Extreme winter weather has been dominating the national headlines for days, but it seems that here in San Diego we've been living in a land that winter weather forgot.
So is there any connection between the below-freezing temperatures in the east and midwest and our mild and very dry weather? When can we expect our winter rains to start? And what, if anything, does all this have to do with climate change?
Daniel Cayan, Ph.D. is a research meteorologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, he said California's historical climate is notoriously volatile.
"We have the greatest up and downs to our own average precipitation in the country," he said. "We have to expect conditions like this."
Cayan said what we're seeing in California and elsewhere in the west this winter all fits together with the so-called polar vortex.
But he said the $64,000 question is, will we get any rain?
"In our Mediterranean climate, the "storm track" runs from late fall to early spring and that's when we have the chance of getting the most rain," he said.
But can all this severe weather be attributed to climate change? Cayan said no.
"This weather pattern is not totally unfamiliar with weather we've seen in the past," Cayan said. "It doesn't mean this is what we should come to expect, next year could be wetter than average."
