THIS POST IS NOT AN OFFICIAL STATEMENT AND IS ONLY MY PERSONAL OPINION It has been abnormally dry in the past 2 months here in the southern San Joaquin Valley. I know that a few months of dryness don't automatically equal a drought, but the overall pattern of storms dissolving before reaching central CA seems very familiar (2013, anybody?). It seems that the northern Pacific states are being constantly battered by heavy rains, which run out of moisture by the time they make it to areas south of Sacramento, leaving only a few hit and miss showers. Since the rain year began in October, Fresno has received 23% of it's normal precip, and Bakersfield sits at 3% of normal (they only had one day of measurable precipitation, which was only 0.03"). It seems like this is only occurring in the central to southern part of the state. Sacramento, only about 175 miles to the north of Fresno, is at a much higher 71%. When the November 2017 Monthly Hydrology Summary (
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/hnx/clisum.php) comes out from the National Weather Service in Hanford, I will examine this much closer. Until then, does anybody else have anything to say about this topic?
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(Climate Prediction Center's 8-14 Day Outlook)
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(GEFS 16 Day Accumulated Precip)
Notice how northern CA gets above 0.25" (still not a lot) while southern CA (specifically the San Joaquin valley) gets little to nothing.