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In California, It’s 72 With a Chance of “Weather Whiplash” | Connecting California

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In California, It’s 72 With a Chance of “Weather Whiplash” | Connecting California


Why is it so hard to make seasonal weather predictions in California—and what’s the path to more accurate forecasts? Columnist Joe Mathews asks in the latest Connecting California. Satellite image courtesy of NOAA Photo Library/Flickr (CC BY 2.0 DEED).

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California weather is harder to predict than it looks. Even Harris K. Telemacher came to learn that.

Telemacher was a Los Angeles TV weathercaster with an ocean of knowledge—he had a PhD in arts and humanities and quoted Shakespeare—but no real meteorological training. So, he assumed that California weather was predictable and decided to tape his televised forecasts weeks in advance, always promising sunny and warm days. This worked until an unexpected Pacific storm deluged the Southland during one of his pre-recorded forecasts.

Telemacher was a fictional character invented and inhabited by Steve Martin in the classic satire L.A. Story. But he embodied a real-life cliché that needs retiring.

California weather has never been as predictable as a Steve Martin gag—especially when it comes to the rain and snow of Golden State winters like this one.

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In fact, no state in the lower 48 sees as much variability in its year-to-year precipitation as California. Such variability makes our weather at least as unpredictable as anything else in this volatile state. Last year, California was in the midst of the driest three-year run in recorded history when NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, published a seasonal forecast for a drier-than-average winter. Instead, we experienced one of our wettest winters ever.

Now, another winter of weather surprises has arrived, demonstrating that California desperately needs better seasonal forecasts so we can plan and protect ourselves in this era of climate change.

Seasonal forecasts are not the predictions of tomorrow’s weather that you see delivered on your TV by Telemacher and his present-day imitators. Seasonal forecasts provide a range of possible weather and climate changes for the next season on the calendar, usually about a month or so in advance. (Federal agency forecasts for winter are usually out by Halloween.) Meteorologists will tell you that while it’s impossible to tell you the weather on a particular day months in advance, they should be able to predict, broadly, how wet or dry the next season should be.

But that’s always been hard to do in California. Lately, it’s become even harder because of the state’s “weather whiplash”—the term that the Public Policy Institute of California has used in recent years to describe the seesawing we’ve seen between flood and drought.

Our current inability to predict seasonal wet conditions makes it harder to manage water supplies (we need to store more in wet winters to prepare for drier years), prepare for disasters (including unpredictable floods, like the one that recently inundated San Diego), and do long-term economic planning for agriculture, which supplies food to the entire nation.

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Another winter of weather surprises has arrived, demonstrating that California desperately needs better seasonal forecasts so we can plan and protect ourselves in this era of climate change.

It’s not just winter weather that’s hard to foresee. Predicting scorching heat, as the state’s daily average maximum temperature rises by more than 4 degrees, is difficult. Impactful heat waves, called Heat Health Events, are expected to increase in frequency and duration, especially in the Central Valley and Sierra. Calling those ahead of time could be a matter of life and death.

But improving seasonal forecasts is easier said than done. Even the most advanced meteorologists have struggled with making seasonal forecasts. Indeed, recent studies, now getting attention in California policy circles, suggest that our state and its meteorologists need a better understanding of the peculiarities of the Pacific Ocean to improve their forecasts.

Making expectations about how much rain or snow is likely to fall in California depends on predicting atmospheric patterns over the northern Pacific Ocean. To do so, meteorologists have tended to look at sea surface temperatures in the South Pacific and the phenomena known as El Niño and La Ninã. Warm temperatures, or “El Niño” conditions, were believed to herald rain. Cool “La Niña” conditions were thought to signal a dry winter.

But a recent paper highlighted by PPIC, with authors from UCLA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, found that El Niño conditions don’t explain most of the variability of our weather. To cite one example, tropical sea surface temperatures and conditions were very similar in 2021–22 and 2022–23, but the first winter was dry and the second was one of the wettest in history.

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“It remains elusive how predictable the year-to-year variability of CA winter precipitation is and why it is challenging to achieve skillful seasonal prediction of CA precipitation,” the paper said.

According to its authors, to arrive at more accurate seasonal forecasts, scientists need a better understanding of the ocean’s “circulation anomalies,” which are deviations in averages and expected conditions independent of El Niño. Current climate models, the paper argued, “show nearly no skill in predicting these,” which means that they have “limited predictive skill for California winter precipitation.”

The paper also argued that current climate models can’t predict patterns that stem from tropical convection (i.e. tropical clouds and thunderstorms) or the stratospheric polar vortex. This means that for better seasonal forecasts, meteorologists need a better understanding of conditions and patterns not only in the relatively nearby western Pacific but also in waters as far away as the Indian and Arctic oceans.

How do we achieve this?

One answer is to devote more time and resources to observing oceans, sea ice, and clouds—and their impacts on precipitation. Another answer is to employ better computer capacity and artificial intelligence to build better climate models. This is a planetary problem—if you want better predictions of California precipitation, you need to improve modeling and data for the climate of the whole earth.

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But such improvements won’t happen fast. So, for at least a few more winters, we’re stuck with unreliable seasonal forecasts and unpredictable weather.



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Northern California’s House of Clocks has stood the test of time for 55 years

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Northern California’s House of Clocks has stood the test of time for 55 years


While we may lose an hour of sleep this coming weekend, one clock store in California is gearing up for one of its busiest times of the year: daylight savings.

It’s the House of Clocks, the largest clock company in Northern California, which was recently celebrating 55 years of business.

It’s a place frozen in time. Just visit the store’s 240-year-old grandfather clock. It’s got plenty of stories to tell, dating back to 1780.

