Hey everybody. ABC10 Meteorologist, Brendan Men, chef here. New weekend time for a new drought update. We're actually have a little bit of stuff to talk about with regards to the drought, not necessarily here in California, but across the Southwest. And then the monsoon and monsoon season that is the focus of today's drought update and the two are related. We'll get to that in a second, but we'll start with the drought map for California. And really these numbers are unchanged. We are not seeing a lot of movement, good or bad, here in California, which as a whole is good news as it regards to the drought. We're really not in drought here in California at all anymore. But again, things are changing a little bit across the Southwest due to the monsoon. We'll talk about that in just a second. But staying here in California, the reservoirs are still looking very good, 86% capacity at Folsom, 90% at Orville and 84% at Shasta. That's as of August 4th. Here's the milestone. There is no measurable snow left on Dwr's snow sensors across the Sierra. So officially there is no snow in the Sierra. Now that is not entirely true. Some of the very high elevation, some of the very remote places that DWR does not have snow sensors at the snow pillows. There is still some snow in the Sierra, kind of remarkably, but officially the numbers at this point all read 0 because none of the sensors are there recording snow. So let's take a look back at July real fast before we really just settle in and focus on August. July was a pretty warm month here in Northern California. Not going to lie. 109 degrees is what we started the month at on July 1st and 2nd. Then we hit it that mark again on July 16th. Then we had lots of days in the triple digits. Lots of times we hit about 108 degrees for highs, and as we look at the average high temperature for the month as a whole, 97.8 degrees. Normally for July, that numbers over the last 30 years 94.4 degrees. Now compare that to June, which was about 3 1/2 to 4 degrees cooler than average. July really felt quite warm. In fact, it was on average about 11 degrees warmer, 11 to 12 degrees warmer every single day than June was. So yeah, July felt hot. Thankfully, we've kind of started August off on a cooler note. But I mean, the this pattern of warming, we talk about it all the time. We see it a lot, not just here in California, not just the United States, but across the globe. If you think about those climate stripes, right, the Blues to the Reds. That's what we see. And since 1970, on average, we've seen about 1.2 degrees of warming every July in Sacramento. And to rephrase that, over the last 50 years, July has warmed by 1.2 degrees. So basically as a whole, every July has been a little bit warmer than the last one. Now let's look at the Southwest as well, because it was not just us here in California that was very hot. It was the Southwest as a whole. It was the 4th hottest July on record. Records go back to the year 1893. Fourth hottest July on record in California for the state as a whole. For Nevada as a whole, that was the 5th hottest. Same in Arizona, third hottest July in Utah during that time frame. And it was the hottest July on record over the last 131 years in the state of New Mexico. Now this is based on average high temperatures, not average temperature. This is just taking into account those daily highs, but that's pretty remarkable too, because Texas had a top ten hottest July as well. So did Louisiana. Florida almost had a top ten hottest July. And you know where the heat Dome was because you see it across the southern United States, That's where it was hottest, especially in the Southwest. We talked about it a lot with that weather pattern graphic, right? How that high pressure was just somewhere between Texas and California. It seemed almost all month long. That's why some days we had those triple digits of around 105. Other days were closer to about 99 or so. But really that was the story of July and you can also see where the heat was not because parts of the upper Midwest and the upper Great Plains had some pretty cool July's as compared to some of the other ones. Let's talk about the weather pattern. As it stands now though, high pressure is building back towards California this weekend, but then it's going to scoot back to the East. So we're warming up and then we're cooling off, at least in California as we go through this coming work week. We might also have some tropical remnants trying to push in towards the state of California as well, which could bring us some showers, maybe even more likely though some lightning, some relatively dry thunderstorms. We know that this has caused fires in the past, especially in August of 2020, we had some tropical remnants move through and it really just sparked the entire coastal range. There were a lot of fires going on at that time. Not saying that's what's going to happen here. Just saying anytime we have starts to talk about maybe some tropical remnants or something kind of moving up the West Coast, the United States, always something we got to think about here in California. But beyond that high pressure looks to build back in after that. So maybe once we get to about a week, week and 1/2 from now, maybe we start talking about those triple digits yet again. But more importantly, I want to talk about this with regards to the monsoon and moisture across the Southwest. So this is the six to 10 day climate outlook from the Climate Prediction Center. So specifically, this is for August 10th through 14th, but what you notice is how much drier than average it is likely to be. So very likely drier across parts of the Southwest, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona. This is the time of year when we expect to see rain in places like Phoenix, in places like Tucson, Albuquerque, even Las Vegas to some degree as well. We know here in Northern California our rainy season is in the winter. We really don't expect to see anything in terms of thunderstorms or rain or anything, anything significant at all here in California this time of the year. It just doesn't happen. We get those atmospheric rivers in the winter time, that's where we get our rain. But that's not the case for places like Arizona, New Mexico, This is their rainy season and look at this summer today. So this is June 1st to date as of this video, the driest summer on record. This goes back again to 1893 for the state of Arizona. 