Clear and blustery this Tuesday afternoon on California’s north coast, and although the NWS predicted some thunderstorm activity for today and tomorrow for the interior, nothing wet happening at all along the shoreline.
They’re also forecasting a 20 percent chance of thunderstorms later today for the coastal area, and even some ‘heavy rain‘ for Wednesday night, but we’ll have to way-wait and see.

In a drought afflicted California, though, rain forecasting can be tricky. Even if the lack of rain actually improves the water quality at the beaches, trying to stir up predictions of the wet stuff can backfire — a weatherman’s nightmare.
Via Salon: ‘That is because it is insanely difficult to predict precipitation says Brian Fuchs, a climatologist at the National Drought Mitigation Center.
“There’s good statistical skill for predicting temperature, but the statistical skill for predicting precipitation is very low,” he says.’

(Illustration found here).

Added, of course, a complex web of nature:

In addition, the conditions that create a megadrought are complex.
For example, California had two of the warmest years on record in the last five years.
This, coupled with a high-pressure system that kept their winters warm and dry, led to dire situations today.
It’s easier to predict drought in some parts of the U.S. than others — it all depends on how strongly the regions are influenced by large-scale climate phenomena, such as El Niño (a coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon that brings warming air currents off the Pacific coast of South America) and La Niña (a coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon that brings cool air and hurricanes to the United States).
Global weather patterns such as El Niño and La Niña significantly change air pressure and temperature in the U.S.
Some La Niña events have been associated with historic droughts.
A study published in Science Advances this February predicted that the western U.S. would soon experience the worst drought it has experienced in 1,000 years.
The chances of a 35-year or longer “megadrought” striking the Southwest and central Great Plains by 2100 are above 80 percent if the world stays on its current trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions, the study warned.
The scientists based their predictions on rising temperatures caused by global warming.
“Even when selecting for the worst megadrought-dominated period, the 21st century projections make the megadroughts seem like quaint walks through the Garden of Eden,” study co-author Jason E. Smerdon of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory said in a statement.

And that nature ruffled by climate change.
Along with a ‘warm blob’ along our coastline — from Vice News this morning:

A mass of unusually warm water in the northeast Pacific, christened the “warm blob” by researchers, is being partially blamed for British Columbia’s forest fires, California’s drought and an unusually active hurricane season.
As it wreaks havoc, the blob provides a preview of what climate change holds in store for the West Coast, according to the scientist who named it.
The warm water system extends more than 1000 miles off the West Coast and up to 150 to 300 feet below the surface, with water temperatures up to 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal in the hottest spots.
It’s been swirling around a stretch of ocean from Alaska to Mexico for the past two years or so, disrupting weather patterns as far away as Atlantic Canada.
Researchers don’t know exactly what’s causing the unusually warm conditions, but it could be a result of an El Niño-like pattern of warm air further west, according to Nicholas Bond, a meteorologist at the University of Washington and the state’s chief climatologist, who first coined the term “the blob.”
He says the blob is having an additional effect on already warm air temperatures, creating a self-sustaining hot cycle that’s drifting hundreds of miles inland.
The blob is partially to blame for dry conditions in California, he told VICE News, particularly by decreasing snowfall over the previous winter.
“We had much more rain than snow in the mountains than usual,” he said.
“We count on that snow pack to get us through the spring and summer, so streams are drying up.”
…
While Dr. Bond doesn’t see any clear connection between the blob and global warming, he told VICE News that we can expect the conditions we’re seeing today to become the new normal.
“The winters will be warmer and a bit wetter, and summers also warmer but a bit drier. So this is a chance to see what it’s like,” he said.

The ‘new‘ normal — rain way-unlikely.