Monday, December 8, 2008
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA – December 8, 2008 (OWSweather.com) Rare 50 year Arctic Blast Sets Sights On Southern California.
With a week away, and a sure sign of things to come, OWSweather.com is making preparations on the server to handle the traffic from this next event. UJEAS is in line with the majority if not all the other models in keeping a near historical arctic air mass into the Southern California region.
With a warm November, Southern California is finally ready for cold storms to make their way in. Resort level snow will be likely next week, and in pretty hefty amounts if things stay on track. OWSweather.com Meteorologist Kevin Martin predicts a 50 year event. While Martin is usually conservative on these events, the pattern highly favors it. “We are in a pre-1950 type pattern, “said Martin. “We know we are due for a winter storm sometime this year. The type we may be dealing with will be ranked up there with the known years before 1950, which set record low daytime temperatures into the forecast region. With this, may come low elevation snow.”
Forecaster Cameron Venable is seeing very cold temperatures in the Los Angeles areas as well. Torrance is not usually known for winter weather, thus making this an interesting event for Venable to track.
“Temperatures in Siberia, Russia will be -81 degrees this week, “said Martin. “With those type of temperatures the arctic air mass has to spill somewhere. Our answer of the exact track will become more clear this week. All residents in the mountain communities should prepare this week for very cold, winter weather, with snow.”
Indications are a second, colder storm could hit near the 18th-22nd time-frame. The details on that will have to be sorted out.
OWSweather.com staff More information: www.OWSweather.com (h/t to PearlandAggie)
From Ric Werme (09:02:20) :
Hmm, 1000-500 mb “thicknesses” suggest temps will be cold enough for snow in the Bay area from the 14th-17th and again from the 19th – Christmas.
Anyone know if AlGore is scheduled for the Bay Area then? …
Anthony,
Love the snowflake effect!
I thought this might be enjoyed by you and your readers.
(to the tune “Let it Snow”)
Oh the weather outside is frightful.
But to the “skeptics” it’s so delightful.
Temps have dropped down low.
Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!
Al Gore promised Global Warming.
But instead it’s been cold and storming.
Solar activity has dropped way low.
Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!
Since sunspots have dropped out of sight.
A Global Cooling trend has started to form.
Proves the “skeptics” are proven right,
That CO2 does not cause Earth to warm.
The Solar Cycle is still slowly dying,
To Global Warming we are “good-bying”.
So as long as sunspots stay at zero,
Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!
Harold Ambler (20:31:17) :
> By the way, for those keeping track at home, it’s not winter yet.
Depends on the definition. Meteorologically and climatologically, the northern hemisphere winter covers the months December, January, and February. The astronomical definition based on the solstices and equinoxes don’t really couple to weather very well.
Months don’t fit all that well either, winter in New Hampshire could well be defined from mid November to the end of March. At least, I don’t stop counting snowfall in March!
White roofs, sleet-covered cars, and more sleet on the lawns this morning in Austin, Texas, from last night’s storm.
How much snow acculation do I have on the bottom of my screen. Does anyone have a forcast for that?
Bryan, Texas… It’s snowing but the Natinal Weather Service is calling it “Unknown Precipitation”. Figure that one out…
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?CityName=Bryan&state=TX&site=HGX&textField1=30.6685&textField2=-96.3652
I looked at the jet stream models and I think, depending on how fast the jet stream decides to run, that California is going to get hit with heavy cold rain, freezing rain, sleet, and snow mix. The stream starts in the Arctic, takes a curve out into the Pacific, and then returns on shore over California. That’s why the rest of us will be so damned cold. The empty space above this ribbon will be filled with North Pole cold temperatures direct from Santa’s house. If the jet stream takes too long curving over the Pacific, it will warm up closer to the 50 F temps of the ocean environment. If it moves just long enough to pick up ocean moisture, snow will happen on shore. Palm trees will be white. Ho ho ho.
