California Temps Moving Higher, Slamming Door On End Of Rainy Season
Temperatures are expected to heat up toward the end of next week, signaling a dry, disappointing and foreboding end to the region’s rainy season as four years of low precipitation continue.
After several days of near-seasonal weather early in the week — with highs in the low- to mid-70s — the winds will turn offshore, allowing dry, hot conditions to press toward the coast and push temperatures to near-record levels, about 15 to 20 degrees above normal, forecasters said. By Friday, the high will probably edge over 90 degrees in downtown Los Angeles, said David Sweet, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.
“This is only March,” he said. “This is pretty early for temperatures up around 90.... We’re really running out of time when it comes to the rainy season.” The rainiest months in Southern California are December through March. Since Oct. 1, downtown L.A. has recorded 7.4 inches. About 12.8 inches would be considered normal. The total in March has been a paltry .87 inches.
No relief is in sight, said Bill Patzert, a climatologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Let’s get right down to it: We’re done. By April, usually, rainfall drops off dramatically,” Patzert said. Just as importantly, the state’s snowpack, a source of runoff that fills reservoirs, has continued to shrink. “Nothing got better this year,” Patzert said. Record-breaking warmth up and down the state “decimated the snowpack.”
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http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-dry-end-to-rainy-season-20150322-story.html
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