"Not a drop of rain fell in downtown San Francisco this February. Or in Big Sur State Park. Or in Paso Robles. February in California was so dry that it is raising concerns that the state, which, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center, only fully emerged from drought last March, may be headed for another one.
“It was the driest February on record,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Ordinarily, 90 percent of California’s rain falls during the seven-month period between Oct. 1 and April 30, with half of the state’s total precipitation falling during December, January and February. The rains that come in February are part of a seasonal pattern that nourishes plants, replenishes reservoirs and, in the Sierra Nevada mountains, restores the snowpack that provides up to 30 percent of the state’s drinking water. "
Kendra Pierre-Louis and Nadja Popovich report for the New York Times March 3, 2020.
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