Will El Nino bring rain?

While the predicted likelihood of an El Nino year is quite high, it's not necessarily clear that California will experience increased rainfall as a result.

Opposition to Affordable Housing in Marin

Marketplace, on NPR, is running a series that deals with affordable housing in Marin County. Marin County is just north of San Francisco, a wealthy, democrat-voting, suburban and rural county, whence "liberal lion" Barbara Boxer hails.

George Lucas, of Star Wars fame, owns a former dairy farm in Marin County. He has offered to build affordable and working-class housing on his property, out-of-pocket. Local residents are opposing his plan. They cite weak reasons like potential traffic, or aesthetics.

In reality, this comes down to "I was here first!" and "Not In My Back Yard!" [NIMBY]. To get a good flavor of the situation, it's very informative to listen to the story from NPR, especially the town hall meeting. 

Wealthy homeowners in the Bay Area are so unwilling to live people who are not as wealthy as they are. They can't imagine that the people who pick the crops, clean the homes of the wealthy, work in their gardens, and teach in their schools, might have to live somewhere nearby.

The standard refrain is that "those people" can just live farther away and commute. The problem is that there is no "farther away" with both affordable housing, and efficient transportation infrastructure. Living more than 20 miles from your workplace is a terrible idea in the Bay Area, because the roads are clogged with congestion.

El Nino Finally Arrives

El Nino climate events are associated with low atmospheric pressure, resulting in cooler, wetter weather in California. Last autumn, with climate scientists predicting an upcoming El Nino event, there was hope that it would coincide with California's winter, which is the rainy season, leading to healthy rainfall and mitigating the 4-year-old drought.

Unfortunately, El Nino never arrived during California's rainy season. It has very recently arrived, as we can verify at NOAA's website here. This El Nino event is still associated with cooler, wetter weather, relative to a typical California spring and summer. However, at this time of year, there aren't many major wet storms in the Northern Pacific to route to California. As such, we'll have a chilly, drizzly spring and summer, but no impact in the way of drought relief.

I lived in San Diego during one of the recent El Nino summers. It never really got warm. It was a chilly, unsatisfying summer. Perhaps this summer's weather will be similar.

El Nino, California Drought

NOAA performs a vital a national and international service in monitoring ocean and atmospheric conditions, recognizing patterns, and classifying and predicting significant climate events.

One of the somewhat-well-understood phenomena is the El Nino Southern Oscillation cycle. Characterized by warmer-than-average ocean temperatures across the Pacific Ocean, and a weakening or reversal of the prevailing Pacific Trade winds, El Nino years tend to bring unusual weather and some extreme weather events. In past El Nino years, we've seen unusual shifts in precipitation, including drought in some places, flooding and even snow in others.

All this is of interest to the drought-stricken American West and Southwest, because strong El Nino years tend to correlate with above-average rainfall in these regions. NOAA maintains a public communication, including monthly updates here. Currently, we are in an El Nino advisory state. A more detailed document, detailing various observations and methodologies is here.

Overall, NOAA predicts the probability of an El Nino by fall or winter at about 80%, but the El Nino is likely going to be "weak to moderate'.

I really enjoyed viewing the satellite imagery, and temperature time series in the .pdf document. I also enjoyed the numerous temperature prediction models, split into "Statistical" and "Dynamical" models. They also included an ensemble prediction. Good stuff.

The Only Democrat in CA Who Won't Blow the Budget

This year, amidst a tax increase and an economic recovery, after years of budget cuts and massive deficits, the state of California is turning a nice surplus. Most Democrats in Sacramento want to immediately establish new permanent programs.

 Perhaps in some cases, they argue for reinstating some of the social welfare programs that were cut during the Great Recession. In other cases, they'd like to establish brand new programs, because if there's some extra money this year, why no establish new spending obligations with no guarantee of budget surpluses next year?

Need we remind them that the voter-approved tax increase was temporary, and that economic booms [Silicon Valley, Wall Street] are also temporary?

 Jerry Brown is proposing an initiative that would set aside a rainy day fund, if the fiscal year's capital gains tax comprises beyond a certain percentage of overall tax revenue. He's the most responsible politician in Sacramento.