'Rivers in the sky' have drenched California, yet even more extreme rains are possible
Published in Weather News
Hecht said it’s not immediately clear why so many atmospheric rivers this season included thunderstorms, but he said higher ocean surface temperatures — a signature of the El Niño weather pattern — could have helped spur the unstable convective pattern.
Even with many water measurements pointing to an overall average water year thus far, federal officials recently issued a major disaster declaration for nine counties after the deadly February atmospheric river storms.
Knowing that further rainfall extremes are possible, Swain said he hopes state officials can better prepare for emergencies, or at least better understand the possible risks.
“If we don’t correctly estimate the risk to begin with ... it’s awfully hard to have an accurate discussion about costs and benefits of any particular intervention,” Swain said.
But, he noted that climate change is still expected to further stretch those natural extremes.
“It’s reasonable to interpret the 20th century as actually getting kind of lucky in California, in the sense that we didn’t see something worse ... just through random, natural variability,” Swain said. “The 21st century? It’s a heavily loaded die.”
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