Storms to break month-long dry spell

Area water resource officials and ski resorts are crossing their fingers for a good dousing as the first rainstorm of the year approaches the Mother Lode.

The region has seen 33 continuous days without precipitation, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Jim Mathews in Sacramento.

The National Weather Service issued a hard freeze warning through tonight. The overnight low in Sonora was 18 degrees, a new record. The previous low was 19 degrees in 1987.    

Chances of rain look promising starting on Wednesday and continuing through the weekend, Mathews said.    

For residents in the Sonora and Angels Camp areas, rain is expected to fall Wednesday night and continue through Friday.    

A second storm is expected to hit Friday night and continue into Sunday, according to Mathews. It will be “quite a wet period” for Northern California from Wednesday through Sunday, he said.    

NWS officials said that beyond Sunday is too far out to predict what the weather will bring, although area ski resorts are predicting a third storm stronger than the previous two.    

Snow could fall above 6,000 feet on Wednesday and Thursday nights, and most of the precipitation will fall north of Interstate 80, Mathews said.    

“You’re going to get some, not a whole lot,” he said. “The northern part of the state will get more.”    

The good news for area ski resorts is a foot of snow could fall above 6,000 feet from Wednesday through Thursday, Mathews said.    

“We could open with as little as two to three feet,” said Amber Jenquin, marketing manager at Dodge Ridge Ski Resort near Pinecrest.    

Officials are “super excited” about the three anticipated storms coming in, she said.    

“Sunday is really the storm we’re keeping our eye on. It could be our opener,” Jenquin said. “The third should be the strongest of the three. Hopefully that would cover us from top to bottom.”    

By this time last year, Dodge Ridge had 24 feet of accumulated snow and the season was opened on Thanksgiving.    

“Last year was an epic season,” Jenquin said. “You never know what you’re going to get with mother nature.    

Bear Valley Ski Resort on upper Highway 4 is open on a limited basis with mostly man-made snow.    

Badger Pass Ski Area in Yosemite needs at least 15 inches to open, according to Lisa Cesaro public relations manager for DNC Parks and Resorts at Yosemite.    

“We’re looking for heavy, wet snow to help build the base,” she said. “We’re all keeping our fingers crossed.”    

The state could use some snow, Department of Water Resources officials say.    

The annual snowpack survey conducted during the first week of January found the statewide water content is 19 percent of normal at this time of year.   

It’s only 7 percent of the average April 1 measurement, when snowpack is normally at its peak before the spring melt, according to the DWR snow survey.   

Lake Oroville, the State Water Project’s principal storage reservoir, with a capacity of 3.5 million acre feet, is 72 percent full thanks to last year’s heavy storms, which is 114 percent of average for the time of year, the DWR said.    

Mountain snow that melts into reservoirs, streams and aquifers in the spring and summer provides approximately one-third of the water for California’s households, farms and industries, the DWR reports.    

While snow is the most useful, because it stores the winter precipitation more effectively, “we’d take anything right now,” said Maury Roos, DWR’s chief hydrologist  in Sacramento.    

“If we get three inches of snow or rain in the high country it would more than double what we have,” he said.    

Normally officials would expect almost half of the yearly snowpack to already be on the ground. The state is only at 2 inches of the 30 inches of water content needed for the April 1 average, so even if it rained heavily for the next several days, it still wouldn’t bring it to average at this point, Roos said.    

Dry spells of more than 30 days are rare in this area, according to the National Weather Service. The most recent was in 2008 from the end of February through late March, but the last time there was no rain for 33 days or more during the winter was in 2000, from Dec. 10 to about Jan. 10, Mathews said.    

In terms of winter months, the longest period without precipitation was 44 days in 1976, he said.    

According to NWS meteorologist Drew Peterson, there are multiple factors to explain why there hasn’t been rain in 33 days, but officials can’t pinpoint one exact reason.    

“This is a La Nina year and typically in La Niña years when we have a pattern set up like this it’s hard to break, but usually we’ll be to normal by the end of the year,” Peterson said. “While we’ve been dry so far, I wouldn’t say it’s uncommon. This is a more typical La Niña year.”    

La Niña tends to bring nearly opposite effects of El Niño, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.    

During a La Niña year, winter temperatures are warmer than normal in the Southeast and cooler than normal in the Northwest.    

“It’s a kind of 50-50 split year. Because of where we are geographically, it could go either way,” Peterson said. “If we were in the Pacific Northwest it’s almost always a wet signature and in Southern California it’s almost always a dry signature. But here it’s kind of a mixed bag.”