THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation beneath a Creative Commons license.
Dry conditions all through Southern California in early January 2025 set the stage for a group of deadly wind-driven wildfires that burned thousands of homes and other structures throughout the Los Angeles area.
Ming Pan, a hydrologist on the School of California-San Diego’s Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes, tracks the state’s water offers. He put Southern California’s dryness into perspective using charts and maps.
How Dry Is Southern California Correct Now?
In early January, the soil moisture in numerous Southern California was in the bottom 2 percent of historical records for that day throughout the space. That’s terribly low.
Hydrologists in California watch the sky very intently starting in October, when California’s water yr begins.
The state will get little or no rain from Would possibly by the use of September, so late fall and winter are important to fill reservoirs and to assemble up the snowpack to supply water. California relies on the Sierra snowpack for about one-third of its freshwater supply.
Nonetheless, Southern California started out the 2024–25 water yr pretty dry. The realm acquired some rain from an atmospheric river in November, nevertheless not lots. After that, lots of the atmospheric rivers that hit the West Coast from October into January veered northward into Washington, Oregon, and Northern California.
When the air is warmth and dry, transpiration and evaporation moreover suck water out of the vegetation and soil. That leaves dry vegetation that will current fuel for flying embers to spread wildfires, as a result of the Los Angeles area seen in early January.
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