Another one of those days, meaning: clear, warm, bright, and dry. How dry? So dry that today there’s a red flag warning for high fire danger in parts of the Sierra Nevada because of high winds and low humidity and the utter lack of snow. I’ve been in California for 35 years, and that’s the first time I can remember this happening.
Down here in Berkeley, fall color continues and, on a breezy Saturday morning, leaves that ordinarily would have been brought down by storms a little earlier in the season are still falling.
Brings to mind the dry years of 1976 and 1977. “Water year 1977 was the driest year of record at almost all gaging stations in the affected area. Water year 1976 ranks as the second driest at gaging stations in the central part of the Coast Ranges and among the five driest in the central and northern Sierra Nevada.” (http://geochange.er.usgs.gov/sw/impacts/hydrology/state_fd/cawater1.html)
Interestingly, those years PDX was super dry, too. This year, we are certainly well below normal in snowpack and in rain (11.5″ vs. 16″ normal to date for the water year), but not historically dry.
We must be in the same weather system, Dan. We’ve been having exceptionally warm weather for January in the Midwest. Yesterday it got up to 60 and someone went water skiing on Lake Springfield. I think that was a first. Amazing.
Same in NYC…very pleasant out there. A high of 61 degrees today. But we have had a couple of nor’easters recently which have drenched the area.
Yeah, Pete — ’76-77 is the legendary driest drought since the Anglos took over. When the state water people did the snow survey the other day, I took a look at the history at a couple of stations up near Echo Summit on U.S. 50. They were very dry in ’76 and ’77, but even drier in 1986, which until now was the record low year for the New Year’s snow survey.
And John and Marie: Yeah — it’s cold somewhere, but right now seemingly not anywhere in the Lower 48. (The NWS says highs on Alaska’s Baldwin Peninsula will range from 25 below to 40 below today.)
Well we’re back to winter here. 34 degrees at 1:16 AM.
All the snow is in Cordova, Alaska. Eighteen feet of it the last several weeks, according to the Alaska National Guard! http://i44.tinypic.com/5ee2b4.jpg