Bay Area's Dry February Weather Approaching Civil War Era Record
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- A high pressure system remained stalled off the Northern California coast Tuesday, locking the region into a dry spell that reached 27 consecutive days without rain and edged the region toward a record set during the Civil War.
The National Weather Service said the 27 days of dry weather matched a similar time span in 2018. With skies forecast to be clear and dry again Wednesday, the region will match 1869, 1910, 1936 and 1988 for consecutive days without measurable rain. The longest mid-winter dry spell was 43 days in 2014 as the region headed into years of severe drought.
San Francisco last had a February without rain in 1864 with just 0.04 of an inch falling in 1953, 0.10 of an inch in 1899, 0.14 of an inch in 1952 and 0.19 in 1964.
Other Bay Area cities will also eclipse or tie historic records for dryness, many of them from February of 1953. In that dry year, Santa Rosa got just 0.08 of an inch, Napa got no rain, Livermore had 0.21 of an inch, San Jose just 0.02 of an inch and Salinas 0.01 of an inch.
Meanwhile, Oakland will also fall short of the 0.21 of an inch it had in 1995.
"Widespread beneficial rainfall is not anticipated at this time," the weather service warned.
The unseasonably warm and dry weather was raising havoc in the Sierra, where much of Northern California gets its water. The National Weather Service tweeted on Tuesday that the snow accumulations have dropped from 30-40 feet deep last February to just 10-20 feet this year.
California water officials were scheduled to measure the Sierra's snow pack on Thursday at Blue Canyon and were preparing for bad news.
Forecasters were holding out hope that a weak system moving into Northern California on Sunday could carry with it some rain and snow. But it won't be significant enough to break the dry spell and drive away fears of a new drought.
"This isn`t going to make a dent in the snow deficit that we have accrued in the last two months, but we will take anything that we can get at this point," weather service forecasters in Reno said.
