In California, a drought turned to floods. Forecasters didn’t see it coming.
Coming into this winter, California was mired in a three-year drought, with forecasts offering little hope of relief anytime soon. Fast forward to today, and the state is waterlogged with as much as 10 to 20 inches of rain and up to 200 inches of snow that have fallen in some locations in the past three weeks…. The [Climate Prediction Center's] initial outlook for this winter, issued on Oct. 20, favored below-normal precipitation in Southern California and did not lean toward either drier- or wetter-than-normal conditions in Northern California. … The stark contrast between the staggering amount of precipitation in recent weeks and the CPC’s seasonal precipitation outlook issued before the winter, which leaned toward below-normal precipitation for at least half of California, has water managers lamenting the unreliability of seasonal forecasts.
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- Reuters: California rainstorm death toll reaches 20, Biden plans visit
- KCRA – Sacramento: Biden to survey storm damages, roadway closures due to flooding
- Axios: California faces weeks of cleanup as “one last” major storm lashes state
- KCRA – Sacramento: More than a dozen homes uninhabitable after major flooding in Calaveras County
- ABC 15 – Arizona: Arizonans volunteer to help amid historic California flooding
- The Guardian: How fast-moving floods took a deadly toll on California’s capital: ‘No one expected it’
- Sacramento Bee: These are 6 of the worst floods in Sacramento history. One made an ‘inland lake’ to the Sierra