California gets break from rain as stubborn storm system reloads

CALIFORNIA – California is getting a brief respite from the battering of rain, wind and heavy snow before another front arrives to usher in the weekend – and serve as a precursor to what may be an even worse storm rolling in on Monday.

“That is when we have a chance for things going kind of crazy,” said David Rowe, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Sacramento. “That has the potential to bring in widespread heavy rain and increased flooding.”

California has been lashed by a

series of atmospheric rivers that sloshed across the state

within the past couple weeks, bringing hurricane-strength gusts, flooding rains and deep snow across the mountains.

Swollen rivers have receded slightly in the last few hours, but another round of rain this weekend will push them back to flood levels as the next storm arrives.

The parade of storms is due to a combination of stubbornly persistent patterns across the North Pacific.

A low pressure trough has opened the door for the storms to roll in off the ocean every two or three days and this could continue for at least another two weeks, said WeatherTiger LLC President Ryan Truchelut.

Typically when a La Niña weather pattern is underway across the equatorial Pacific, storm tracks tend to move north, often missing California and leading to more drought.

The world is experiencing its third La Niña in as many years, though this one doesn’t seem to have the power of its past peers that left more than 97 per cent of the Golden State in drought.

The culprit is likely a large pool of abnormally warm water that has been “parked in the central North Pacific for months” that has overridden the typical La Niña reaction, said Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center.

The jet stream has bent around the warm pool and pumped storms into California.

“The persistent warm ocean blob tends to make this a stubborn pattern,” she said.

Whatever the cause, the story is the same: California will continue to get blasted by drenching rains and heavy snows for the next week or more. BLOOMBERG