Experts say California's recent series of storms was no more severe than what the state has experienced in the last century.
A battery of January storms has blanketed the Sierra Nevada in extraordinary snowpack, but will it last through the winter?Indeed, this mid-winter’s precipitation was far behind the 1956 season, when California had received a whopping 85.3% of its average annual precipitation by Jan. 17, according to the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes. As of Wednesday, California had accumulated about 70% of its average annual total, the center said.
That emergency, scientists say, was a taste of the kind of meteorological tumult Mother Nature has in store for the future: Climate models predict more frequent mega-storms fueled by warming oceans and a thirstier atmosphere due to global warming.“Most recent storm systems don’t hold a candle to the kinds of extreme prolonged storms of the last century,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA.
, said the megadrought was likely to persist through 2023, matching the duration of another mega-drought in the late-1500s. “Global warming is real,” he said, “and because of it the heaviest storms around the world are getting heavier — except in California and the southwestern United States, where the weather typically swings from too dry to too wet.”
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