The California Avocado Commission (CAC) says a combination of factors has led to this year's season picking up pace earlier than normal. 

The organization also welcomed the rainy weather the state has been experiencing over recent months, saying growers are happy and drought conditions in many areas have been 'significantly reduced'.

In a release, the CAC said the early start was brought on by a break in the weather, availability of harvesting crews and a strong market.

"Harvesting is ramping up a little earlier than expected for this year’s California avocado crop," CAC vice president of marketing Jan DeLyser said.

"As a result of the rainy winter we’ve had in California, avocado fruit is sizing, and growers have the opportunity to take advantage of strong demand for the local fruit."

The commission said it had initiated "customer-specific marketing" where there is distribution of California avocados.

Market-level programs will begin in April, with the focus on Golden State. For the last several years the period around St. Patrick’s Day, which overlaps U.S. baseball tournament known as March Madness, has ranked as a top consumption event for avocados with volume approaching or surpassing Cinco de Mayo levels. The estimate for this year is more than 119 million pounds of avocados.

The CAC will encourage purchases of California avocados for the Irish celebration with digital and social media activity, including an email newsletter, Twitter and Facebook with green-themed-recipe ideas directed to more than 300,000 fans.

“Now is great time to display avocados in the produce department,” said DeLyser.

“Shoppers entertaining for March Madness and St. Patrick’s Day contribute to an uptick in demand, especially when signage clearly calls out that local California avocados are available.”

The CAC added demand continued to be 'strong' for avocados, and said "optimism prevails" despite the 2017 crop projection of 200 million pounds being about half of last year's volume.

According to the organization, California avocado trees are looking better than they have in several years. The precipitation has helped to leach accumulated salts from the soil, providing the trees with much-needed clean water in large quantities, it said.

The group added the benefits of these rains should help to improve tree health for 2017 and 2018, regardless of the how wet the 2017-18 winter is.

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