Rain measurements in and near the Dolan Fire Area, Los Padres National Forest, California, 2022 to 2023

Rainfall measurements were collected in and near the Dolan Fire burn area, Los Padres National Forest, California. The CZU Fire ignited in Los Padres National Forest, California, on August 18, 2020. By the time of full containment on December 31, 2020, the fire had burned 518 km2 (128,050 acres) in Monterey County. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) installed seven rain gages in and near the Dolan Fire burn area in October 2021 to measure rainfall during two post-fire wet seasons. This data release contains rain records from the Mill Creek and upper Nacimiento River watersheds collected during water year 2023 (October 1, 2022, through spring 2023). Previous datasets from this region included an additional rain gage (Dolan1), but due to vandalism its data are not usable over winter 2022-2023 and are not reported. Two other gages (Dolan4 and Dolan6) ran out of battery power and so did not record rain over part of the winter of 2022-2023; extreme rain conditions closed access to Los Padres National Forest so that batteries could not be replaced. This affected the following gages after the following dates: Dolan4 did not record data after 2022-11-03 00:54:39, and Dolan6 did not record data after 2022-11-10 16:07:27. Gages Dolan2, Dolan3, Dolan5, and Dolan7 collected complete rain records throughout the wet season. All seven rain gages were removed on May 25, 2023.