'A tale of two climates' means drought for California
By Steve Scauzillo, San Gabriel Valley Tribune
Posted: 01/03/14, 7:17 PM PSTAt the same time the Northeast was getting pummeled by an early-winter blizzard, the first snow survey of the winter in the Sierra Nevada found snowpack levels 20 percent of normal.
Friday's manual snowpack survey conducted by the state's Department of Water Resources matched the 2012 readings, making both years the driest on record, according to the DWR.
The lack of snow in the West continues what was the driest calendar year on record for Los Angeles in 2013, when only 3.60 inches of rain was recorded in the downtown/USC area, breaking the old record of 4.08 inches set in 1953.
Low rainfall in the southern part of the state, when combined with an 80 percent drop in snowfall in the north, are strong indications that the state and most of the West are heading into a third year of drought, scientists said.
Melting snowpack flows into the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which feeds reservoirs and aqueducts that deliver water to farmers in the Central Valley and urban customers in Southern California. California gets one-third of its water from the snowpack.
"While we hope conditions improve, we are fully mobilized to streamline water transfers and take every action possible to ease the effects of dry weather on farms, homes and businesses as we face a possible third consecutive dry year," said DWR Director Mark Cowin in a statement.
The weather dichotomy is part of a pattern the nation has been locked in for three years, said Bill Patzert, climatologist from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge, who predicts continued record dry weather through June for the state.
A negative Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or PDO, means the western Pacific becomes cooler than normal and pushes the Jet Stream, which carries the storms, away from California and the West and into the upper Midwest and Northeast.
"It is a tale of two climates. The high pressure over the West is driving the Jet Stream north, with lows swooping down from Canada and low pressure systems moving up the East Coast giving them the Nor'easter," Patzert explained.
The flip side of California's dry, warm weather is New York and Boston's winter storms and Minnesota and Illinois' below freezing temperatures, he said.
"That is very much part of the pattern. In Minnesota, temperatures have been in the minus 20s and it is like 80 degrees here. That is a 100-degree temperature swing," he said.
Ski resorts at Mammoth Mountain and Lake Tahoe have not had snow for several days. In Mammoth, the ski resort is open but only 11 of 25 beginner runs, 23 of 71 intermediate runs and 12 of 34 advanced runs are open as of Friday morning.
Snowpack readings were 11 percent of normal in the northern Sierras and 30 percent of normal in the southern Sierra, the DWR reported.
The low snowpack and sparse rainfall totals have forced the DWR to deliver just 5 percent of the more than 4 million acre-feet of State Water Project water requested by 29 different agencies for 2014. DWR hopes the allocation will rise as more winter storms develop.
Source: http://www.dailynews.com/environment-and-nature/20140103/a-tale-of-two-climates-means-drought-for-californiaCheck out http://groups.yahoo.com/group/californiadisasters/
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