Federal forecasters warn drought could redevelop in Northern California by June, just months after a wet winter erased dry conditions statewide.
William Hale Irwin/Special to the Chronicle
Federal forecasters warn drought could redevelop in Northern California by June, just months after a wet winter erased dry conditions statewide.
NOAA
Northern California recently emerged from drought. It may not last.
Federal forecasters warned Thursday that dry conditions are likely to redevelop across the region by early summer — a sharp reversal after a winter that erased drought conditions statewide.
A new three-month outlook released Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center showed drought conditions were likely to develop across a broad stretch of Northern California, including the Sacramento Valley and areas just north of the Bay Area, by late June.
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Some of the Bay Area was expected to fall back into drought during that period, including parts of Napa, Sonoma and Solano counties. But the shift to the north is a warning sign in a region where dry conditions have historically spread south over time.
As of Tuesday, none of California was in drought, but 15.7% of the state was classified as “abnormally dry,” the earliest stage of potential drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
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That status is already changing.
Federal forecasters warn drought could redevelop in Northern California by June, just months after a wet winter erased dry conditions statewide.
NOAA
“This combination of drier- and warmer-than-normal weather and snow drought may set the state for drought conditions to worsen in the coming weeks if weather conditions remain warm and dry,” the Drought Monitor wrote in Thursday’s update.
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The warning comes as the Bay Area and much of California are in the middle of an unusually early heat wave.
Winter began on a wet note, but ended dry. Since Jan. 1, precipitation totals were about 3.5 inches below normal in San Francisco, Sacramento and Redding.
While overall precipitation was close to normal since the rainy season began Oct. 1, a warm winter took a toll on California’s snowpack, which was its lowest in more than a decade.
A “snow-eater heat wave” was rapidly shrinking the state’s frozen reservoir. Snowpack in the northern Sierra Nevada was just 18% of normal Thursday, according to the California Department of Water Resources.
The meadows in the valley at Palisades Tahoe Ski Resort. Warm weather across the Sierra Nevada Mountains has led to an early spring in the Tahoe and Truckee regions. Olympic Valley, Calif. March 16, 2026
William Hale Irwin/For the S.F. Chronicle
Large reservoirs like Shasta Lake and Lake Oroville typically fill up into the late spring from gradual snowmelt, but the depleted snowpack meant total water storage was below normal, according to the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes.
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That heat is already taking a toll on the region, where rapidly melting snow this week forced early closures at ski resorts including Mount Shasta Ski Park, Sierra-at-Tahoe and Homewood Mountain Resort.
Forecasts called for a cooldown across Northern California over the weekend, but signs of another round of heat were emerging heading into the last weekend of March.
No significant precipitation was expected until at least early April. Odds of another major storm were fading, as San Francisco averages a total of just 2 inches of rain in April and May.
The National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center said an “anomalous, record-breaking Western U.S. high-pressure ridge” is intensifying, bringing “an almost summerlike heat wave” across the region.
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