“This is the oldest piece we have right now,” clocksmith Joey Hohn said.

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The House of Clocks is on the outskirts of Downtown Lodi in San Joaquin County.

“We have new, we have vintage, we have antique,” co-owner Sandy Hohn shared. “Honestly, it feels like not a day goes by that we don’t get a phone call or an email of somebody wanting to sell something for 100 different reasons.”

The clock store has been with the Hohn family for three generations. It’s all thanks to one family heirloom.

“When the first war started, [my grandparents] left everything and had to move,” Joey Hohn explained. “After the Second World War, my grandpa was stationed in Germany. They went back to the house that had been abandoned and the neighbor who they left the property to said, ‘As far as I’m concerned, everything in the house is still yours.’ They went back and got this, so this is my great-great-grandparents’ clock.”

You can find just about anything in the House of Clocks, from old grandfather clocks to clocks that can fit in the palm of your hand.

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What you can’t find anywhere else is the Hohns’ love for Lodi.

“We’ve made so many friends over the years out of customers,” Sandy Hohn said. “Friends that are just wonderful, that love collecting, and we keep them repaired for their families, which is awesome. They have sentimental value that’s passed down.”

That same love for the city and their community runs in the family.

“We had a customer that wanted to repaint their dial,” Joey Hohn explained. “We told them no because it was her father’s who had passed away. Every time he went to wind the clock, he placed his thumb in the same spot. When we told her that smudge there on the dial was her father, she said, ‘Back away, don’t you dare.’ It was just a good memory we have.”

While you can’t turn back time, what we can do is keep memories alive and treasure the present moment.

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“There’s so many personalities,” Sandy Hohn said. “We just try to find a good home for them.”



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Signs of spring blooming at Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve after wet, warm winter

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Signs of spring blooming at Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve after wet, warm winter


It’s beginning to look a lot like spring!

The warm and wet weather this winter has led to the start of a dazzling super bloom at the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve.

“We had an unseasonably warm winter as well, so there’s actually a lot of growth,” said Callista Turney with California State Parks. “We’re having early wildflowers that are already at the park. So if you look at the poppy live cam, it shows a lot of orange already.”

The rain has helped the early blooms, but it’s actually the heat that accelerated the growth of the flowers.

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“It will actually speed up the growth of the plants, so some of them were already blooming and that’s going to cause those blossoms to accelerate faster towards seed production. And the blossoms that are in the process of being formed, those are going to open up soon as well.”

We also sometimes see great super blooms in Death Valley National Park, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, Joshua Tree and the Mojave National Preserve.

“It’s definitely a rare occurrence because we don’t always have the right conditions. It’s gotta be the weather, the wind, the rain, all coming together,” said Katie Tilford, Director of Development and Communications with the Theodore Payne Foundation.

If it continues to stay unseasonably warm, we’ll see a shorter bloom. The key to a longer season is milder weather.


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Republican governor candidate Chad Bianco says he’s the ‘antithesis to California state government’

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Republican governor candidate Chad Bianco says he’s the ‘antithesis to California state government’


We are counting down to the California governor’s race. Chad Bianco, the sheriff of Riverside County, is one of the two biggest names running on the Republican ticket.

In a one-on-one interview with Eyewitness News political reporter Josh Haskell, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said, “I am the antithesis to California state government because I am going to take a nuclear bomb into that building and absolutely destroy everything that they do to us behind closed doors.”

Although he’s been elected by the voters twice, Bianco says he’s not a politician — which is why he believes his campaign for California governor is resonating, as reflected in the polls.

“President Trump, in one year, from 2025 when he took over, until now, did absolutely nothing to harm California. What’s harming California is 30 years of Democrat one-party rule that have created an environment here that no one can live in anymore. They’ve only been successful here in California because we vote D no matter what. You vote D or die. I mean, that’s it. Charles Manson would be elected in California if he was the only Democrat on the ballot,” Bianco said.

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Bianco isn’t the only conservative Republican running for governor, and according to polling, he’s neck-and-neck with former Fox News host Steve Hilton.

SEE ALSO: CA governor candidate Steve Hilton says ‘everybody supports’ Trump’s immigration policies

Leading in some polls in the wide-open California Governor’s race as the June primary creeps closer is Republican and former Fox News host Steve Hilton.

“Steve has no chance of winning in November. The Democrats know that I’m going to win in November, and so they have to do everything they can to keep me out of that,” Bianco said.

When asked about the affordability crisis in the state, Bianco said, “Almost the entire issue of affordability in California is because of regulation, excessive regulation imposed by government. Every single regulation can be signed away with the governor’s signature.”

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“It is a drug and alcohol addiction problem that, and a mental health problem,” he said about the homelessness crisis. “Every single bit of money that is going to these nonprofits that say ‘homeless,’ zero money. You’re getting absolutely nothing. I can’t tell you that we would end what we see in the homeless situation within a year, but I guarantee you we would never see it again after two years.”

When challenged on that prediction, pointing to how the state doesn’t have the facilities to treat the number of people living on our streets, Bianco responded, “We have been conditioned to believe that buildings take five years to build. It takes 90 days or less to build a house, but in California, it takes three to five years because the government won’t allow it. The regulations that are destroying this state are going to be removed with me as the governor.”

Bianco also said California jails shouldn’t have to play the role of treatment facilities.

Although he says he supports the Trump administration and wants the president’s endorsement, Bianco has been traveling the state — meeting not just with Republicans, but Democrats and independents as well. He says all of our state government officials have failed.

The primary election is June 2.

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No clear front-runner in race for California governor, new poll shows

A new poll shows there’s still no clear front-runner in the race to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom.

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