HINTS OF A WET MARCH FOR THE NORTH BAY

Share with Friends

For those worried that the rainfall spigot may have shutdown early across Northern California, the updated outlooks for March give reason for plenty of optimism.

The European and Canadian ensemble and long range forecasts hint that the pattern may open up to stormy weather for the first two weeks of the month.

The European model currently shows storms arriving on March 2nd, 5th and 8th. You can see them on this outlook for early March….lined up in the Pacific to the west of California.

The whole storm train comes thanks to the position of the high pressure ridge, which is expected to retract and move north by the first few days of March, settling in west of the Aleutian Islands, and allowing a low pressure trough to set up along the entire West Coast.

Without getting into too many details about specific storms, which will certainly change, the long range outlooks are trending toward a wetter than average start to March.

Here is the European ensemble outlook. The others are similar.

And, although the models hint that March will gradually dry out after mid-month, the overall outlook for the month is for above average precipitation, at least for Northern California.

Not a bad outlook considering that the North Bay is currently running well ahead of average precipitation for the date, and Lake Sonoma storage is also running ahead of average for the date, as are most other Northern California reservoirs.