Been over a week. Any updates?
Rain is gone. All our creeks have returned into their banks. The reservoirs have done their job sparing the population from mass flooding and water storage has risen to ample levels for the coming year
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Some smaller roads, generally in the various sets of hills/mountains, are still closed while damage is being repaired, one road has been closed for nearly a month. A few of these roads are used by commuters, so commutes are even more messed up than usual during the busy times.
At work, we are trying to be flexible with schedules to ameliorate where possible. There are also some homes that appear to be impossible to access, not sure but they may be letting the few residents in that area pass through.
Not sure about the situation in the Santa Cruz mountains and some of the coastal areas and roads, but there are areas that must still be a mess.
-Al
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It’s nice to think we might have a delayed bud break this year, with all the weeks and weeks of very cool overnight lows, or, maybe even a less hectic kind of year?
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Good luck with that, Steve (meant sincerely).
-Al
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Just out of curiosity when was the last perfect or near perfect year overall? It seems there is always some bump in the road somewhere during the growing season.
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2016 and 2018 were pretty smooth start to finish, as I recall.
Last one I really liked was 2014, but 2013 was even better. YMMV
shocking to see cars with snow on them driving all over the Valley today. Snow on the ground at the winery today in Calistoga.
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2023 (so far) is turning out to be the most remarkable weather for CA in years. Record rains, record snow.
The given knowledge is that extremes prove government hypotheses: climate change drives elevated temperatures and drought - even with record rains and low temps.
Alternately in the face of these phenomena the weak Weather thread proves that Casey’s absence is more relevant than CNN
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With this week’s rainfall, where are you all sitting with respect to annual expected rainfall?
I don’t know that there was that much rainfall, though it was nice enough. Some areas have gotten slammed pretty hard, like central coast, Santa Barbara, and I think Socal is getting a lot now. Overall nothing like the atmospheric rivers we had in January.
What’s projected is a huge amount of mountain snowfall, which should put us way over annual average (I think we were right around annual average already, keeping in mind it’s a huge state, and there is variation across the state).
It will be a good year for precip, but I will guess that some areas will still be in drought. Some reservoirs are already full, and releasing water in anticipation of spring melts, some are far from full. Shasta, for example, is still 70 ft below max, though that should improve with eventual snow melt. Another big reservoir, Don Pedro, seems to be about 40 feet low. In recent years, it’s been so low that the popular house boat traffic was essentially shut down. I haven’t been able to find how much it has come up this year.
This site shows the state of rivers around the state, all pretty much in the green
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This should be a free article
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This link has quite a bit of info on the state major CA reservoirs.
Note that most reservoirs will receive water from snow melt others like San Luis are fed by rain runoff.
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My area of the far SF East Bay received around 3/4" of rain yesterday (a bit more or less depending on which side of town). The hills/mountains around the valley received a decent amount of snow at higher elevations, on the way to work there were lots of people on the side of the road taking photos.
One commute “short cut” is a very narrow and steep (in places) back road. About 100 cars were stuck before dawn when some of the cars spun out and blocked the road for a couple of hours. Not smart, but then some of the local drivers don’t have a lot of experience driving in snow (as well as not having tires for it).
The highway between San Jose and Santa Cruz was closed for snow. I think the road up out of Saratoga and the section of Skyline Blvd past the Rhys winery and Skyline vineyard was closed and supposedly will reopen today.
My area is now at 120% of annual average and 170% of average to date. Last few years have had less rain after this date than previously, though. As Alan mentioned, a lot of snow fell in the Sierras which already had much deeper snowpack than usual. The colder weather (and snow vs rain) also helps preserve the snow melt until later.
Overall, it’s been much, much better from a precipitation standpoint than recent years and better than I think anyone expected. Did have a fair bit of damage in late December/early January, though, and there may end up being some flooding in Southern California from this current storm system.
-Al
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And March, on average is not far below Dec-Feb for possible precip, so we have a while to go yet before the season winds down. Hopefully a few more moderate storms will roll through.
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I would have been stuck on Patterson pass if it hadn’t been for leaving 15 minutes later than normal. Tesla was beautiful though.
Very unusual to get that much snow here.
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FWIW, that looks to be right about the spot where a friend and I went off Tesla in a new Porsche 944 Turbo, did a 360 but didn’t roll (might have a little higher up). We were okay but the Porsche burned to a crisp. We were headed in the opposite direction, fence on the downhill side wasn’t there at the time
-Al