The month of October has been significantly cooler than normal. This was seen with average daily maximum and average daily mean temperatures that were below normal for all 9 key cities (see tables below). The largest temperature anomalies were in the Sacramento Valley where temperature maxima averaged 5.8 and 4.6 degrees below normal at Redding and Sacramento respectively. Close behind were San Francisco and San Jose with -3.5 and -3.6 degrees below normal. Despite a period of warm dry Santa Ana winds in Southern California that led to fires, both San Diego and Los Angeles had average monthly maximum temperatures of about a half degree below normal.
Note that the Santa Ana winds are seasonally normal; they happen about this time every year, and some years are stronger than others. This talk in news stories of attributing the Southern California fires to global warming is just pure nonsense made up by some news organizations that don’t understand California’s seasonal weather patterns.
It was also generally wetter than normal with a couple of mid-month Pacific troughs that brought rain. This is shown by more than twice the normal October rainfall at Eureka and Los Angeles. Only Fresno (31%) and San Diego (84%) were below normal in precipitation. Note that San Diego was where we had a large fire concentration this year, like happened in 2002, but the remainder of the state had normal or above normal rain. Read the rest of this entry »
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