Northern California’s rainy season has been a bust. In fact, the San Jose Mercury reports nobody alive today has seen weather in Northern California this dry during January and February, historically the two wettest months of the year.
That’s a dramatic turnaround from the precipitation the region received in December. Several major snowstorms in December boosted the precipitation to 159% of normal, and much of the state was well above normal for the water year to date, and reservoir levels were rising.
The driest January and February on record followed, plunging northern California back into severe drought.
“We were so far above normal early in the winter,” said Jan Null, a meteorologist with Golden Gate Weather Services. “But the rainfall season has just flat-lined. It has died.”
Downtown San Francisco received just .65 inches of rain over the past two months — the lowest level since weather records began there in 1849 during the Gold Rush.
The Sierra Nevada snowpack — which provides nearly one-third of California’s water supply — on Monday was 64% of its historical average for that date, based on automatic sensors spread out over hundreds of miles. That’s nearly the same as last year on March 1, when it was 61%, and is nothing less than a massive collapse from the 168% of normal it was on New Year’s Day.
In January and February, the 8-Station Northern Sierra Index, a collection of key weather stations near major reservoirs such as Shasta and Oroville in Northern California, received only 1.74 inches of precipitation. That’s 10% of average — and the all-time lowest amount since records began in 1921.
Prior to the ongoing drought, beef cow numbers in California were rebounding. At the beginning of January this year, USDA reported 680,000 beef cows in the state, 3% more than in 2021. This year’s total was also 90,000 head more (+13) than California’s lowest total reported in 2015 after three years of drought.
California cattlemen say they are praying for a “Miracle March” to mitigate the drought.
“Everybody’s biting their nails, hoping for rain in the next couple weeks, not wanting to have to make the same decisions they made last year,” California Cattlemen’s Association Past President Mark Lacey told the California Farm Bureau Federation’s #AgAlert.
