If you live in California you’re wondering the same thing as everybody else: What the heck is up with this weather?

We all know that last year, 2010, was the Year Without Summer. Now, 2011 is shaping up to be a repeat. In fact, the West Coast is now in the seventh year of a below-normal temperature pattern.

Here are selected notes from my 2011 Vintage Diary:

March 22
December was very, very cold, as were the first 2 weeks or so of January. The we had three weeks of gloriously warm, record-setting dry weather. February turned cooler, but not cold, with average rainfall. Now March continues the mild temperatures, but it has been very rainy.

April 22
The last several weeks have been gloomy as hell. Lots of cool, cloudy days.

May 10
There was extensive frost damage last month.

May 14
I was in Paso Robles yerterday and was told of crop losses there from the April 8-9 freeze approaching 50% appellation-wide.

May 15
Very cold and windy today. Widely scattered showers since last night, some of them heavy.

May 16
“This will not be light.” My friend Steve Paulsen [meteorologist, Channel 2], predicting the storm blowing in today.

Monday, May 23
Continues very chilly with temps well below normal, and now–more rain 2 days from now.

Wed. May 25

Rain in the North Bay. More rain predicted for Friday. [later] Steady light to moderate rain in Oakland. Wine country must be getting drenched. Very cold, temps 15-20 degrees below normal. Cloudy. Widespread scattered showers. From Natl. Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center, the 10 day forecast: “THE TROUGH FORECAST OVER THE WESTERN CONUS [continental U.S.] IS EXPECTED TO LEAD TO ENHANCED  PROBABILITIES FOR ABOVE MEDIAN PRECIPITATION FOR PARTS OF THE PACIFIC  NORTHWEST [and] NORTHERN CALIFORNIA” with below normal temperatures.

Sat. May 28
Chilly, very windy and showery. Storms to the north.
Evening: Steady rain.

Tues. May 31
Rain today throughout North coast. Half inch already has fallen. Temps 10-15 degrees below average esp. inland. “By Friday night another system. This one will be stronger, maybe widespread rain as we approach the weekend.” Steve Paulsen.

And now, this morning, the new ten day forecast calls for thundershowers this Saturday and more showers for Sunday, with temperatures next week continuing well below normal–more like January than June.

How all this is impacting the grapes, I don’t know. Some say that because Spring was so cool, budbreak was late, lessening the rain’s impact. But the threat of grapevine diseases has to be making some growers antsy. I suspect they’re breaking out the sulfur up and down the State. I wonder how long it’s going to be before the meteorological community declares that the West Coast of the United States is entering a Little Ice Age.

Yesterday’s headline in the San Francisco Chronicle that Schwarzenegger is playing politics in refusing to declare an end to the drought that he officially declared two years ago didn’t surprise me. Despite “heavy snowfall [that] buried the Sierra Nevada and torrential rains [that] drenched much of California,” the Governator found plenty of reasons to allow the drought to continue — on paper, that is.

It certainly no longer exists in nature. California’s snowpack was more than 140 percent above average as of April 30, and that was already before the recent wave of storms dumped still more snow in the mountains — with more set to fall this weekend.

On Monday, about half an inch fell throughout Northern California wine country. By this time of the year, it should be dry and sunny, with temps in the 70s. But no! Lance Armstrong was in Santa Rosa, for the Amgen Tour, and the Press Democrat had him asking, “Does it always rain here?”, a question millions of the rest of us have pondered.

It wasn’t just wet in the north country. “One storm barreling ashore now and another expected to follow this weekend will bring rare, drenching May rain and cool conditions to much of California and the West Coast,” said this article on AccuWeather’s website
.

May storms batter California

I got a nice little running commentary the other day on my Facebook page when I posted about “the coldest, wettest May in years.” Apparently I have a lot of winemaker friends, and they engaged each other in the comments section, describing how they’re try to control mildew and botrytis. From John Kelly: “’no rain on bloom’ from your lips to god’s ears.” The more optimistic winemakers, such as Justin Mund, down in Santa Barbara, said, “It [the rain] doesn’t really matter anyway right now unless it is going to affect bloom. It will be dry soon enough!”

But will it? My faithful Facebook friend, Peter Cargasacchi, wrote from his perch in the Santa Rita Hills, RAIN/DRIZZLE… EL NINO CONDITIONS CONTINUE ACROSS THE EQUATORIAL PACIFIC OCEAN WITH SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE DEPARTURES OF +1.0 DEGREE C OR GREATER ACROSS PORTIONS OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC. OCEAN SUB-SURFACE TEMPERATURE ANOMALIES ALSO REMAIN POSITIVE FROM THE SURFACE TO A DEPTH OF 75 METERS FROM NEAR 160 E EAST…

And El Nino, as we know all too painfully, pulls the storm track southward, resulting in greater precipitation in California.

It’s not just wet, it’s cold. I asked my friend, KTVU-TV meteorologist Steve Paulsen, just how cold it’s been, and he wrote: “the mean temperature at Sacramento Executive Airport so far this month is 55.5 degrees. That is 3.4 degrees below normal and the coldest mean temperature for  Sacramento since 1948.” Folks, 3.4 degrees is a HUGE temperature change. By the way, the reason they picked Sacramento, not San Francisco or some other coastal city, was because Sacto is “not influenced by the cold, onshore flow from the Pacific” and thus is a more reliable gauge of weather-related (as opposed to maritime-influenced) temperature.

Today’s Chronicle says the well-known Bay Area meteorologist, Mike Pechner, calls “the string of cold, wet weather ‘unprecedented in its strength and duration,’” and that it could “last until June.” My own take is that climate change is deranging California’s weather pattern, making it cooler; add El Nino, and you get wetter, too. What’s that you say? “Heimoff’s not a meterologist, what the hell does he know?” Well, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

P.S. Wine Enthusiast has a really cool contest on their Facebook site. You can access information about it here, or here. Check it out.