NOAA: Prolonged rain delivers ‘perfect’ foraging conditions in California

With La Niña approaching by the end of this summer, North Bay farmers hope the prolonged rainfall from its winter-spring counterpart doesn’t continueas the region dries out.

Currently, the El Niño-spawned foraging growth for livestock along the North Coast within California’s 57 million acres of rangeland (over half grazed by livestock) is described by agriculture stakeholders and weather watchers as “perfect” — a term seldom used. The warm water mass, characterized as a climate phenomenon, lies off the shores of South America and impacts California weather.

“Since October, we haven’t had more than three dry days in a row,” said Leslie Roche, associate professor of rangeland management with UC Davis during a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration drought and climate virtual conference March 25. “There’s no crisis, and everybody’s happy to not be thinking about a disaster. The conditions are good. … Perfect.”

“Perfect is in the eye of the beholder,” Sonoma County Farm Bureau Executive Director Dayna Ghirardelli said. “We need to get the cows out to graze.”

Santa Rosa dairy farmer Doug Beretta just released his cows from the barn to the pasture in late March. Drought years have prompted the longtime dairyman to reduce his herd by 80% to 280 head.

With back-to-back wet winters, the grass is tall all over the North Bay. The ground is also saturated from moisture. This combination provides adequate feed for livestock and reduces the wildfire threat.

But there can be too much of a good thing.

“We’ve got plenty of grass. The pasture is growing well. But if we continue to get rain, it will be too tall.” Beretta said about his 200 acres of Sonoma County farmland. Then, the grass loses its protein, and the saturated soil causes tractors and livestock to sink.

“It’s almost impossible to get a tractor in the vine rows now. And, we’re going through bud break now,” Sonoma County Winegrowers CEO and President Karissa Kruse said. “We need the rain to slow down.”

“It’s definitely really wet out there. I just saw a tractor stuck on River Road,” said Jeremiah Ciudaj, an irrigation consultant who runs Deep Root Solutions in Sebastopol.

But like meteorologists, climatologists, ag specialists and other weather watchers, Ciudaj believes conditions are going to change rapidly.

“Drought is the rule, not the exception,” he said.

Historically, La Niña has added up to dry winters.

In the past 30 years, nine strong or moderate La Niña winters have impacted weather on the West Coast, the National Weather Service reported.

In that three-decade time period, five strong La Niña winters saw the North Bay receive on average 11.5 inches of rain. That’s 74% of normal precipitation, which is 15.6 inches of rainfall.

Four moderate La Niña winters only delivered 7.1 inches of rain.

The drier-than-average prediction for this year’s La Niña comes as NOAA and other weather officials monitor overnight temperature patterns among other levels.

The 30-year daily temperature average is 40.6 degrees for the North Bay, National Weather Service meteorologist Dillon Flynn pointed out. The region experienced a full three degrees of warmer temps in this last meteorological winter ending Feb. 29. Cooler overnight temps prevailed in March.

Across California, minimum temperatures have averaged 2 to 6 degrees higher than average, said Julie Kalansky, deputy director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a NOAA climate scientist.

Besides warmer-than-average temperatures, Kalansky’s team is tracking drought indicators such as high concentrations of evaporation.

“Warmer nighttime temperatures in this case mean greater fire risk. (But) a better metric is (the) EDDI (evaporative demand drought index), which indicates humidity, temperature, winds and precipitation,” she said.

As for the state’s upcoming drought and climate conditions, the current seasonal outlook favors “above-normal temperatures with increasing chances of above-normal conditions as you move north. Above-normal temperatures would dry out vegetation quicker,” said NOAA climatologist Nathan Patrick, increasing the fire risk.

Susan Wood covers law, cannabis, production, transportation, agriculture as well as banking and finance. She can be reached at 530-545-8662 or susan.wood@busjrnl.com