A remarkably wet kickoff to Northern California’s rainy season has coincided with a desperately dry fall in Southern California — a huge disparity, perhaps unprecedented, between the haves and have-nots of rainfall. Los Angeles usually gets several inches of rain by now, halfway into the rainy season, but it’s only recorded a fifth of an inch downtown since July, its second driest period in almost 150 years of record-keeping. The rest of Southern California is just as bone-dry. … Northern California is always wetter than the semi-arid southern half. But the scale of the north-south gap that has persisted for several months has stunned experts. This season’s stark imbalance isn’t bad in terms of water supply. That’s because Northern California’s rain and snow feed major reservoirs, which provide much of the water used by Californians. If this occurred in reverse — a wet south and a dry north — most of the water would remain uncaptured, providing little benefit for supplies.

Related water supply articles:

• Newsweek: California’s biggest reservoir has best January start in at least 15 years
• Telluride Daily Planet: Local drought could impact the West’s water supply
• Public Policy Institute of California blog: Rising to California’s water challenges in 2025
• California Farm Water Coalition news release: Full reservoirs and drought