonably cool day west of the mountains.”
More precipitation has fallen on California during its current “water year” than in the full prior 12-month span, the National Weather Service says.
The downpours and mountain storms of recent weeks have helped boost the state’s precipitation volume to 33.9 trillion gallons thus far for the water year that began Oct. 1, compared to the previous water year’s 33.6 trillion gallons, the service said Sunday. Lake Tahoe by comparison contains roughly 40 trillion gallons.
With just hours left to go in this month — and no precipitation in the forecast for Tuesday — downtown Los Angeles is set to experience its first rainless November in almost 30 years, according to the National Weather Service.
The 11th month of the year is typically not a wet one for the area, with downtown’s average just a hair above three-quarters of an inch on average, NWS said.
However, it’s still unusual for there to be no precipitation at all. In fact, that hasn’t happened since 1992, weather service data showed.
Last year, Northern California had very little precipitation in October and November, and we wondered if California was entering into a multi-year drought. Today, we know – last year became the 3rd driest year on record for northern California, in terms of precipitation.
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 Department of Water Resources today conducted the third manual snow survey of the season at Phillips Station. The manual survey recorded 56 inches of snow depth and a snow water equivalent (SWE) of 21 inches, which is 86% of average for this location. The SWE measures the amount of water contained in the snowpack and is a key component of DWR’s water supply forecast.
“As California closes out the fifth consecutive dry month of our water year, absent a series of strong storms in March or April we are going to end with a critically dry year on the heels of last year’s dry conditions,” said DWR Director Karla Nemeth. “With back-to-back dry years, water efficiency and drought preparedness are more important than ever for communities, agriculture and the environment.”
Precipitation is below average in California for the current water year. Despite recent storms that increased the statewide Sierra Nevada snowpack to 70% of average to date, the state is experiencing its second consecutive below average year for rain and snow.
The start of California’s annual rainy season has been pushed back from November to December, prolonging the state’s increasingly destructive wildfire season by nearly a month, according to new research. The study cannot confirm the shift is connected to climate change, but the results are consistent with climate models that predict drier autumns for California in a warming climate, according to the authors.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
