DESPITE DRY JANUARY, NORTH BAY WATER SUPPLY IS CURRENTLY GOOD

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A good water year in 2023-24 combined with a wet start to the current one has the North Bay’s reservoirs in good shape for January.

The current water storage levels at Lake Sonoma are running slightly above average for the date (dark blue line), when compared with historical averages (blue shading).

The same goes for Lake Mendocino.

A lot of the credit goes to our relatively wet November and December, when the North Bay was at the southern edge of an active storm track. Despite an extended January dry spell, rainfall is still above average for the date across much of the North Bay.

However, the southern two thirds of the state, and especially the Los Angeles and San Diego regions, continue to be very dry.

Over the next 10 days we may have chances for showers on the 25th,

And perhaps again around February 2nd.

Still, with a persistent ridge of high pressure blocking storms, most models are pretty dry through the first week of February.

After that? The European ensemble model is hinting at normal to slightly above normal rain for February here in the North Bay, but still dry to the south.

And the CFS forecast model is bullish on February being wet. I’d take this one with a grain of salt.

One good sign is that Euro and GFS long range models do show the high pressure ridge being replaced with a low pressure trough around the middle of February. We’ll wait to see. Stay with us for updates!