As California enters the sixth year of its historic drought, something unusual is happening: It’s raining.
And raining.
Rainfall is expected across much of the Bay Area again Sunday, with another storm coming Halloween night. Marin, Sonoma and other North Bay counties should get the biggest soaking.
Meteorologists stress that it’s only the very beginning of California’s rainy season, so there are no guarantees that a wet October will bring a wet November, December, January or February. So far, though, October has been surprisingly wet across the northern part of the state, raising the hopes of drought-weary Californians.
Most Bay Area cities have seen double their historic monthly rainfall average this October. Sacramento has quadrupled its average. Eureka is at five times the norm and still climbing. Redding airport already has broken its all-time October rainfall record.
More important, storms barreling in from the Pacific Ocean have been drenching key areas in rural Northern California, where California’s largest reservoirs are located. Through Saturday, this month is already the third wettest October of any back to 1921 over a series of eight Northern Sierra locations stretching from Lake Tahoe to Mount Shasta, all sitting in the watersheds that fill massive reservoirs like Shasta, Oroville and Folsom that provide water to tens of millions of Californians and millions of acres of farmland.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, the heavy rains near big reservoirs haven’t increased water levels in a major way yet. Much of the rain has soaked into very dry soils, Carlson noted. And typically in October, water levels in Northern California’s big reservoirs drop because water has to be slowly let out into rivers for salmon and other fish, as well as for farmers and cities to consume.
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