Weekend storms push Fresno over average rainfall total
FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- This weekend's storms pushed Fresno over the average rainfall total of 11 inches for the water year.
While that's great progress in the short term, we still have a ways to go to when it comes to ending the drought and challenging record rainfall.
While February was a disappointment for Valley rainfall and sierra snow, the month of March is off to a good start but it is still too early to tell if this will be a repeat performance of 1991's Miracle March. "We got close to seven inches in that month alone in precipitation for the Fresno area," Jerald Meadows with the National Weather Service, Hanford explained.
Meadows is the warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hanford. He says Fresno has picked up two inches of rain for March already, but it would take nearly ten times more to end the drought. "Say we get about 11 inches of rain each year that would be about 22 inches of deficient," he said.
Meanwhile, at the Kings River, along the Fresno and Tulare County line, the river bed is dry. But the Kings River Water Association says the recent storms were good and there is some great run off but there is still have a ways to go. "We had 6,600 cubic feet per second running off into Pine Flat Reservoir on Sunday that is the most run-off in the Kings River that we have had since 2011," J. Randall McFarland with the association said.
Most of the water is from run-off from at the lower elevations of the sierra thanks to the warm conditions last month. But McFarland says things are better than last year when the all-time record low on the Kings River was at 22 percent of average. "We know we're going to exceed that by a lot," he said. "But it doesn't appear to be we're going to be at a normal year unless it turns out to be a being a Miracle March."
And we need a really wet April. The key snow survey is on April 1st for the state for the maximum snow pack. That will tell us how much water we will have for the year.
