Welp, so much for that conveyer belt of storms from El Niño the weather guessers promised. At this point I think we would be okay with a few minutes of sprinkles in the Coachella Valley.
Barring a miracle, the month of February will end with 0.00 inches of rain falling in Palm Springs. Zero. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. Diddly Squat. Average rainfall for the month is just over an inch for Palm Springs – and that is without El Niño conditions – so yeah, it has been pretty terrible.
February has also been much hotter than normal, with the LA Times noting that temperatures have been a whopping 8 degrees above normal.
So how does this all fare for the drought? Obviously, not well. David Sweet of the National Weather Service told the Times that SoCal will need a “March Miracle” to avoid a 5th year of drought.
“The current pattern is like the drought pattern from these last four years,” Sweet said. “If March doesn’t come through, and April and May are typically drier months, we might be out of time by then.”
