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It’s supposed to rain a lot in March, especially here in Humboldt County — but that has not been the case this year.

Eureka averages about five and a half inches of precipitation in March, but the 2026 version has delivered less than half an inch, according to data from the National Weather Service. And with none in the forecast today, we can go ahead and mark this down in the record books as the city’s driest March since 1926 and the second-driest since modern record-keeping began in 1886.

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While the National Weather Service has just the one measuring station in the county, this super-dry spell has been “pretty similar across the board in Humboldt,” meteorologist Jacob Boomsma told the Outpost in a phone interview earlier today. 

To zoom out a little bit, Eureka’s rainfall remains at about 88% of normal for the current water year, meaning the 12-month period that starts each October 1. That’s largely due to some very wet weather in the second half of December and the first week or so of January. 

“So we’re doing pretty good this year for precipitation, but March really fell off,” Boomsma said.

You can see that reflected in the graph below, which shows the observed rain accumulation hitting a stark plateau late last month.

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This mini-drought is also reflected in the depleted snowpack across the northern Sierra Nevada and Trinity Alps. Snow accumulation has been well below average since the beginning of the water year and has now almost entirely disappeared, as shown in the below graph from the California Department of Water Resources.

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The snowpack in Trinity County is less than 5% of normal, according to Boomsma, though he said that has less to do with a lack of precipitation than with warm temperatures, which caused that precipitation to fall as rain.

We’re not alone in this trend, either. This has been among the driest and warmest Marches on record across much of California. On March 19, Ukiah tied its record high March temperature of 91 degrees, set in 1914. San Francisco recorded its first-ever 90 degree March temperature on the 20th, and its total rainfall this month, 0.06 inches, is barely above the record low for March of 0.03 inches, set in 1923.

Across much of the American West, temperatures have been 3 to 9 degrees above normal, according to the Climate Prediction Center. Scientists overwhelmingly agree that human-caused climate change is exacerbating volatility in the weather, which can be especially catastrophic here in California given our susceptibility to drought, wildfires, landslides and other extremes.

But good news is on the horizon — for the short term, anyway. 

“A cold spring storm will bring rain and high mountain snow to Del Norte, Humboldt, Trinity and portions of Mendocino and Lake Counties Wednesday into Thursday,” the NWS Eureka forecast says.

“That should help a bit,” Boomsma said. With fire season around the corner, he and his colleagues are keeping their eyes on fuel moisture, meaning the amount of water in vegetation and dead organic matter.

“We did have some record dry fuels a week or two ago, but this next storm looks like it will correct things back to where they should be,” Boomsma said. “So it’s not the end of the world yet.”