Rain and snow impact California, West Coast

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's California Expert Ken Clark explains the incoming storm to California on March 17, as well as additional storms forecast for later in the week.

Transcript

00:00Joining me right now is our California expert with over 40 years of experience here at Accuweather

00:07It's of course Ken Clark joining us live from Rancho Cucamonga here this morning Ken

00:13We've been talking about this storm coming in the California today

00:18But there's two other storms that we're tracking you could see them in the Pacific Ken

00:22But like each one of these storms are a little farther north

00:27Than their predecessor coming into California today

00:31That's correct. The one we spent later Wednesday into Wednesday night

00:34Maybe ending early Thursday morning will be a certainly a lighter event than today's a storm

00:40Still give you a little bit of rain and snow to northern, California, especially the northern third

00:45Let's say maybe is six to twelve inches of snow in the northern and central Sierra

00:49Not a big storm a little bit of impact

00:52But not a big storm the last week late in the week storm is it's meant to be even weaker

00:58Won't get as far south as a Bay Area and they only clip northernmost, California

01:03You know Ken so far this winter again the December and January was just so dry across Southern, California

01:10That we got way behind on the rainfall here

01:14And when you look at the drought monitor, and this is more of a short-term problem, you know

01:19Virtually no problems in general in Northern, California

01:22How would you describe it for Southern, California?

01:27It was a dire need of rain

01:30Through January October through January saw two to five percent normal rainfall

01:36So what we've done since then we really picked things up. It was very very dry to start

01:41We've picked up a quite a bit of rain over the last

01:44Month and a half or so and that's the good news

01:47We've got lots of water right now things are green across

01:51California the fire danger is low at this point and probably will stay that way for a while

01:55So this is greatly improved the storms have greatly improved conditions in Southern, California

02:01Speaking about improvements can we were running way below normal in the central and southern Sierra as far as the snowfall

02:09Grabbed up here Ken is the Sierra

02:12Central Sierra snow lab at Soda Springs now going into this storm. So this is from yesterday morning to

02:20291 point three four inches of snow the normal going into this storm was about

02:26301 and I I think we've easily picked up a foot of snow here in the last 24 hours

02:32That's correct and

02:34South of there, you know

02:35This the storm lab is is on the northern edge of the central Sierra as the way they calculate things

02:42Most of the central and southern Sierra were anywhere between 50 and 60

02:47average by

02:48Late January now, we're in the mid 80s in those areas

02:52Yeah, great improved the snow back across the central and southern Sierra nor this year never had a problem

02:58So we are looking really good right now at the snow pack heading into the last part of March

03:05Ken in about 30 seconds another key contributor

03:08Why every a lot of people are talking about a drought in Southern, California a drought in Southern, California

03:12You've been very consistent with this message that there was not a water shortage in Southern, California

03:20Absolutely, not all the major reservoirs are chock-full of water at this point

03:26If we're gonna end the season with good amounts of snow in this Sierra, I think we're looking good throughout the summer

03:32We're that we have no water shortage in, California

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