Will the west coast rainstorms end the western drought

Good, but I don’t think I can handle any more rain for a while here!!

 

California survived the massive amounts of snowfall in January because the temperatures in spring and early summer were cooler than normal, creating a more gradual release of snowmelt. Basically, they got lucky.

Fear of the 'Big Melt' turns to big relief along California's Eastern Sierra

 

Mammoth Mountain has finally had all of its snow (75 feet!) from the January storms fully melted. The snow skiing season finally closed on Aug. 6th.

Mammoth Mountain's 900 Inches Of Snow Has Finally Melted

 

Looks like Hilary could put a hurtin' on Socal.

 

Rare, but not unheard of. The difference is this looks like to be an El Nino year. The waters off the Baja are warmer than usual. Pacific hurricanes in this area are usually CAT 1, and often are downgraded back to a TS before landfall. Hilary is expected to become a CAT3 and only downgraded to possibly CAT2 before landfall.

Last major storm to hit this area was around Labor Day several years ago. Happened to be traveling back from San Diego when we stopped for lunch in Yuma. Power went out halfway through eating as the rain started coming on strong. We scarfed down the rest of the lunch and high-tailed it out of town and made it out of town about 45 minutes before they closed I-8 for flooding. That was a CAT1 storm that made land as a TS. This one looks to be bigger and badder.

 

Lock her up!!!

 

Based on the projected track, it looks like there is a good chance that the center of the storm comes ashore in Baja, Mexico, so the storm should slow down by the time it gets to SoCal. It may still deliver a ton of rain, but the wind damage shouldn't be too bad.

 

Yep shit tons of rain on the mountains and deserts of socal, nv, parts of az and the flashfloods that come with that. The eggheads at the NHC screwed up, "Hurricane Hilary" would be more of an east coast i.e. mar a lago thing, but instead that name ended up on the eastern pacific list. Go figure.

 

Where I live tends to get the moisture - or what’s left of it - of the s cal storms. That Labor Day weekend, it was in the 90s & raining ash from wildfires. From sun evening to Labor Day morning, the temp dropped 70 degrees & I shoveled a Ft of snow off my driveway

 

An area northwest of Los Angeles experienced a 5.1 earthquake during the middle of the storm, which has brought flooding and rockslides to many areas. Rains have so far exceeded 6" in some places.

Torrential rain from Tropical Storm Hilary causes dangerous mudslides, rockslides in Southern California

 

Rare but not unheard of?
Climate change has got to be the reason?
I guess they should have mandated electric only sooner.

 

We live on the Western Slope of the Rockies, and our rainfall this past spring and summer is significantly increased, with a return to what locals refer to as 'monsoon season.' It runs from June through September bringing wet relief to the region's arid high desert climate.

https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/colorado-is-drought-free-for-only-the-second-time-in-23-years#:~:text=The U.S. Drought Monitor uses,is 100%-drought free.

Colorado is drought-free for only the second time in 23 years
Colorado is the only state in the western region without drought. And monsoon season has barely started.

"For only the second time since 2000, Colorado is free of any drought and it is all thanks to the snowpack and lots of recent rain, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor and National Weather Service (NWS).

"U.S. Drought Monitor uses five classifications to illustrate the location and intensity of droughts across the United States and regularly releases the data. According to its map published Thursday morning, which depicts conditions from July 4, 2023, Colorado is 100%-drought free.

"This is only the second time in recorded history that this has happened, according to a hydrologist with the NWS. However, the U.S. Drought Monitor only started working with this kind of data in 2000. The first time the state was free of any drought using this data was May 28-July 16, 2019."



The drought maps show 3 of the rivers that have headwaters in the state. The Colorado runs into Utah midway down the western border. Grand Junction is about 30 miles east of Utah at the river's southernmost point in the state, where it merges with the Gunnison which is not shown. The river flowing south from headwaters in the San Juan Mountains is the Rio Grande and the Arkansas flows southeast from headwaters in the middle of the state. The blue loop that ducks in and out in the northwest is the Green River which merges with the Colorado in central Utah.

The rain storms that invariably hit us from the Southwest started early this year. There were indications this would be an unusual year as increased amounts of rain fell in lower elevations while there was still significant snowpack in the higher elevations east of the Grand Valley. Horticulturists predicted a desert super bloom, a relatively rare spring and summer phenomena in the deserts of the southwest. One of my neighbors is an experienced gardner with a prodigious knowledge of the region. She has lived her entire life of approximately 60 years in western Colorado / eastern Utah. She told me the last time she had witnessed a desert super bloom was more than 50 years ago when she was a child traveling by car between Grand Junction and Salt Lake.

A desert bloom is a climatic phenomenon that occurs in various deserts around the world. The phenomenon consists of the blossoming of a wide variety of flowers during early-mid spring in years when rainfall is unusually high.

We had a small taste of it this year with the cactus in our own yard. Each one produced more flowers than they had the 2 previous years, and the unirrigated cholla cactus in our yard and chollas in our neighbors' yards have bloomed twice! The chollas were covered in 3 dozen or more flowers as expected in June, and now 2 months later they are blooming again with another dozen or so flowers. A most unusual year.




Photo taken near Park City, Utah in July '23.

 

I read that it it’s all about the snowpack. Of course any rain events must help some, but the words used were “drop in the bucket” compared to the snowpack.

This was obviously a good year precipitation wise, but by all accounts it sounds like Mead would need multiple years like this to stop it’s decline.

 

Only the parts that drain into Lake Mead. Most of Nevada does not.

 

I see a SyFy Channel movie coming: Hurriquake.

 

Brought it up like 4 - 5".

 

21st Colo summer (thanks god!) & I never recall it being this green!