Is the Mediterranean Climate of Europe more "stable" than CA in regards to precipitation (rainfall, 2014)

[cBach]

Okay, so California follows a Mediterranean climate to a T, in the sense the precipitation is concentrated in the winter and there is virtually zero precipitation in the summer. Also, the precipitation seems clustered around the core winter months of Dec-Feb not the shoulder months. It seems that Europe has higher rates in Fall/Spring but some in winter and the summers are not as bone dry but still very dry.

One thing about CA, though, is the unpredictability of the rainy season. For instance, in December, some areas received 15 inches of rain, those same areas received 0 inches in January, then some of those areas received 5 inches in this previous event in February. The events tend to be scarce and when they happen they are intense. So, for the most part the climate is sunny most of the year, extremely sunny from May to October with nary a cloud in the sky unless on the coast or in the high mountains, and then mostly sunny from November to April broken up by periods of intense rainfall.

I've only been to Mediterranean climates in Europe in the summer, so could someone please explain if they are similar in the the sense of widely scattered rain events that are extremely heavy or sparce light rains now and then during the rainy season?

[nei]

Check this thread:

Erratic rainfall patterns

I made a graph of the monthly and annual precipitation distribution in Portland, Seattle and San Rafael (Bay Area). And for a humid continental climate — Amherst, MA, which is relatively stable. A Roman poster made a similar graph for Rome. It was mentioned in the Fall thread by a poster in Nice that he got 20 inches of rain in a fall month, suggesting high variability.

The graph for Rome looked less variable than the Bay Area but more than Amherst or Seattle, maybe a similar to Portland which displays some California-like precipitation patterns. Rome is at the latitude of the Oregon-California border, perhaps if you looked further south it'd look more California like.

[Rozenn]

It's rather erratic, though I assume 0 mm months in autumn and winter are nigh impossible, at least in France. Here's the 2014 Wiki box for my location, November was the wettest ever:



Winter rain tends to be light to moderate, with rainy eisodes interspersed with periods of cloudless weather. In autumn, thunderstorms and heavy rain are more common than later in the rainy season. There are few little dry cloudy days over here. Gonna have to find some stats.

[cBach]

Wow, 22" in November and 11.3" in January. 1.118" in July is something you'd never see in CA though.