From the California Dept. of Water Resources
Northern Sierra Precipitation Sets Water Year Record Atmospheric Rivers Pushed Total to 89.7 Inches since October 1
SACRAMENTO – Never in nearly a century of Department of Water Resources (DWR) recordkeeping has so much precipitation fallen in the northern Sierra in a water year. DWR reported today that 89.7 inches of precipitation – rain and snowmelt – has been recorded by the eight weather stations it has monitored continuously since 1920 from Shasta Lake to the American River basin.
Source: https://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/precipapp/get8SIPrecipIndex.action
Today’s total surpassed the previous record of 88.5 inches recorded in the entirety of Water Year 1983. The region’s annual average is 50 inches. California traditionally receives 30 to 50 percent of its annual precipitation from atmospheric rivers (ARs), long and relatively narrow “rivers in the sky” laden with moisture that blow in from the Pacific. The West Coast experienced 46 ARs between October 1 and March 31, the first six months of Water Year 2017. Nearly one-third of the total were “strong” (13) or “extreme” (3) ARs. DWR’s 5-station San Joaquin index is keeping pace with Water Year 1983’s record total of 77.4 inches in the region. Today’s total of 68.2 inches among the stations is 194 percent of the average precipitation recorded by today’s date during the water year and far exceeds the San Joaquin annual average of 40.8 inches.
The six-station index in the Tulare Basin, often called ground zero of California’s five-year drought, which officially ended in most of California on April 7, has recorded 178 percent of the amount of precipitation that normally falls by this date during an average water year. Total precipitation so far is 45 inches, about 1.5 times the average annual precipitation of 29.3 inches in the basin. The snow water equivalent of California’s snowpack is far above average throughout the Sierra Nevada — 176 percent of the April 13 average. DWR will conduct its final snow survey of the season on May 1 at Phillips Station in the Sierra 90 miles east of Sacramento.
# # #
California Regional Weather Server
http://squall.sfsu.edu/scripts/wcsathts_vis.html
Rain or shine ‘caliphs’ of California will complain.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LA-rain.gif
(click on the graph to enlarge)
vukcevic, would you please post a cumulative of the “above/below”. And perhaps a trailing 30/year window sum. I think a fair estimate for the 2016-17 season should be added to the curve to put this year into perspective.: cumulative to date + average of (may+june).
Personally, I don’t know whether LA has had a wet or dry year as most of the rain and flood news we get is about Northern CA and the Sierras.
From here in Houston we just smile when LA reports flooding trouble when they report 1.5 inches of rain in a day. We can get that in half an hour. Annual rainfall in Houston is 53 inches with a range from 70 to 35 (and a really bad 24 inch outlier in 2011). http://www.weather.gov/hgx/climate_graphs_iah
There is very little difference (mainly within one inch) between the 30 year moving average and the 138 year average (=14.8 inches), with the exception around 1960 when the m.a. drops 1.7 inches below the average. The rest might do a bit later.
You mentioned no trend in the moving 30 year average. There must not be any trend worth mentioning.
30 year m.a. trend line
y = -0.0003x + 15.386
Climate Change: It’s As Natural As Sunshine And Rain!
Now the question remains Who Will Stop The Rain?
https://youtu.be/JNrsJNtd_bc
Let’s see global warming causes droughts, it causes floods, it causes no change.
Bases covered, now, let’s regulate the world and get that wealth transfer running full speed. There are sticky fingers who need the cash to pay for their mansions and servants.
They have a solution, those altruistic progressives (usedtobe democrats). They have had a solution since they were young; all of their friends & associates have shared the similar visionary concept that they can provide a solution. They want to help; they want to help you.
Some of them have waited a lifetime, picking away at minor issues, biding their time until they could step up to the plate with the grand solution to the previously unknown problem. Finally, now, an acceptable problem has surfaced for which they can come together and apply their solution, and you sarcastically insinuate that they are simply being greedy and manipulative.
True altruism can never be fully appreciated by those that haven’t been carrying the burden of an unused solution for the bulk of their lives.
The Al Gore effect . Produce another climate horror flick and the weather just shreds it .
La Nina ? Climate changes … who knew ? What is Brown going to soil himself about now ?
Time to solve some real problems or are they out of his pay grade . Easy to fight the phantom
climate farce instead of out of control government spending and pension insolvency issues .
Enjoy the rain California Mother Nature is still running the show and not climate fear mongering pimps .
North Sierra Precipitation: 8-Station Index, April 14, 2017.
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/products/PLOT_ESI.pdf
It’s the Mister Murray Effect.
Dr. Cliff Mass blogged a very thoughtful essay about why climate change likely had nothing to do with California’s big wet year. Read Record Breaking Precipitation in California: Is Global Warming to Blame?
http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2017/04/record-breaking-precipitation-in.html
I skimmed Elisa Berg’s link to Exceptional Years and didn’t read Don B’s link to Scientific American, I don’t know if either they or current data are in line with Steinbeck’s “East of Eden.” But the last paragraph of Chapter One has always been my guide to California’s climate.
https://nook.barnesandnoble.com/products/9781440631320/sample?sourceEan=9780140186390
Forecast 18.04.2017. Wind @ur momisugly 70hPa + Mean Sea Level Pressure
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2017/04/18/2100Z/wind/isobaric/70hPa/overlay=mean_sea_level_pressure/orthographic=226.34,30.52,700
drought interrupted every 5 to 10 years by truly exceptional weather events is still a drought.
