Watch any crime drama, and you’ll see that witness accounts don’t give the complete picture—the same is true of the weather in our vast and varied state.

We Californians witness the weather in our own region, but that’s only part of our state’s landscape.

We may recall the past few weeks but can often overlook the Water Year as a whole. 

This is called “recency bias”—giving greatest importance to the latest information when making decisions and forming judgments. 

In February and March, successive slow-moving low-pressure systems dumped precipitation throughout California. 

But is California wetter than average? 

Are we forgetting that as of January, the state had received only a third of its average annual precipitation?

National Weather Service data through April 30 indicates that the state's total water year precipitation is below normal at 89.08%*. 

Of the seven regions in Weather Tools’ CAP forecast domain, only two are above normal for the total water year; the remaining five are below. 

And of critical importance to water management, the Core Water Supply (CAP regions 2, 4, and 6) has been even drier, coming in at 82.64% of water year normal through the end of April.

Recent storms and headlines only tell part of the story—data tells the rest.

*We verify our forecasts using National Weather Service data.  The precipitation statistics in this newsletter reflect the most recent information available in the NWS database.