California will start to see dry weather conditions for the rest of the month, according to state officials, marking a reprieve from a series of damaging storms that rolled off the Pacific for the past several weeks.
(Bloomberg) — California will start to see dry weather conditions for the rest of the month, according to state officials, marking a reprieve from a series of damaging storms that rolled off the Pacific for the past several weeks.
One more brief storm expected Wednesday will be the 10th atmospheric river event California has endured since Christmas, said Mike Anderson, climatologist with the state’s Department of Water Resources, speaking to reporters on a webcast Monday.
The parade of storms has taken 19 lives and has tested disaster-weary California, which has endured a crucible of wildfires and extreme heat in recent years as global warming makes weather ever-more extreme.
Over the weekend, President Joe Biden declared a major disaster for parts of California. The declaration gives people living in Merced, Sacramento and Santa Cruz access to federal funding.
In some areas, rain has raised water levels high enough to replenish the losses that had depleted reservoirs over the past three years of drought, Anderson said. Small systems are probably in “better positions” and larger systems are recovering, but the largest reservoirs including Shasta in the Central Valley are less improved, he said.
The snowpack in the mountains in northern Sierra is “healthy” but that could cause some high levels of runoff starting in April when melting tends to peak, Anderson said.
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