Map Shows California Cities to Get Hit Hardest With Rain

An updated forecast map shows more rain is on the way for California, prolonging the state’s wet-weather pattern into early March.

The excessive rainfall has been a result of a slew of atmospheric rivers that have battered the state this month. Last year, more than a dozen of them helped alleviate the state’s severe drought situation and replenished many of the state’s reservoirs, but the storms also caused devastating floods and landslides.

Atmospheric rivers are defined as a “long, narrow region in the atmosphere—like rivers in the sky—that transport most of the water vapor outside of the tropics,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

As a winter storm works its way across the Pacific Northwest and into the intermountain west on Monday, the National Weather Service (NWS) office in Sacramento, California, shared updated precipitation predictions for the western half of the U.S. The map shows that the entire state of California faces the risk of above-average rainfall.

“Wet pattern will return this week and is likely to persist into early March,” the office posted on X, formerly Twitter, over the weekend.

The forecast was issued on Saturday. It shows that the California cities with the highest risk for above-average rainfall will be in the central part of the state, including San Francisco, Sacramento, San Jose, Monterey, Oakland and San Luis Obispo. That region has up to an 80 percent chance of above-average rainfall through March 5.

A much-larger region of California has an up to 70 percent chance for above-average rainfall through early March, including much of the northern and southern halves of the state. This includes Eureka and Redding in the northern part of the state; and Los Angeles, Palm Springs, San Diego and Santa Barbara in the southern half.

The very northwest and southeast corners of the state have up to a 60 percent chance for above-average rainfall through March 5.

NWS meteorologist Chelsea Peters told Newsweek that an incoming storm this week will mostly impact the region in the form of heavy mountain snow—up to 8 feet with locally higher levels in the Sierra Nevada mountains—with light rain falling at the valley levels. However, a weak atmospheric river will arrive over the weekend and could bring some rain as well.

Much of California has already received above-average rainfall during the winter. For example, if no more rain falls in Los Angeles through September, the city’s seasonal rainfall will still be 125 percent of normal. Half of the city’s rainfall came from an atmospheric river that hit California earlier this month, bringing more than 7 inches of rain to Los Angeles and causing catastrophic floods.