The massive Pacific storms that streamed onto the California shoreline dropped a lot of rain, but they did little to ease long-term drought conditions and may end up exacerbating what is already expected to be a disastrous wildfire season.
This week’s U.S. Drought Monitor, released Thursday morning, shows that the “blockbuster” storms that lasted from Feb. 26 to March 2, dropped as much as 75 percent of the moisture some California cities have received all season. Burbank received 4.78 inches of its 5.28-inch season-to-date rainfall total and downtown Los Angeles received 4.52 inches of its 5.72-inch total.
The cruel irony is that the much-needed moisture may end up making a wildfire season expected to be catastrophic even worse than it would have been if the region had stayed completely dry.
“The initial impact will be to dampen the immediate impact of fires,” said Drought Monitor author Brad Rippey, a meteorologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C.. “But this rain will be enough to promote spring growth of vegetation that may otherwise have been dormant because of the drought. There may actually be more to burn, at least the lighter fuels, than if it had stayed dry all the way through.”
Grasses will sprout and grow because of the rains, then they’ll quickly dry out and provide easy fuel for a major wildfire, he said.
Read the full article at: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/rains-ease-calif.-drought-make-wildfire-outlook-grimmer-17147
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