Dear WeatherCat Western United States drought watchers,
April started out as a continuation of March with one more very wet atmospheric river storm. After that, we had a series of relatively weak storms lasting until about mid-April. That was enough to give us 2.93" of rain which is 180% of a normal April. This can be seen on the graph:
That was enough to rain our cumulative total to the end of April to 79%. That should be close enough to a normal season to avoid draconian water restrictions. Of course this late in the season this could be all the rain we'll see this year. In that scenario we would end up about 6" short of a nominal 25" of normal rainfall. That would be 76% of normal. That is probably still sufficient to avoid hard-core water restrictions.
On the other hand, the creeks are drying up very fast. Our bird feeders are attracting creatures like raccoons that normally don't run out of water until at least June. For those things completely in the wild, it will be definitely a dry and hard summer. If previous years are any indication, it will also a relatively hot summer as well.
Oh well . . . . . . . Edouard