Our very dry winter continues in northern California. Sounding like a broken record now, a strong ridge of high pressure remains quasi-stationary over the eastern Pacific into California, keeping us in dry northerly flow. Storm systems have continued to track from the Pacific Northwest southeastward into the Great Basin, but have mostly stayed to our northeast. And, these systems are not big rainmakers anyway, as they are coming from a northerly (dry and cold) trajectory instead of a more favorable west or southwesterly trajectory (moist and warm).
So far, San Francisco has received just 6.86 inches of rain so far this water year, or about 40% of normal. The Sierra snowpack also remains well below normal, as shown in the first image. Much of the west (and especially the Sierra) has below-normal snow water contents, with the exception of the northern tier states. This is troublesome heading into the spring, because the majority of our precipitation in California falls from November through February. If not for the precipitation surpluses of last year, we would be in considerable trouble from a water resource perspective. The second image is the U.S. Drought Monitor, a depiction of drought status across the country updated weekly. Most of California is in a Moderate drought, but this is likely to degrade further unless we get substantial spring storms. Elsewhere across the country, we find comparably much worse drought conditions over Texas - much of that is carryover from 2011, which was extremely hot and dry in that area. There are some subtle signs that we could see increased precipitation here in California in March. Let's hope so!
Our very dry winter continues in northern California. Sounding like a broken record now, a strong ridge of high pressure remains quasi-stationary over the eastern Pacific into California, keeping us in dry northerly flow. Storm systems have continued to track from the Pacific Northwest southeastward into the Great Basin, but have mostly stayed to our northeast. And, these systems are not big rainmakers anyway, as they are coming from a northerly (dry and cold) trajectory instead of a more favorable west or southwesterly trajectory (moist and warm).
So far, San Francisco has received just 6.86 inches of rain so far this water year, or about 40% of normal. The Sierra snowpack also remains well below normal, as shown in the first image. Much of the west (and especially the Sierra) has below-normal snow water contents, with the exception of the northern tier states. This is troublesome heading into the spring, because the majority of our precipitation in California falls from November through February. If not for the precipitation surpluses of last year, we would be in considerable trouble from a water resource perspective. The second image is the U.S. Drought Monitor, a depiction of drought status across the country updated weekly. Most of California is in a Moderate drought, but this is likely to degrade further unless we get substantial spring storms. Elsewhere across the country, we find comparably much worse drought conditions over Texas - much of that is carryover from 2011, which was extremely hot and dry in that area. There are some subtle signs that we could see increased precipitation here in California in March. Let's hope so!
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