March rain has left Salt River Project reservoirs as full as they’ve been in a decade. The company is discharging water to make room for the runoff, providing a boost to the underlying aquifers.
More rain and mountain snow will move through the West, including communities in worsening drought, in the early part of the week ahead. This wet pattern began when an area of low pressure moved into the California coast on Sunday. It brought more than an inch of rain to much of the Los Angeles area.
The final days of winter will bring more stormy weather across much of California.
A storm started off the weekend along the northern California coast, helping to produce snow and blizzard conditions across the Cascades and northern Rockies.
The storm will shift south along the California coast through early week, bringing precipitation to central and southern California.
This week, Southern California may have its most soaking rain since Christmas after parts of Northern California picked up their first rain since January. To say it has been dry recently in the Golden State is an understatement. The state just had its driest February in 126 years, according to NOAA. Drought has also returned. About one-third of California is in moderate drought, and nearly 70% of the Golden State is abnormally dry, according to the latest report from the U.S. Drought Monitor. Reservoirs remain in fairly good shape, but the snow-water equivalent (how much water is in the snowpack) in the Sierra Nevada is about half of what is expected at this time of year.
More rain and snow area headed to Northern California on Tuesday, although the storm won’t be nearly enough to make up for what’s been a relatively dry January.
The National Weather Service said rain is expected to start falling at around 7 a.m. Tuesday, just in time for the morning commute. Light snow should hit the Sierra Nevada a couple of hours later, said NWS forecaster Craig Shoemaker.
Here’s how much rain fell on Monday and early Tuesday at more than 50 locations across San Diego County. A new round of rain will move ashore on Christmas night and will last into Thursday morning, according to the National Weather Service.
San Onofre: 1.85″
Brown Field: 1.74″
Otay Mountain: 1.70″
Lake Cuyamaca: 1.66″
Kearny Mesa: 1.38″
Point Loma: 1.36″
A wet Christmas Eve is in store for parts of San Diego County.
Scattered showers will continue Tuesday everywhere except the deserts and the showers are expected to linger through Christmas night, according to the National Weather Service.
Skiers and snowboarders already know this: California’s recent storms have lifted the state’s precipitation totals to the respectable range in the northern part of the state, and to well above normal in the south, according to Jan Null of Golden Gate Weather Services. Skiers and snowboarders already know this: California’s recent storms have lifted the state’s precipitation totals to the respectable range in the northern part of the state, and to well above normal in the south, according to Jan Null of Golden Gate Weather Services.
Normally sunny San Diego got more rain than Seattle last month, a reverse of what residents of both West Coast cities have to come to expect.
The National Weather Service recorded just under 3 inches of rain with their monitoring station at Lindbergh Field this November, making it the wettest November on record for San Diego.
Fresno tied an almost 70-year-old single-day rainfall record Sunday — while areas north of the city like Merced were hit even harder, according to the National Weather Service.
Sunday’s rainfall in Fresno exactly matched the Dec. 1, 1952, high of .78 inches of rain.
“They tied it to the hundredth,” said Jim Dudley, a NWS meteorologist. “Right on the nose.”
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
