La Niña has been ruling the roost, as we expected it to back in the fall. It is alive and well in the Pacific Ocean, as you can see from the map below.

All of that "blue and green" off the West Coast of South America is water that is cooler than average. This represents the La Niña from a sea surface temperature anomaly perspective. Another area that I think has gotten far less publicity than the La Niña, is the warmer than average water off the west/southwest coast of California. It is warmer than average over a wide area. This limited temperature gradient coupled with the ongoing La Niña is not conducive to an active storm track for southern areas. In fact, it favors the exact opposite.

The one bit of possible good news I see is that this La Niña may have peaked, and will gradually start to relax. The animation below shows that trend. Warmer than average water in the Western Pacific undercutting the colder than average water, which tends to weaken the La Niña and eventually lead to its end.

However, the maps below show who has been the driest during the past 30 and 90s days.

Green is good and brown is bad... The only area that has had close to average precipitation is the northern part of the state. But that certainly hasn't been due to storm frequency. One storm pretty much contributed to that anomaly...

The pattern for February offers very little optimism for California. The blocking ridge that continues to prevent storms from impacting California looks to be more dominant than not. That is why the stout dry signal is showing up in the models. Bad news for the state...

Let's look at the latest models and what they have to say for the upcoming spring.

NMME Model Forecast March-May

Temperature

Precipitation

The NMME Model forecasts a warmer than average and an average to drier than average spring for most of California.

CFS Model Forecast March-May

Temperature

Precipitation

The CFS Model paints a warmer than average and drier than average spring for California.

JAMSTEC Model March-May

Temperature

Precipitation

The JAMSTEC Model shows a warmer than average and drier than average spring too. The lone exception may be the far northeast part of the state, but even that might be a stretch.

Bottom-line, we see little optimism for the spring when it comes to seeing a wetter than average spring for California. The blocking ridge of high pressure to the west, is going to be very tough to break down. Thus, I would expect drought conditions to continue to rapidly worsen...

Spring Outlook
Below is our temperature and precipitation spring (March, April, May) outlook:

Temperature

Precipitation