Floods caused by atmospheric rivers and wildfires fanned by Santa Ana winds are common occurrences in California with devastating societal impacts. In this work, we show that winter weather variability in California, including the occurrence of extreme and impactful events, is linked to four atmospheric circulation regimes over the North Pacific Ocean previously named and identified as the “NP4 modes”. These modes come in and...

Santa Ana winds (SAWs) are associated with anomalous temperatures in coastal Southern California (SoCal). As dry air flows over SoCal’s coastal ranges on its way from the elevated Great Basin down to sea level, all SAWs warm adiabatically. Many but not all SAWs produce coastal heat events. The strongest regionally averaged SAWs tend to be cold. In fact, some of the hottest and coldest observed temperatures in coastal SoCal are...