Drought concerns lessen in wake of latest rain, but experts still cautious
Recent storms have drenched Southern California enough that areas have almost twice their average rainfall totals.
Even drought status has been pushed away for all but the southwest and north edges of the state.
“On the whole, it’s good news. But good news on water is only temporary in California,” said Jay Lund, professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis, and director of watershed sciences at the school. “In wet years, we have to prepare for dry years, and in dry years for wet years.”
The recent storms have pushed much of Southern California out of drought classifications, according to figures published Thursday by the U.S. Drought Monitor. The wet weather has rainfall averages well above measurements for this time of year for several spots in the region.
Mild to moderate drought started spreading back over the state during last year’s dry winter. As recently as Thanksgiving 2018, 100 percent of the state was considered to be somewhere between abnormally dry and in extreme drought.
Now some areas in Southern California have 150 percent to 180 percent rainfall of what they would normally receive by now; some are closing in on what they would receive for a full water year — Oct. 1 through Sept. 30.
More rain on the way
Short-term, the wet-weather pattern is expected to continue, with light rain and snow forecast for the weekend. A larger storm is possible later next week, forecasters say.
The weekly drought monitor report released Thursday, puts much of Southern California — from northern Orange and southwestern San Bernardino counties up the coast to San Luis Obispo County — into the “abnormally dry” category. It’s an improvement from the moderate drought category the areas had been in.
That classification is technically not considered a drought, but the change does not necessarily mean the end of drought conditions, cautioned National Weather Service meteorologist Lisa Phillips. “Things have been coming up, though.”
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Sections of southeastern Orange County, western Riverside County, eastern Imperial County and all of San Diego County, remained under moderate drought conditions.
Lund said water agencies in those areas are prepared. “They know there is a lot of variability, and have made preparations to survive at least one or two years of drought,” including storing groundwater and making purchase agreements with neighboring agencies
While the area has had a surplus of rain since the season began Oct. 1, “several reservoirs have failed to significantly respond,” the report said. They remain at or near their lowest level in recent years.
Rainfall totals boosted
Until the recent storms, rainfall in the area had been tracking pretty close to historical averages for much of the Oct. 1 through Sept. 30 water year. The past week’s storms pushed those totals well above average in many spots, according to data from the National Weather Service.
Long Beach Airport (with 12 inches of rain since Oct. 1) and John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana (13 inches) are both around 180 percent of what they normally would have received by now.
In fact, both are also closing in on what they normally receive for the full water year.
Big Bear Lake has gotten more than 18 inches of rain — 170 percent of normal (which is the average of rainfall through this date in 1981 through 2010). That doesn’t even take into account the more than two feet of snow that has fallen in the San Bernardino Mountains community.
Los Angeles International Airport, the Burbank/Glendale/Pasadena region, the Hemet-Ryan Airport in Riverside County and the desert town of Joshua Tree, north of the national park, are over 150 percent of normal precipitation.
Fullerton and Riverside aren’t far behind, according to measurements taken at their municipal airports. Ontario is also about 30 percent above normal, and even Palm Springs in the Coachella Valley is running a bit above average.
“I think overall for the state, we are about at the average for where we are — a little ahead for some places and a little behind in others,” Lund said. “We have two months to go in the wet season, so it could go either way.”
The drought monitor report, the rainfall accumulations, and a measurement that showed the Sierra snowpack was at exactly 100 percent of its historical average on Jan. 31 has been a stream of recent good news for California’s water watchers.
This winter has been far wetter than last — at this point in 2018, all of those areas were running 50 to 85 percent below normal.
In most areas, however, it hasn’t been quite as rainy as 2017, when an atmospheric river parked over the Pacific Ocean soaked the state and broke a five-year drought, with the state’s second-highest recorded runoff.