Watershed memory amplified the Oroville rain-on-snow flood of February 2017.

Mountain snowpacks are transitioning to experience less snowfall and more rainfall as the climate warms, creating more persistent low- to no-snow conditions. This precipitation shift also invites more high-impact rain-on-snow (ROS) events, which have historically yielded many of the largest and most damaging floods in the western United States. One such sequence of events preceded the evacuation of 188,000 residents below the already-damaged Oroville Dam spillway in February 2017 in California's Sierra Nevada.

Toward snowpack runoff decision support.

Rain-on-snow (ROS) events are commonly linked to large historic floods in the United States. Projected increases in the frequency and magnitude of ROS multiply existing uncertainties and risks in operational decision making. Here, we introduce a framework for quality-controlling hourly snow water content, snow depth, precipitation, and temperature data to guide the development of an empirically based snowpack runoff decision support framework at the Central Sierra Snow Laboratory for water years 2006-2019.

Hot and cold flavors of southern California's Santa Ana winds: their causes, trends, and links with wildfire.

Unlabelled: Santa Ana winds (SAWs) are associated with anomalous temperatures in coastal Southern California (SoCal). As dry air flows over SoCal's coastal ranges on its way from the elevated Great Basin down to sea level, all SAWs warm adiabatically. Many but not all SAWs produce coastal heat events.

North-south dipole in winter hydroclimate in the western United States during the last deglaciation.

During the termination of the last glacial period the western U.S. experienced exceptionally wet conditions, driven by changes in location and strength of the mid-latitude winter storm track.