5th driest on record for the state of New Mexico. 26th driest on record for California, which still significant, but of course we also don't expect to see a lot of rain to begin with here. But notice Nevada is actually 46 out of 131, so they're having a slightly wetter than average summer so far. Utah right, where you expect to be that white color right in the middle here, which means it's not really wet, not really dry. But Colorado? Look at this the 6th wettest summer on record in Colorado so far, right? August is the last month of the meteorological summer, which is June, July, August. So there's still time to go for all these numbers. Things could change for sure, but it tells you a lot about where that high pressure has been, considering that Colorado has had an extremely wet summer, but New Mexico and Arizona have not. So one of the things that gets brought up sometimes and we're still trying to exactly understand how this might impact the North American monsoon. One of the things we talk about El Nino a lot with the sea surface temperature anomaly, we see that it's building. We see that off the coast of South America. There's obviously a very strong signal that temperatures are warmer than average for the Equatorial Pacific, right. This is hallmark, classic textbook, whatever adjective you want to use. This is what El Nino looks like now. We want to see it build out as we talked about with the last update that we did a couple weeks ago. We want to see that build out further into the Pacific, still kind of waiting for that ocean atmospheric connection to kick in. So we're kind of in a holding pattern with El Nino, but as we move up the coast towards towards California, towards the Baja California as well, we notice this cooler than average section of ocean temperatures as well. And what that might be leading to. And it's kind of a delayed start, if you will, to the North American monsoon season as well because high pressure likes to sit right here over the Four Corners region and kind of pull that moisture in. But if you've got cooler than average temperatures in that part of the Pacific, that's going to lead to less evaporation, less cloud cover, really kind of just less moisture in general to work with for that monsoon. That may be playing a role in kind of the weather pattern that we're seeing. What's for sure though, I also mentioned that there's some studies out there that suggest maybe a heavy snowpack in the Rockies could have some effects as well on the on the monsoon season here in the Southwest. But that's kind of still up in the science debate right now. But one thing that we are looking at for sure is that this could lead to some increasing drought earlier than what we would expect. So this is at the start of summer, right, so June 1st basically. And that's where we see the drought update at the time where we had some of that drought still lingering in the Las Vegas area, some still in parts of like Yuma County Down into Southern the desert Southern California, which we still have some of that abnormally dry notice. New Mexico though it was bad near the Panhandle, but it was improving along the more mountainous parts of the state. Here's what it looks like now when you can see where we've had that change. Now much of Southern Arizona, again, this is the rainy season. You'd be expecting to see things continue to improve or hold steady. But in fact, we're moving back into that abnormally dry category for Southern Arizona. We're also seeing much of the state of Mexico now in much worse drought conditions than where we were just a couple of months ago. We do see that Colorado eliminated their drought, which is great on the Front Range, but than on the West side of the Rockies. We do see some of that abnormally dry category, Utah as well and parts of Las Vegas. So we've seen some minor improvements over here, but certainly we're seeing some worsening conditions towards the Four Corners region, which is where we've seen that high pressure basically all summer long, right, how hot it's been in Phoenix and Tucson and New Mexico, places like that. It's because that high pressure has been sitting directly overhead. What we want to see to get that North American monsoon going is that high pressure sitting over the Four Corners. That's Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, right. It sits right over those four corners of the state, maybe a little bit to the east. And what happens is the rotation just the way that the the high pressure rotates the rotation of the atmosphere, it brings that moisture in some in some cases from the Gulf of Mexico across kind of that Mexican plateau and then up into the really the deserts of of the Southwest, right. It also pulls the moisture though in from the Gulf of California in from the Pacific as well. And this is where we've seen some of that cooler than average water which may not be helping either. So this is what we want to see in an ideal situation, that positioning of the high over the four corners and also maybe just a little bit to the east and it brings all that moisture in and this is the time of year that it happens. But really we've been seeing something a little different. Instead of sitting right over the four corners and pushing all this moisture in towards places like Arizona, Northern Mexico and New Mexico, instead this high pressure sitting much further West, in the further West and especially further southwest that this pressure sits, this high pressure sits, What happens is it stamps out that convection, right. It stamps out storm development. It keeps that moisture off to the West. So this is kind of what we've seen a lot this year. It's, it's right over Arizona, sits right over New Mexico, brings extremely hot temperatures, lots of sunshine. And that moisture gets kept away out in towards northern Mexico's, in some cases into Southern California, but also more so up in towards Nevada, in some cases the southern Sierra as well. But that's if that high pressure is a strong one and if the winds line up just right, This is all a textbook kind of idealized situation. This is not exactly what it's looked like. But this is to give you an idea of what we've seen. This is generally where that