Climate Change Blamed For 2 Huge California Storms

Forecasters are warning of back-to-back atmospheric rivers that could lead to flooding, mudslides and road closures between today and Tuesday.

“We could very well receive February’s total normal precipitation within the month’s first five days,” forecasters from the National Weather Service’s office in San Diego wrote early Monday morning.

California needs the rain to stave off drought. The state has gotten only about 81 percent of the total average rainfall expected by this time of year, and the snowpack is just 32 percent of its average April 1 peak, according to state data. Water levels at reservoirs are still above average for this time of year because of the bounty of rain we received last winter, but they are not nearly as high as they were a year ago.

For those who don’t know, the term “atmospheric river” was coined in the U.S. in 1998, and refers to “long narrow streams of high water vapour concentrations in the atmosphere that move moisture from tropical regions towards the poles across the mid latitudes.” This is according to the Atmospheric Rivers State of Knowledge Report, released by the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions and B.C.’s environment ministry.

The same report notes that as the planet continues to warm, we can expect atmospheric rivers and other extreme events to “intensify, move northward and become more frequent over time.”