California Drought Will Drag on Through Winter 2014, Prediction Says

The California drought, the state's worst on record, will likely continue on through the winter because of a weak El Nino, according to a National Weather Service winter prediction released this week.


"California is now extremely vulnerable to water shortages," Kevin Werner, western regional climate services director at the National Weather Service, told the newspaper. "The situation is unlikely to change even if we get an average winter."

The service's forecast model is predicting that Southern California, south of Bakersfield, will get greater than average rainfall this winter. The same model, though, shows that Sierra Nevada in Northern California — which needs rain and snowfall to refill rivers and reservoirs — will not get the support from Mother Nature it needs.

"Given the magnitude of the drought, even in a best-case scenario there are still going to be large parts of California in drought even when winter's over," Mike Halpert, the acting director of the National Weather Service's prediction center, told the Bee.

Jonathan Lloyd of KNBC-TV wrote that California continues to fall prey to a weak El Nino system in the Pacific. El Nino is the weather phenomenon in the tropical Pacific Ocean that affects weather patterns. Strong El Nino patterns would draw moisture into California but, for years, a weak El Nino system has left the state barren.

It's not only California either. Oregon and Washington will also experience drier conditions this winter while, on the other side of the country, New England will have above-average temperatures, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

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