high pressure has been. And This is why we've not seen a lot of that monsoon moisture just simply because that high pressure has been in the wrong spot. So we talked to an expert at the Western Regional Climate Center and the Desert Research Institute. Someone that's super familiar with monsoons knows a lot about them. And and we had a great discussion. Here's what he had to say. A monsoon isn't an individual storm, even though sometimes the term is used incorrectly that way. It's a seasonal shift, you know, mostly driven by the changes in the wind direction and and and patterns of high and low pressure. Dr. Dan McAvoy with the Western Regional Climate Center at the Desert Research Institute knows a thing or two about monsoons. He conducts research on drought and hydro climatology for the Western United States, and so the Southwest US monsoon is one of those areas. There are some other major monsoon regions across the globe like India and the Asian monsoon, but the SW monsoon typically occurs. It usually kicks in sometime around late June to early July. The official start date to the monsoon season is June 15th and goes through the end of September. And so we the the Southwest US transitions from this pattern due due to the changing of the seasons mostly of a subtropical high pressure center that becomes almost was I stationary over somewhere around the Four Corners region of the Southwestern US. And depending exactly where that high pressure center sets up will will determine whether you have a weaker, more stronger monsoon as it's able to draw in less or more moisture from the main sources which are the Pacific Ocean and the the Gulf of California and also can be from the Gulf of Mexico. And though many of us living in California are used to hearing the word monsoon, its direct impacts are actually more focused along our southern border. It's really like the southern half of Arizona and New Mexico are most strongly impacted. And of course, it doesn't stop at the the the country borders Mexico itself. South of Arizona and New Mexico have the strongest impacts from the monsoon. So as you go into the US further north and West, so very far southern and Southwest California can occasionally get impacts from the monsoon moisture. As you go further north, the terrain starts to play, come into play. So we have the Sierra Nevada, the mountains that run north to South. And so, for example, in Sacramento, there's rarely any monsoonal moisture that makes it into northern, central and Northern California. It's more common. I'm into central and northern Nevada, but still much less moisture makes it that that far north. But we do have surges of moisture depending on how the synoptic weather patterns are set up. This doesn't come as a surprise for those of us in Northern California. We know our rainiest months are in the winter time and come from landfalling atmospheric rivers, but for those in the Southwest, this is their time. It's really the rainiest time of year for places like Tucson, AZ, Albuquerque, NM, Phoenix, That area, Las Vegas also can get quite a bit of from the monsoon. This year, though the proverbial monsoonal taps have been slow to open up. Overall, it's been a very slow start to the monsoon, and I kind of like the term that I don't know who started using it, but nonsoon when these monsoons don't really show up. And so it's, it's been somewhat interesting the past two years 20/22/2021, we're very good monsoons with a lot of rain. 20/20 was extremely dry. And so I've been hearing from some folks in Arizona and Mexico that they believe this year, you know could start to look like 2020, which was a very dry monsoon. So just about no rainfall in Albuquerque. Phoenix is having one of its driest July's had one of its driest July's on record. There was some spotty, decent monsoon rain. So, for example, Tucson further South in Arizona, got about two inches in July, but that was still below average for the year. So the entire region is is well below average and with that lack of clouds and rain, it's been extremely hot in that region as well. A dry monsoon or non soon isn't necessarily a water supply problem. Most of that comes from winter snowpack in the Rockies. It's more about keeping the healthy landscape and vegetation and also reducing fire danger for that region. Because if it continues to be hot and dry like we've seen this year, then the fire danger can persist well into the summer. So why is the monsoon off to a slow start off the coast of California? It has been very cool And so that's going to lead to less water vapor and evaporation into the atmosphere which which could also lead to less moisture and cloud cover and and monsoonal activity. Really you know the as I mentioned there's this high pressure system that typically is centered around the right around the four corners area as the center and this year that's been shifted a bit further South, so centered over central or southern Arizona and New Mexico. And So what that's doing is, is with the clockwise circulation around the high pressure system just being that a little bit further South, it's not able to draw in the moisture from the the big water bodies like it does. And so this is setting up to kind of have drought conditions start developing again as they were starting to to come out of at least in the short term pull out of the drought that has been persisting there for years and years. Still the hope isn't lost. The monsoon season still has another month or so to go. The kind of shorter term forecast, at least for the next week or two, still show it being quite dry and hot with with a really no monsoonal moisture returning. That could change. The longer range forecast beyond, you know two weeks or so aren't incredibly reliable. And again, since most of the precipitation with monsoon is convection and thunderstorms, that's even harder to predict those surges. But it can persist well into September and so there is hope and a chance that it could return for a late start to the monsoon, which would help. I think it'll still be tough to make up the seasonal like the the total monsoon deficits that have already occurred as as the monsoon period is is about halfway over and again the next one to two weeks still looks very dry. So that does not mean there can't be more moisture in late August or or September.
