Calif. missed a year’s worth of rain since ’12
By Avaneesh Pandey, International Business Times
California — currently facing one of the worst droughts on record — has accumulated a rainfall “deficit” of about 20 inches since 2012, according to a new NASA study. In other words, the difference between actual rainfall in the state and the rainfall expected on average is now equivalent to a whole year’s worth of precipitation.
Although California has typically seen wide annual fluctuations in rainfall, the wet years balanced out the dry ones during non-drought periods. However, the latest precipitation data gathered by NASA shows that California accumulated a deficit of almost 13 inches between 2012 and 2014, and another 7 inches during the 2014-2015 wet season.
According to the study, this lack of rains can be attributed to the absence of “atmospheric rivers” — narrow, water vapor-rich jets that travel through the atmosphere, typically from west to east — over the eastern Pacific Ocean.