The last month certainly hasn’t been completely dry in the northern half of the state–occasional rain and high elevation snow events have occurred, though they’ve been a bit hard to pinpoint very far in advance (as sometimes occurs during transition seasons). But SoCal has remained decidedly dry through the period … California will not instantly see a more active pattern when the jet starts to do some wild things, as now appears highly likely. A relatively dry and warm pattern will continue for the next 7-10 days, then with perhaps gradually more active conditions 10-14 days from now before potentially more dramatic shift toward wet and active conditions after that–most likely sometime during the last week in Dec. … And all of this might be happening just in time to take advantage of favorable forcing from our strong El Nino, and perhaps the next active cycle of the MJO as well.

Related articles: 

• San Francisco Chronicle: California weather: How the jet stream could bring an active storm pattern soon
• ABC 10 – Sacramento: Dry week ahead, but potentially stormy pattern on the horizon for Northern California
• Antelope Valley Press: State contractors plan for less water
• The New York Times: Unpacking California’s wild weather year
• Los Angeles Times: Blizzards, tornadoes and a hurricane: We lived through SoCal’s year of weird weat