Hey! Now, someone’s thermometer has to be broken. Didn’t we just see that Siberia was having a large enough heat wave to bring the whole planets average temp up? Obviously this guy has his thermometer upside down or something, and California will be having an AGW heat wave soon. Pay no attention to that Hansen guy behind the curtain, he just reports the temps, he does not make them up… and up and up. heh
Ontario Weather Service is a fraud. There is no one with any legitimate meteorological training running that site. There’s no arctic blast for California this upcoming weekend. The source region for the colder air is the Northeast Pacific, not Siberia. That’s not an arctic blast. It will be noticeably colder with precipitation by early next week, not the record breaking arctic blast advertised by OWS. Instead, just a typical cold winter storm in December.
Re: “let it snow let it snow” Portland Or is expecting snow this weekend from the same system but it will not be recorded. Since the weather service got their automated equipment in `98 the records show no snow, even though we have gotten a couple of good storms. The reason? Since Portland doesn’t get snow very often NOAA decided that a device to measure the snow was a waste of money. The old way of measuring with a ruler is not ‘official’ so officially we don’t have snow, therefore we don’t need a snow detector. Don’t you love the government?
The snow effect is brilliant, on target, and charming. But it is deadly to systems
without spare processor power. It runs just fine on newer multi-processor systems,
but is a killer on older single processor systems. By itself snow saturates the
1Ghz G4 on my old Mac.
Can we schedule a code review to reduce the computational overhead?
Anecdote alert:
We just got nailed with a foot of snow in Wisconsin, and it’s been persistently cold for the entire month of December. Last year, if you recall, we set all sorts of records for snow in a state where it is quite a feat to break a record.
As of yesterday, we have already received twice as much snow as we did at this time last year. As I am seeing the cooler ENSO readings and the negative PDO, I am bracing for more to come.
I won’t say I enjoy it… I finally bought a roof rake yesterday and spent three hours between shoveling and clearing off my roof – and I get a guy to plow out my driveway, so he does most of it.
More of this, and I’m likely to get into shape. That simply can’t happen. I’ve worked to hard to get out of shape.
Is this guy Martin some kind of fraud? If so using his info certainly does not help with this sites credibility.
OWSmonitor (08:48:21) :
Ontario Weather Service is a fraud. There is no one with any legitimate meteorological training running that site. There’s no arctic blast for California this upcoming weekend. The source region for the colder air is the Northeast Pacific, not Siberia. That’s not an arctic blast. It will be noticeably colder with precipitation by early next week, not the record breaking arctic blast advertised by OWS. Instead, just a typical cold winter storm in December.
Reply:
While I don’t want to call anyone a fraud, I do have to say that this web site should not be issuing watches and warnings in my opinion due to public safety, but that is the internet these days. You will open yourself to legal issues potentially. In the internet age, you need to determine what is scientifically sound and what is not. Having said that, the National Weather Service and other federal agencies forecasting in meteorology for the warning areas should be the official weather source since they practice the riggor of meteorology in my experience. Professionals in the various respected universities are also a good source of meteorological information.
I can certainly appreciate the enthusiasm of these folks running this web site, but I want to emphasise that formal education is key in meteorology. I am a hobbyist meteorologist myself. Even some TV weathermen don’t have the suggested experience so I urge people to take weather information with skeptacism and not as gospil when viewing unofficial web sites.
Randall (06:03:37) :
The program allows upto 60 snowflakes, err, snowspots per page. So, “High of 60.”
Frank Perdicaro (15:28:03) :
I can disable Javascript with a single click in firefox (possibly with the aid of some random addon). That breaks a few other things, far too many web sites depend on Javascript, so I keep reenabling Javascript too.
I haven’t looked at the code in enough detail to know if it will be in an infinite loop for any page. I keep active pages (about 6-8) in separate tabs, so it leads to a lot of processing demand.
Note in from a buddy in Houston: “Watching snow out my window.”
Ain’t snowin’ downunder; but we got some mighty storms rolling across the country; and you can drink that stuff.
