Very high temperatures for the season and the precipitation deficit avail the fear of seeing the megafeux.
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Atmospheric rivers – water vapor corridors causing intense precipitation – in October 2021, record snowfall in December, not a drop of water since January: Californians no longer know what season. February is no exception. Since the beginning of the month, temperatures are canicular in the Golden State. Without fear of the contradictions, the meteorologists speak of “winter heat wave”) and the social networks of “delicious nightmare” (“Delightmare”): put on its swimsuit to go on the beach on February 11th.
A Los Angeles, temperatures of 30 ° C to 32 ° C were awaited on Saturday. The National Weather Service launched an alert to the heat wave. The Super Bowl, the final of the American football championship, Sunday could break the record of 1973 (29 ° C) for a match that took place on January 14, and already in Los Angeles.
In Northern California, temperatures are lower but just as unusual: more than 10 ° C above the seasonal average. San Francisco saw the thermometer reach 25.5 ° C on February 10, which has made it the hottest day since 1986 in February. In Salinas, at the edge of the Central Valley, it made 87 ° F (more than 30 ° C), an absolute record at this stage of the year.
Jet-Stream blocked
February is usually not a month when the inhabitants are forced to evacuate their house under the threat of the flames. This is the fate of several hundred residents of the heights of Laguna Beach, an upscale beach of the County of Orange, awake in the middle of the night, on February 10, by the firefighters. The fire was contained in a dozen hours, but another fire became a little further, destroying a house and injured. “It’s no longer a fire season we know. It’s a whole year,” Brian Fennesy said, the chief of firefighters from this county located south of Los Angeles.
Depending on the meteorologists, the heavy heat can be explained by a configuration that resembles that which had resulted in absolute records (49 ° C) in western North America in the summer of 2021. Stream, which comes down from the Gulf of Alaska and should bring rainfall in this period of the year, is blocked for weeks by a high pressure dome that pushed it east.
The Californians are shared between enjoying good weather and worry about what the future reserves. Is megashearing going back this summer? The precipitation of autumn had born the hope of a return to the ordinary after an extreme year. According to the Draght Monitor website of the University of Nebraska, which publishes a weekly drought card, it is cataloged “severe” or “moderate” depending on the region, but more in the “exceptional” category, as until in mid-December 2021.
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