All Those Gloomy Spring Days We've Had Are Good News

OK, folks, I've heard some of you complaining we've had maybe a bit more than our share of gloomy days here in New England so far this spring.


Yellow and orange areas on this map are still dry
or in drought. It's a lot less than it was a few months ago

Buck up! The timing of this precipitation was perfect to really ease the drought we were in last fall.

I had been worried that it would remain dry, and the drought would intensify this spring and summer, leading to more well failures, water shortages, crop problems and the like.

But at least here in the Champlain Valley of Vermont, precipitation has been above normal since February.

The U.S. Drought Monitor comes out every Thursday, and it will be interesting to see if there will be even more improvement in the Northeast in the past week when we get new data tomorrow.

As of last week, just over 22 percent of  the Northeast region, which extends from West Virginia to Maine, was in drought or at least abnormally dry.  . That compares to 70 percent of the region being dry at the end of December.

Severe drought in southern New England has gone away completely.

Here in Vermont, drought conditions are hanging tough in a small area in the mid-Connecticut River valley in and near White River Junction, but the rest of the state is fine.

Droughts are easier to break when leaves are not on the trees yet. Leafed out trees suck up a lot of water from the ground, all other things being equal.

During last night's mild showers, I noticed the trees in the Champlain Valley really started to show signs of green.

No worries, though. If rainfall remains near normal for the rest of the spring and summer, we'll have no trouble with drought.

In the short term, the next week or two, the weather pattern looks active, so chances are good we'll get more spring showers.

Even if eventually does turn dry again, at least we won't start out in the hole in terms of water supplies. Though I hope some steady drenchings keep hitting the White River Junction area.

So enjoy the sunny days, but rejoice in the rain, too. We still could use it. and it's good for all of us.

California Ski Resort Has Had About 65 FEET Of Snow This Season

Uncovering a ski resort shack recently at Squaw Alpine
near Lake Tahoe, California. 

Here in Vermont, ski season is winding down, after a weird winter, that ultimately ended up OK with a fair amount of snow for winter sports enthusiasts.

A few die-hard resorts are open in the North Country, but as things green up and warm up, that will end soon, too.

Out in California, maybe not as soon as here. Several ski resorts have had 700 inches or more of snow this stormy snow season, and one resort is flirting with 800 inches.

According to the Weather Channel, the Sugar Bowl Resort in the northern Sierra Nevada mountains has had 777 inches of snow so far, and more might be on the way. That's nearly 65 FEET of snow.

Imagine shoveling that out of your driveway.  Then again, you wouldn't even be able to find your house, so there's that.

Of course, there was never 65 feet of snow on the ground at Sugar Bowl Resort because some snow compacted and melted over the course of the season. But still, there's a LOT of snow out ther.e

Believe it or not, the deep snow at Sugar Bowl isn't even close to the record for the most snow in one season at a place in the United States.

That honor goes to Mount Baker Ski Area in Washington State, which had 1,140 inches of snow during the winter of 1998-99. That would be 95 feet of snow.

This year, all that snow stored up in the Sierra Nevada mountains is a good thing, since it will melt over the course of spring and summer and feed reservoirs needed for drinking water and agriculture.

Melting snow from the Sierra Nevada normally supplies about one third of California's drinking and irrigation water supplies.

The melt from the Sierra Nevada hasn't started in earnest yet. In fact, they might get a little more snow in the next couple of days.

The one drawback to all this reservoir-replenishing snow in the California mountains is what happens if it melts too fast?

Snowpack in the Sierra was 164 percent of average as of April 1, which is normally near the peak of the snow depth in those mountains. That's the most since 2011 and the seventh most since 1950, says the Los Angeles Times.

If any strong heat waves develop over California, the rapid snow melt could overrun rivers, especially in the San Joaquin Valley, which already had its share of flooding during the winter storms earlier this year.

The bottom line: California is loving all this water coming off the mountains, but they don't want it all at once. A little at a time, please.

California Clobbered Again, But Will Get At Least Brief Break

Flash flood destruction in Gaviota, California last Friday

While we were distracted by tornadoes in the South and a gusty, wet, icy nor'easter blasting the Northeast over the past couple of days, California got pounded again by another tremendous storm off the Pacific Ocean.

Unlike in the past few storms, southern California got particularly blasted, with floods, mudslides and other havoc in the Los Angeles basin and other areas of the Golden State's southern half.

At least four deaths have been blamed on the latest California storm.

The Los Angeles Times reported that both the 110 Freeway in Carson and the 710 Freeway in Long Beach shut down due to flooding. The Long Beach area was perhaps the hardest hit, with a record one day rainfall of 3.87 inches reported there Sunday.

Brett Albright, a meteorologist with the National Weather Servcie in San Diego, told the Los Angeles Times that the latest storm poured four inches of rain down on some places.

"Today was very intense," Albright said of Sunday's California weather. "It's not a normal event. It was definitely a culmination of perfect circumstances: We had a very intense atmospheric river witha lot of moisture and an area of lift in the atmosphere right over coastal Los Angelese and Orange counties. It forced all that moisture out. "

This kind of weather closed Malibu roads because of rock slides and had some houses and apartments teetering on the edge of mudslides. On Monterey Bay, there was a new record high wave height during the storm, just over 34 feet.

In the mountains, feet upon feet of snow piled up. Snowfall in the Sierra Nevada this winter has been the deepest in 20 years, according to some reports.

While the drought is not over in California, it is slowly getting eroded away by this winter's parade of storms.

Los Angeles has had double its normal amount of precipitation this winter. And, about 42 percent of California is no longer in drought. Ninety-seven percent of the state was in drought this time last year.

Also, just two percent of California remains in "Exceptional Drought" category, the severest level. At this time last year, 43 percent of the Golden State was in exceptional drought.

Of course the water works could shut off abruptly in California, and the drought could re-intensify. It's too soon to say whether that will happen.

What will happen is California will get a break from the wet, stormy, snowy, destructive weather for at least the next few days.

Very little, if any rain and snow is expected in most of California for the next seven days or so. However, there are hints that more storms could start hitting at least central and northern California again in early February.

That last storm that hit California ended up in the central Plains states yesterday and last night, dumping more than a foot of snow in places like the southern half of South Dakota. The big winner for snow so far, according to the National Weather Service in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is right where most of my in-laws live in Yankton, South Dakota at 16 inches.

That storm is weakening as it heads east, so for us here in Vermont, we can expect frequent bouts of light snow over the next several days. It could even mix with rain the valleys Thursday before colder air moves in.

Only a few inches of snow at most are expected in Vermont's valleys in the next few days, but it should pile up fairly nicely in the mountains, with six inches to a foot on some ski areas over the next five days.

And the western New York Great Lakes snow blasts should also get really cranking in the next few days.