San Diego markets itself as the land of endless warmth and sunshine. That seems like a goof as 2023 comes to an end.
The city received only two hours of sunshine in the entire month of May. The temperature was below average for 11 straight months.
And in August, when there’s typically no rain, the public was told to brace for a tropical storm — something that San Diego hadn’t seen since 1939.
“It was a weird year,” said Casey Oswant, a forecaster at the National Weather Service. “And a challenge to forecast.”
Here’s a quick look back.
Hello, Hilary
The waters off Baja California and San Diego County usually aren’t warm enough to sustain the tropical storms and hurricanes that form off the Pacific coast of Mexico. Most of these systems curve away from land and die.
This year was different.
A very warm pool of water formed just south of Baja and stretched nearly to San Diego, allowing Hurricane Hilary to charge northwest. The cyclone weakened to a tropical storm as it approached Southern California. But it still delivered a punch when it blew through San Diego County on Aug. 20.
Hilary dropped 2 inches of rain at and near the coast and upward of 7 inches in the mountains, causing widespread flash flooding. Thirteen people had to be rescued from surging waters in the San Diego River. Traffic slowed to a crawl on parts of state Route 94, Interstate 5 and Interstate 8. In Julian, authorities kept an eye on boulders loosened by the rain. A tornado warning was issued in Alpine.
As this began to unfold, Oswant looked out a window and said, “Why aren’t the leaves moving?” Mother Nature seemed to be listening. Minutes later, powerful gusts exploded out of the south, damaging trees over wide areas of the county. The winds hit 84 mph in the Cleveland National Forest and more than 40 mph in San Diego Bay.
Hilary moved on, flooding parts of Palm Springs, destroying crops in the Coachella Valley and damaging roads across Death Valley National Park, which closed for more than two weeks. The collective damage has been estimated at $150 million.
Something hugely positive came of all this.
San Diego had experienced a wet winter. But by late spring, the backcountry was starting to dry out, raising the risk of wildfires in a county whose thick chaparral and Santa Ana winds make it prone to burning. Hilary’s unexpected rains tamped down that threat. Fresh green grass quickly appeared.
“We found that the chaparral actually started drawing moisture from Hilary,” said Brian D’Agostino, vice president of wildfire and climate science at San Diego Gas & Electric. “We weren’t sure it was going to do that.”
The county will finish 2023 without a single red flag fire weather warning having been issued. The weather service usually posts several.
Brrrr
Until fairly recently, San Diego County had been dealing with years of record heat, damaging drought and wildfire. Scientists attributed much of this to climate change and expected things to get worse.
For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, 2023 didn’t play out that way.
From January through November, the average monthly temperature in San Diego was below average — in some cases by nearly 4 degrees. The city had not had a streak like that since 1948, when San Diego was emerging from World War II.
Outsiders laughed at San Diegans who complained about being cold when the thermometer read 68 degrees. But that is cold if you’re used to temperatures in the mid-70s.
The bee population also wasn’t digging the big chill.
“It wasn’t warm enough in March and April for bees to come out of their hives to pollinate the fruit trees,” said Jim Horacek, manager of the Armstrong Garden Centers location in Del Mar. “So the fruit didn’t form as it should.”
Where’d the sun go?
People’s spirits often sag when thick clouds develop for long periods of springtime along the county’s coastline — earning the months of April, May and June the nicknames Graypril, May Gray and June Gloom.
Some years are worse than others. This one was flat-out horrible in San Diego. Especially in May.
The sun usually peeks through the clouds for varying lengths of time seven or eight days during that month. This year, there was only one day — May 7 — on which the skies cleared enough to see the sun. And that lasted all of two hours. Miguel Miller, a weather service forecaster, put a colorful spin on it, telling The New York Times that the fog seemed to be on steroids.
This year, the bleak streak extended into June and affected most of coastal Southern California, leading a Los Angeles media outlet to call it “Gloomageddon.”
Snowbound
Many San Diego County peaks are higher than those found in more than 30 states. But they never receive the sort of snowfall required to sustain a major ski resort.
Or maybe we should say rarely. During a weeklong period starting Feb. 22, Palomar Mountain received a near-record 60 inches — 5 feet — of snow. At times, near-whiteout conditions existed. It was the second highest snowfall in Palomar’s history.
The storm would have gotten a lot more publicity if not for what happened not far away, in the higher San Bernardino Mountains, where upward of 100 inches of rain fell during a similar stretch. Residents in Big Bear and Lake Arrowhead got trapped in their homes. Food rationing became necessary.
Palomar became a footnote.
