Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hello from your local National Weather Service forecast office. My name is Charles Bell and
I am a meteorologist here in Monterey. This briefing will provide an update on drought
conditions across our area as well as the weather outlook through the middle of March.
The latest drought monitor product shows most of the South Bay plus the Central Coast in
the D4 category which is for exceptional drought conditions. Around the San Francisco Bay Area,
most of the peninsula is also at D4 while the East Bay and San Francisco itself is at
the D3 category which is for extreme drought. Thanks to recent rainfall, most of the North
Bay is at D2 or severe drought. Unfortunately the recent storms have only
marginally improved the snow water content for the Northern and Central Sierra sections.
As you can see by following the pink line in the two images, both of these areas are
near the record low from the 1976 to 1977 winter season.
Conditions are slightly better over the Southern Sierra where recent snowfall has helped to
increase the amount of water content. Again, the pink line represents conditions from this
winter. In San Francisco, after an extremely dry start
to the water year, conditions have improved a bit, although the city is more than 10 inches
behind normal for this time of year. In order to have a normal amount of rain for the entire
water year, San Francisco needs to receive more than 15 inches by the end of June, or
more than 13 hundredths every day. The longer range computer models bring a strong
ridge of high pressure back to the Western United States for the second half of next
week. Drier than normal conditions are likely. Looking further out shows little change with
a ridge of high pressure across our entire area. Rainfall should be well below normal
for the third week of March. Thank you for listening to this update about
the drought across our area. We will continue to monitor the latest information for any
substantial changes in the weather pattern along with possible storms. Please follow
us on Twitter and like us on Facebook for the latest information.