For the first time in a month there is a real chance that our pattern is going to change.

Not in the short term… It’s still bone dry.

But the long term has more consistent precipitation than I’ve seen since the spring.

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We were starting to see hints of this last week when precipitation popped up around the 10th, and then shifted back and forth as the week went on.

Now… Caveats: This remains a long term, high variability, forecast. No rain has appeared on the short, 7 day forecast. Also, the initial indications last week had pegged the first system at 60mm in a couple days. Now we are down to 33mm over 7 days and long term forecasts and the GFS in general, often overestimates the precipitation we get.

So there you have it. There might be a bit of relief coming for our drought… But at this point I think it’s going to be more like those few drops of water shared around from one small flask in the desert. It will keep us going, but we may just be looking at a mirage and must still wait for our oasis to appear.

One final kicker… From the research I’ve done, we need at least 140mm of rain in October to avoid setting an all time, 114 year record for dryness since July. if you click on the 1896 record in the last post you’ll see how much rain we need to catch up.

I give us a 30% chance of avoiding it.

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