Carley Gomez

Last week The Fujiwhara effect and bombcyclone brought in heavy rain, downed trees, power outages, and impressive snowfall. Call it deja vu, or clockwork, but I've been tracking computer models since Thursday, March 23rd, and that bomb cyclone did in fact take place Monday night with the bulk of the storm dumping water over northern CA Tuesday. Moreover, a new low pressure has emerged Wednesday causing more rotating bands of showers to move across the region. Here's a look at the pressure analysis, 1013 mb at 06z on Monday, to 980 mb at 06z on Tuesday. That's a 33 mb drop in pressure in 24 hours. You need 24 mb drop in 24 hours to have a bomb cyclone. The post it note I had since Thursday shows a 32 mb drop. It's impressive to see how far forecast models have come to being able to predict these events.

As of 9:00 am Wednesday, March 29, 2023, Downtown Sacramento came in with 25.47 inches of precipitation. Water years extend from October 1st to September 30th each year. So far, water year 2023 has beat out the last two drought years, which combined only brought in 24.84 inches of rain. This year, Sacramento has already seen a surplus of 9.13 inches of rain compared to the "normal" year (30 year avg). These are astounding numbers. 2021 was also the 4th driest year for downtown Sacramento on record. Futurecast models still show a few more storms in the pipeline, likely to increase the total water year precipitation through at least April.

The National Weather Service in San Diego says their office has issued the first ever Blizzard Warning in their history. The Blizzard Warning is in effect from 4am Friday through 4pm Saturday for strong gusts around 50-60 mph. The blowing snow will make travel near impossible as visibility will be near zero. The San Bernardino mountains are home to the famous Big Bear Lake and Big Bear Mountain, where many southern California skiers and snowboarders go to catch fresh powder. 48-60 inches of snow is expected through Saturday.

Snow levels have dropped to around 1500 feet this morning in the central Sierra foothills. By the afternoon a graupel/snow mix in Placerville fell around 1800 feet. Portions of I-80 were closed from Colfax to state line for zero visibility. Kingvale near Donner Summit, at 6,128 ft has been mostly empty most of the afternoon. The Interstate has been intermittently open and closed as weather conditions either improve or worsen. Late Thursday night into Friday morning will be the worse of the storm system with snow falling as low as 500 feet with about an 1-3inches possible. Meanwhile 1-3 feet of snow is expected above 3,000 feet into Saturday morning.

A very impressive start to the water year. State officials now say forecasting these kind of events are becoming more unpredictable, and anticipate the possibility that the "April 1st" date for peak snowpack may eventually change.