San Diego County has fallen behind in seasonal rainfall. A weak storm could bring a little moisture Wednesday through Friday. But the National Weather Service says the region will then be dry until late next week, and perhaps for much, much longer.
So where’s the El Niño that’s supposed to turn this into a wet, calamitous winter?
The natural, periodic climate change phenomenon known as El Niño has formed in the equatorial Pacific, says the U.S. Climate Prediction Center. It’s a strong event that’s led to a lot of speculation in the media that California will get walloped this winter.
But recent CPC forecasts say there is just as great a chance that San Diego County will receive average rainfall this season as that it will get the unusually wet conditions of a year ago, when there was no El Niño.
It is also possible the county will get below-average rainfall.
That’s what happened during the year-long rainy season that began on Oct. 1, 2015. Federal forecasters predicted that an El Niño would hit greater San Diego hard. But San Diego International Airport received only 8.18 inches of rain, about 1.60 inches below the seasonal average.
Since the latest rainy season began on Oct. 1, the airport has recorded 0.29 inches of precipitation, which is 0.85 inches below average.
The weather service says that back-to-back low pressure systems from the North Pacific could drop 0.25 inches of rain at the coast and twice as much in the mountains from Wednesday to Friday.
But the jet stream won’t dig far south and deliver the sort of heavy, sustained precipitation it brought on many occasions a year ago.
