Southern California Drought

[LABob]

My location's normal rainy season sees about 19 inches of rain, but this year we've only seen a little over 6 inches and there's little hope of any more rain at this point. The season started a little above normal, but it dried up in January. The period from January to March has been the driest on record, which began in 1895. I'm curious how bad other California stations are faring.

[saratogaWX]

Same bad news re: rain here in the SF Bay Area.  The season (July-June) started great with Nov/Dec well ahead of seasonal normal at 15.28in v.s. 7.37in (207%) .. then a persistent Pacific High steered the Polar Jet to the far North with Oregon/Washington getting rain while we parched.  Jan-March should have brought the total to 21.67in, but only managed 18.09in (89%) .. if no more rain this season, we'll be at 83% or seasonal normal.

Last year (2011-July to 2012-June) was worse.. we had only 13.18in total v.s. 22.16 'normal' (59%)

[LABob]

Right now we're at a little over 32% of normal for the season, or almost 68% behind. I've never seen anything like it, but I guess that's why they say it hasn't happened since 1895 at least. It just figures that I installed a California native landscape last year with the hopes of practically eliminating my use of imported water to irrigate exotic plants. Now I have to water just to keep the young plants alive long enough to get established.