A rainy December is putting water into California’s depleted reservoirs and snowpack on the Sierra Nevada, says the San Francisco Chronicle. “While longer-term forecasts are tough to make, climate experts remain optimistic that the next few months will be wet or at least not as bone-dry as recent winters,” says the newspaper. A Stanford expert says the ridge of high pressure air that blocked precipitation for months has dissipated and the state was seeing “a more typical storm track” for the rainy season.
Precipitation in the Sierra Nevada mountains was 145 percent of average but the snowpack in the mountains, which melts in the spring to feed rivers and irrigation canals during the spring and summer, is 40 percent of average for mid-December.
The Weather Channel forecasts three storm systems will drop 2-3 inches of rain on the West Coast and nearly a foot of snow on the Sierra Nevada in central and northern California this week. Eighty percent of the state is in severe or exceptional drought so, “While the rains in California have been generous recently, they are far from enough to put a big dent in the drought…Even with the recent rain, Los Angeles has had a little more than half its average rainfall since July 1, 2011 – 23 inches short of the average of nearly 48 inches,” it said.
The riparian brush rabbit has been spotted at a large wetlands restoration project, the Dos Rios Ranch, in central California, says USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. The rabbit, an endangered species on federal and state lists, was thought to be extinct after flooding in 1997.