AccuWeather's California Expert Ken Clark explains the incoming storm to California on March 17, as well as additional storms forecast for later in the week.
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00:00Joining me right now is our California expert with over 40 years of experience here at Accuweather
00:07It's of course Ken Clark joining us live from Rancho Cucamonga here this morning Ken
00:13We've been talking about this storm coming in the California today
00:18But there's two other storms that we're tracking you could see them in the Pacific Ken
00:22But like each one of these storms are a little farther north
00:27Than their predecessor coming into California today
00:31That's correct. The one we spent later Wednesday into Wednesday night
00:34Maybe ending early Thursday morning will be a certainly a lighter event than today's a storm
00:40Still give you a little bit of rain and snow to northern, California, especially the northern third
00:45Let's say maybe is six to twelve inches of snow in the northern and central Sierra
00:49Not a big storm a little bit of impact
00:52But not a big storm the last week late in the week storm is it's meant to be even weaker
00:58Won't get as far south as a Bay Area and they only clip northernmost, California
01:03You know Ken so far this winter again the December and January was just so dry across Southern, California
01:10That we got way behind on the rainfall here
01:14And when you look at the drought monitor, and this is more of a short-term problem, you know
01:19Virtually no problems in general in Northern, California
01:22How would you describe it for Southern, California?
01:27It was a dire need of rain
01:30Through January October through January saw two to five percent normal rainfall
01:36So what we've done since then we really picked things up. It was very very dry to start
01:41We've picked up a quite a bit of rain over the last
01:44Month and a half or so and that's the good news
01:47We've got lots of water right now things are green across
01:51California the fire danger is low at this point and probably will stay that way for a while
01:55So this is greatly improved the storms have greatly improved conditions in Southern, California
02:01Speaking about improvements can we were running way below normal in the central and southern Sierra as far as the snowfall
02:09Grabbed up here Ken is the Sierra
02:12Central Sierra snow lab at Soda Springs now going into this storm. So this is from yesterday morning to
02:20291 point three four inches of snow the normal going into this storm was about
02:26301 and I I think we've easily picked up a foot of snow here in the last 24 hours
02:32That's correct and
02:34South of there, you know
02:35This the storm lab is is on the northern edge of the central Sierra as the way they calculate things
02:42Most of the central and southern Sierra were anywhere between 50 and 60
02:47average by
02:48Late January now, we're in the mid 80s in those areas
02:52Yeah, great improved the snow back across the central and southern Sierra nor this year never had a problem
02:58So we are looking really good right now at the snow pack heading into the last part of March
03:05Ken in about 30 seconds another key contributor
03:08Why every a lot of people are talking about a drought in Southern, California a drought in Southern, California
03:12You've been very consistent with this message that there was not a water shortage in Southern, California
03:20Absolutely, not all the major reservoirs are chock-full of water at this point
03:26If we're gonna end the season with good amounts of snow in this Sierra, I think we're looking good throughout the summer
03:32We're that we have no water shortage in, California