So about the weekend. It ended up much cooler than forecast across the board. This year’s tule fog layer is proving to be exceptionally stubborn, even expanding its coverage over the North Bay and East Bay.
The result was a weekend of high temperatures running 10 to 20 degrees below normal. The miserable stretch of cloudy, cool weather goes on for Sacramento and the Central Valley. Over the past two weeks, Sacramento’s average daily high has been 50 degrees, the coldest late-November/early December stretch since 1972.
The fog and cool conditions deserve the spotlight for now, but another storyline is lurking underneath. San Francisco hasn’t had measurable rain since Nov. 20, 18 days ago. That’s notable during California’s “rainy” season, and it’s been easy to miss because November was such a wet month
Perhaps even more notable is that the forecast shows no rain in the foreseeable future. A combination of atmospheric factors, from stratospheric warming to a broad ridge of high pressure, has kept the state high and dry, and will continue to do so this week…