I live on the east coast but have noticed all of the wild weather hitting California in the last week; even the tornado that showed up. What’s the current situation in regards to rainfall and mudslides happening? How many evacuated people are planning to move back to their homes now?
What you’ve been hearing about is mostly Southern CA, I’d guess. We in the northern part of the state have been hit with tons of rain, sleet and whatever, there are only a few places where buildings are evacuated, and that’s more ocean erosion. We’ve had a few tornado warnings, but I don’t know if any have touched down yet.
Sun is shining today!
They’re calling it an “El Niño year”, whatever that means. I thought El Niño was more of a '90s fad.
Rainfall is somewhat above average, which is good. However, we need the rainfall to be way above average to make up for the last several years of below average rainfall, in order to say that the drought is truly over.
El Niño is a weather/climate phenomenon. What would make you think it is confined to a particular decade?
Two things: This is the time of year when the west coast gets some rough weather anyway, IIRC. Secondly, it’s an El Nino year, which makes it worse.
ETA: Thirdly, I got beaten to the punch!
It’s called a joke, based on the intensity of press coverage it received back then.
Well, once something has a cute name, the press jumps all over it. But the currents that cause the changes in the North Pacific water temperatures have been doing it for a long time, and still are doing it now.
Some people say there are no seasons in CA due to the year round generally nice weather.
There are seasons we just have different names for them, flood, mud, fire, and earthquake.
A tornado was spotted in Contra Costa county, but it is not clear if it touched down. And I think it started raining just as you wrote that - sunny again now.
There was a tornado warning in Morgan Hill earlier in the week, too. I’m trying to get a few things done in the yard before it starts raining again tomorrow. In between posting on this MB, that is. 
Re: El Niño. It isn’t necessarily a predictor of high rainfall-- we’ve had El Nino years before that only had average rainfall. It’s a probability thing, not a certainty, and seems to be used as an after-the-fact explanation.
The sun is shining in southern California now too, but they are forcasting more rain for Tuesday.
We just had a pretty wet week, and the rain, when it does come here, can be very heavy, but it was nothing out of the ordinary for this time of year. Mudslide warnings and such are a regular occurrence.
There were erosion-based evacuations in hilly locations in southern California where fires took out ground-holding plants this past summer, but residents were allowed to return.
The Santa Cruz Mountains got something like 10" of rain last week. And we had 2 days of crazy-ass wind. Cost me part of a fence!
Me too!
(Capitola)
See you at the Paradise Grill for a drink later. Love that place!
All the weather hitting California should have been hitting us up here in the Pacific Northwest. Instead of rain, we have been getting near record temps, nice sunny days and not a hint of snow. It got into the 60’s for a couple of days in Seattle this past week.
Yeah, that’s our rain!. The jet stream has just been tracking to the south and putting the rain into CA. It is moving back north and Wash and Oregon will be getting the rain again and 2 inches of rain per day will just be the normal weather here again.
But it sure was nice today, I pruned my grapes, cherry and pear trees back and puttered around outside.
We’ve had a great day today in Arlington, VA. After a few weeks of 20’s and 30’s, today was a balmy 63 degrees. However, temperatures are scheduled to drop back down and snow is predicted for Friday. Damn.