It stops being a drought when you have a return to a regular rainfall pattern…
If you eat all your meals on Thanksgiving, are you still getting a balanced diet?
[Gosh, I almost deleted this comment because of it’s sheer stupidity, but then again, people need to see just how “Griff” has bird-brained thinking. – Anthony]
Dear Griff
”Droughts and flooding rains” is the regular weather pattern in areas with a Mediterranean-type climate (like e. g. California).
But be patient, it will pass. In just 40 million years California (or at least the part west of the San Andreas fault) will have moved north and been scraped off onto southern Alaska and then you won’t have to worry about droughts.
The long island that will form off the North American Pacific coast some 50 million years from now will triple the amount of beachfront property here.
And long before the island breaks free from North America, the northern movement will produce a long, beautiful peninsula, sort of a negative image of Baja at the opposite end of the fault.
The process is already visible at Pt. Reyes. Drake’s Bay is the precursor of this future gulf. Maybe the Sea of Drake rather than Sea of Cortez.
Pt. Reyes is a bit of the Tehachapi Mountains, which divide southern California from northern.
What counts as “regular”? The average rainfall regime of the Holocene?
Extreme Late Holocene Climate Change in Coastal Southern California
CSULB, 1999
http://www.pcas.org/Vol35N23/3523Boxt.pdf
Finds protracted droughts during the Medieval Warm Period, but dramatically increased moisture levels during the LIA. Since warm periods were the rule during the Holocene Climate Optimum and prior interglacials, CA suffers droughts during most of interglacial time, while enjoying wetter conditions during centuries-long cooler spells. Big ice ages of course are a mixed bag, with the globe generally drier, but parts of CA enjoying pluvial conditions.
to me Griff that sounds like a very normal weather pattern in a semi desert like climate zone. That’s the climate of California: semi desert – like arid.
but i guess that’s something you didn’t learn at school yet 😉
This is not so surprising, as nature has a habit of strong rebounds. In the UK, the famous drought of 1975/6 was followed by an epically wet winter. Of course over here, our extremes are less extreme than Californian ones.
Three years of low rainfall and you will be back in drought though. Go look at 50 years of data and you will see what is obvious…..Californians need to talk and do habitat regeneration for the next 80 years, with the emphasis on letting nature do the work….
The habitat around here, Northern central Cal. has not actually been damaged much, rtj . . drought years generally mean low precipitation, not none . . and the habitat(s) are already adapted to that. The media might make it seem like we’ve been watching devastation unfold, but in reality it’s just been kinda dry . .
(It’s perfectly normal to get little or no rain for six months or more, so in a sense there’s a drought every year ; )
averaging weather into a “climate” is never a good thing
Also in Belgium we got extremes but as we are in a temperate climate they are less pronounced.
in 2016 we saw the wettest first half year with trupet blaring in the media that it was due to climate change, followed by a dry second half with the media claiming the same.
the full year? a very normal average year.
You must be mistaken.
There was no such thing as “Climate Change” back in the ’70’s. 😎
“Climate Change” didn’t happen until things cooled down after Wirth shut off the AC for Hansen’s testimony about the dangers of “Global Warming”. 😎
In Green-speak, routine weather events are always a “disaster” or at least “unprecedented”.
If they persist or stay the dominant events through a season, they became “permanent” until the next season’s events have the opposite effect. Then the new conditions become “permanent”.
In other words, in “Green-speak”, a “permanent” condition that prevails for only for a few weeks is “temporarily-permanent” but if it prevails for a whole season then it is “permanently-temporary”.
(And, of course, all are caused by Man.)
Rainfall in California.
http://weatherplaza.com/en-US/radar/?region=nam-SOW&radaroverlay-cities=true&radaroverlay-groundmap=true&radaroverlay-roads=true&
This season is not necessarily unusual. Anthony’s dataset is the northern Sierra. I like San Francisco, where the data goes back to 1850. Admittedly a single point, but a pretty god proxy, lying as it does about the middle of the state.
You can see that 1982-3, the previous northern Sierra record year, was only the fourth wettest year in San Francisco. You can also see that unless we get an unusual spike for this time of year, and a severe deviation from the apparent trend, 2016-17 will be well below 1982-3.
Um, 1982-3 was the FIFTH wettest year.
In May, the chart will go up.
http://www.cnrfc.noaa.gov/awipsProducts/RNOWRKCLI.php
The chart could go up in May as it did in 1997-8. I remember it rained 5″ in May, 1990. Still, if you were betting, SF rainfall tends to tail off sharply after April.
http://pics.tinypic.pl/i/00893/5kkztf2fpcam.png
The “experts” pontificating at length not long ago…..”We have entered an era of permanent dryness, expect a drastic and or permanent reduction or elimination of precipitation all together”
Well…..I dunno bout that.