Parts of California received a great deal of rain in mid-March, affecting the state’s drought outlook but having little impact on crops.

For much of this year’s rainy season, the predicted El Niño has underperformed. There has been rain off and on since December — certainly much more than the state has received the previous four years — but the El Niño deluge has not materialized.  

Then the calendar turned to March. Rain this month has not hit all sections of the state equally, but it has drenched Northern California and sent several storms through the Central Coast regions, where vegetables and strawberries are in the throes of seasonal volume increases. But for the most part, the rain in those regions has been light to moderate with only minor interruptions in harvest or planting schedules.

As a point of reference, the top half of the state had received above-average rainfall for the first five months of this rain year (October through February), with January exhibiting the best performance at 175 percent of normal. While this was going on, Southern California received average rainfall at best.

The El Niño predictions pointed to a 95 percent certainty that Southern California would get a much greater-than-average rainfall this season.  The El Niño watchers said there would be a 50-50 chance that Northern California’s precipitation would be greater than average.

The forecasters appear to be relatively accurate about the precipitation caused by the El Niño conditions, just not where it has dumped the bulk of its wrath.

Besides the reversal of fortunes in California’s two halves, Florida has received much more rain in the past several months than anyone anticipated from these known atmospheric conditions.

March does appear to be helping the predicted deluge become a reality. By the middle of the month, Northern California had already received more than 200 percent of its normal monthly average, and another storm was sitting off the coast poised to hit around March 20-21.

Other areas also had rain. The Santa Maria area, which has just started to move into its heavy spring-summer production time, received several inches of rain in early March over a 10-day period. Salinas Valley received a strong storm the first weekend of the month and some more rain over the March 12-13 weekend, which was not enough to materially affect the crops or fill the local reservoirs. The two reservoirs that fuel the Salinas River are still sitting well below normal capacity.

All of this is happening while rainfall in Northern California is above average for this time of year. In fact, some reservoirs have been releasing water to the rivers below them to create capacity for future storms. And one large reservoir in Northern California (Lake Oroville), received over 211,000 acre-feet of water in two days, March 13-14.

A spokesman for the California Department of Water Resources was not certain whether that was an all-time record, but he said no single day had as much water collections as either of those days in the past 12 years.

On the whole, it does appear that the California drought (at least for one year) has come to an end, though the impact of the drought is still being felt in many places in the bottom half of the state. And it appears that many of the water-use restrictions for residents will stay in place until at least June, when a more thorough assessment of the water year results can be made.

In the meantime, weather has continued to affect California crops, but it is not so much the rain of mid-March but the weather of the past few months causing the effect.

Craig Smithback of Fresh Kist Produce LLC in Santa Maria, CA, told The Produce News March 16 that there are some small gaps in supply in broccoli, cauliflower and some lettuce items, but those are gaps caused by the warm winter and January rain.

On that particular day, he said the broccoli and cauliflower f.o.b. market price was rising into the low teens and it might be at least a week or two before supply and demand are back in sync.

“We should have a slight bit more supplies next week [March 21-26],” he said, “but I think it is going to be the first week of April before we are back to normal.”

Smithback said while there might continue to be short gaps, the days are getting longer and warmer, so those gaps tend to close rather quickly.

Perched a couple of hundred miles north in the Salinas Valley, Mark McBride of Coastline Family Farms had a very similar report.

“We have not gotten a lot of rain,” he said of the mid-March storms.  “Draw a line from San Francisco to Sacramento. Everything north of that received a lot of rain. Those of us south of that didn’t get very much.”

Consequently, McBride said the Salinas Valley is still on target for an early start, about one week earlier than usual. Broccoli and cauliflower were already being harvested and he estimated that the first lettuce crops would be packed the week of March 28.

In the meantime, desert production was rapidly declining, with many growers closing up shop the week of March 14-20. The lettuce harvest in Huron in the San Joaquin Valley was expected to begin March 21 for many growers. That is typically a four-week deal that bridges the gap between the desert and coastal California production.

With the area transitions and the weather forecasts, McBride agreed that it would probably be early April before the volume of many items returns to a steady pattern of increases.

The industry supply outlook newsletter published by California Giant Berry Farms in Watsonville, CA, also pointed to increased strawberry supplies moving forward.

The newsletter noted that Oxnard, Santa Maria and Watsonville had received some significant rain during the first two weeks of March, but only enough to temporarily halt production. In the longer-range forecast, supplies are increasing and should be quite plentiful in April.