SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Several days last week saw showers in the valley and snow in the mountains. That's good news after an October that was largely dry across Northern California. With that being said, we're not quite where we'd want to be, but we aren't that far behind either.
Downtown Sacramento has picked up 0.75" of rain this month, which is +0.04" above normal as of Friday, November 15. Most of that fell just this past week (0.40"). However, on the water year as a whole, Sacramento is only at 0.92" total which is about three-quarters of an inch below normal.
The San Joaquin Valley has not been quite as fortunate when it comes to rain, as Stockton and Modesto have respectively only recorded 0.27" and 0.32" of rain since October 1. That means Stockton is more than an inch behind normal, while Modesto is sitting about two-thirds of an inch behind.
Even South Lake Tahoe is an inch below climatological normal.
The map below shows the statewide departure from water year normal, and the only spot on the map that is actually above average right now is Eureka, which is almost 2 inches above normal on the water year to date.
The drought monitor continues to have inland Northern California in the abnormally dry category, which isn't technically considered drought. Abnormally dry means without rain and snow, we'll be entering drought conditions soon.
The situation is much different along the Colorado River in Southern California. Right along the river in what is an already dry part of the state, "extreme" drought has emerged as this region is running well behind seasonal normals for rain. It'll take a bigger winter storm to pull the SoCal deserts out of these elevated drought conditions.
But let's be honest, the rainy season is just barely getting started!
While Downtown Sacramento averages over an inch and a half of rain in November, things really don't get going until December when the average rainfall is 3 and a half inches! The wettest month is January, with almost 4 inches of rain on average. So there's still plenty of time for this rainy season to come around.
Even though this will be a La Niña winter, as I wrote at the beginning of October, these types of winters can still be very wet.
