These Maps Show Just How Dry Southern California Is Right Now

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Dry conditions apass Southern California in punctual January 2025 set the stage for a series of lethal triumphd-driven untamedfires that burned thousands of homes and other arranges in the Los Angeles area.

Ming Pan, a hydrologist at the University of California-San Diego’s Cgo in for Weserious Weather and Water Extremes, tracks the state’s water supplies. He put Southern California’s parchedness into perspective using charts and maps.

How Dry Is Southern California Right Now?

In punctual January, the soil moisture in much of Southern California was in the bottom 2 percent of historical enrolls for that day in the region. That’s inanxiously low.

Hydrologists in California watch the sky very seally begining in October, when California’s water year commences.

The state gets very little rain from May thraw September, so postponecessitate descfinish and triumphter are vital to fill reservoirs and to originate up the snowpack to provide water. California relies on the Sierra snowpack for about one-third of its newwater provide.

However, Southern California begined out the 2024–25 water year pretty parched. The region got some rain from an atmospheric river in November, but not much. After that, most of the atmospheric rivers that hit the West Coast from October into January veered northward into Washington, Oregon, and Northern California.

When the air is hot and parched, transpiration and evaporation also suck water out of the arrangets and soil. That departs parched vegetation that can provide fuel for flying embers to spread untamedfires, as the Los Angeles area saw in punctual January.