California Keeps Struggling With Getting Enough Winter Rain And Snow

Officials with the California Department of Water Resources
measuring Sierra Nevada snow on February 28.
An on and off winter has left the snow at about 85
percent of normal, so they're a little short

California is experiencing an on again off again wet season, and that has implications for how the state will handle both droughts and wildfires through the rest of the year.  

If a water shortage were to develop in California, it wouldn't be just a California problem. The reservoirs near the mountains depend on snow melt to stay full and ready to provide water to homes and farms. 

If farmers don't get enough irrigation from the reservoirs, that would damage crops, causing shortages and add even more inflationary pressure to your grocery bill, which is already too high, I'm sure. 

A lack of snow would help cause an earlier and longer-lasting and worse wildfire season. Severe fires would take federal resources to help manage.  And that federal help has suddenly become quite unreliable user the Trump administration. 

THE SITUATION

We do know things are not nearly as dire as they were in the 2010s, when several years of far below normal snowfall in the mountains - and a major lack of rain in the valleys - plunged California into one of its worst drought crises in memory. 

This year, it has been snowing in them thar mountains, but in sort of an unsettling on and off pattern. 

Large storms in early winter got the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains off to a rousing start, leaving the  amount of snow up there as of January 1 actually a smidge above average.

Then January, a traditionally stormy, cold month in those mountains, was sunny and warm.  Some of the snow actually melted. 

Some storms did come in during February, which helped. The result is as of this week, the northern Sierra Nevada mountains are doing OK, with the snow there more or less normal.  But the central Sierra Nevada are somewhat below normal and the southern Sierras are doing even worse. Taken as a whole, the Sierra Nevada snowpack was at about 85 percent of where it should be this week. 

You can sort of see a pattern in what I just described. Storms are more or less coming in, but there are big gaps in this storm parade, and many of those gaps feature sunshine and springlike air that melts some of the snow. 

Snow-eroding winter heat waves are becoming more common in the Sierra Nevada, yet another sign of climate change. 

The Sierra Nevada has maybe a month and a half to collect major new snows before the wet season wanes 

There has been a recent change in the weather pattern that is sending storms into almost all of California over at least the next two weeks.  I don't see signs of a "March miracle" in which phenomenal amounts of snow pile up.  But it looks like those mountains will make gains in the amount of snow that's up there. 

Still, reservoirs are still in pretty good shape given a near average 2024 and a whopping amount of snow in 2023. 

However, the fact that the snow melts so quickly could mean the ground will become bare in many areas prematurely, which could in turn herald another earlier than average start to the fire season. 

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

It's been a weird  year in southern California, too, which as we know led to absolute disaster by January. 

Drought continues in southern California. The 
darker the shade of orange or red, the worse
the drought conditions are. 

Pretty much no rain fell there through the first half of the "rainy" season. The first substantial rain of the season hit on January 26, which was way too late. 

Considering how the drought, combined with ferocious Santa Ana winds caused what will go down as the worst wildfire disaster in Los Angeles history. 

The rains finally tamped down the wildfires - for now, anyway. The rains in late January only amounted to an inch or so in Los Angeles, barely over a third of normal for the month. 

February's Los Angeles total was 2.66 inches, just slightly below average. But the rain shut off again starting February 15, and no measurable rain had fallen until Tuesday, when nearly a half inch of rain fell on L.A. 

That change in the weather pattern I mentioned gives southern California some more chance at more rain this month. But again, we don't know how long that rainy period will last or whether it will provide a huge boost.

As of Thursday, northern California was pretty much drought-free but widespread drought still plagued the southern half of the state.   This month's rains do not seem destined to fully erase that problem.