Southern California’s five-year drought has resumed despite last year’s brief respite. A much needed storm brought 2.92 inches of rain and sleet to kick off March. This storm spared us from suffering the driest winter I’ve ever recorded in 21 years of weather records for Fernwood. The record for March 4, is 3.64 inches of precipitation set in 2007. This year our season total now stands at 5.03 inches of rain—still 10.20 inches of rain below normal!
Not all of this precipitation has fallen as rain. On February 27, a blustery sleet storm left some drifts on the ground. We haven’t seen much of that on the slopes of Saddle Peak in quite a few years.The twenty-first century has been anything but normal so far. Cold winter storms used to be more common than they are today. Despite our chilly February, the overall average temperature is higher here, as it is elsewhere on the planet.
All stations in California are reporting season totals that are well below their averages. Los Angeles Civic Center has seen only about half of the wet stuff that we have seen up here in the mountains—2.48 inches of precipitation—well below their average of 11.39 inches for March 4.
La Niña has returned this winter, as was predicted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) back in October of last year. La Niña is a condition of relatively cool ocean surface temperatures in the South Pacific that is associated with drier, warmer conditions in the American southwest. The opposite condition, El Niño, is notorious for turning on the rain spigot here in Southern California. NOAA forecasts a 55% chance that La Niña should diminish this spring and return to a neutral state between the two conditions, too late to do this rain season much good.
Eric Fitzgerald is a title designer and graphic artist for the movie business. As a second generation native of the Santa Monica Mountains, he is the contributor of the Fernwood Rain Report and other astronomical and cosmic events.