The Science Behind Why California Has Been Soaked By Storms This May

Blame it on the jet stream.The high-altitude river of fast-moving air running from the Pacific across the United States is one of the key factors playing into California’s unusually wet and snowy May. By late spring, the Pacific jet stream is typically rushing over the Northwest, but this year its trajectory never shifted to the north and remains over California, hurling storms from the Pacific Ocean onshore.