I love a sunburnt country,
a land of sweeping plains,
of ragged mountain ranges,
of droughts and flooding rains…
What is this Ontario Weather Service? I haven’t gotten my info from that source. I get it here: http://squall.sfsu.edu/crws/jetstream.html
The jet stream model projection has changed a bit since yesterday with the jet stream combining both cold Arctic air with upper Pacific Ocean air midweek, combining to come down and over California. By Wednesday of next week, I will be freezing my ass off in NE Oregon, and California should be getting cold rain, sleet, freezing rain, or snow mix based on latitude and altitude. If I had a vineyard in northern California, I would be spreading some kind of ground cover to hold in heat. If this stays long enough, the ground could freeze and kill roots. It will be a given that some (many?) vineyards in Oregon will go to their grave. Won’t even talk about Washington and Idaho vineyards. If you planted the root ball deep enough you might survive. If you planted root balls at the normal depth, you could be in trouble. Vineyards in Tibbet plant their vines much like you would plant asparagus, but MUCH deeper. They also don’t trellis, instead working the main branch into almost tree trunk size and then letting the head do what it wants. When fruiting, it looks like a gnarly small tree. With such a big main trunk and deep roots, these vines produce less but much hardier fruit. And that’s why they don’t freeze-kill in that cold climate. Lots of ceremonial wine to go around.
So for all you California types, get used to wool swimwear. It just ain’t the same as a little yellow pocka dot bikini made out of soft cotton and spandex.
OWSmonitor (08:48:21) :
I’m happy to confess I don’t have much experience with reading long-range GFS forecasts and even less interpreting them for California (or eastern Oregon). However, here in the northeast, we watch the 1000mb-500mb thickness closely, as that’s the layer that produces most of our snow. Thicknesses below 5400 are generally cold enough for snow to reach the ground, and that’s what I’ve focused on.
With onshore winds, I could see enough warm air coming off the Pacific to melt the snow before it reaches the ground. That’s the the most obvious (to me) flaw in my interpretation, but I wouldn’t be surprised someone with more experience could point out several others. In addition, of course, to actually looking at GFS output for Fantasyland timeframes.
The GFS output for just over a week from today at http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/nwprod/analysis/namer/gfs/12/images/gfs_slp_180m.gif shows 5340 thickness at San Diego and 5280 at LA. And light precip. The chance of snow before that is pretty iffy. Is that just a typical cold winter storm there?
http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/nwprod/analysis/namer/gfs/12/images/gfs_ten_180m.gif is suggesting ground temps in the 40s, which is tough for snow to make it through.
Pamela Gray will be very glad to hear that the GFS has backed way off from the subzero temps just before Christmas, but that was far enough out to be more entertainment than forecast.
I live in Southeast Texas. Two months after Hurricane Ike devastated our region, we’re getting a snow storm with 1/2 inch of accumulation and still going. We’re at 29.5 deg N about a half mile from Galveston Bay!
Actually the snow came three months after the hurricane… Sorry.
NWS Sacramento and Eureka CA are now saying freezing temps could start on Saturday and last until Tuesday at least with snow levels < 500 feet ASL.
Since forecasts have seemed to run +2 C above actual this fall, I’ll bet it will be colder than that.
This weather pattern in the jet stream is now projected to dump a foot of snow or more at pass level and nearly as much on the valley floor in NE Oregon this weekend. I drive over two passes on my way to and from the ranch: the Blues and then up again through a finger of the Wallowa Whitman/Eaglecap Wilderness Area. Then next week the the jet stream moves south, temp drops like a stone in Oregon and California gets a taste of snow. I have to get some more heat lamps going under the house and space heaters going in bathrooms/laundry rooms to keep that big house from freezing up or else I would hunker down in Pendleton and ride it out till Xmas break. I also have cows on the property that need water. We may have to hose it out to them with a heat coil in the tank if the creek freezes up.
Are we having fun yet with this global warming?
Paul Shanahan (11:20:26) :
Richard Black is the most poorly informed environment correspondent I know of at the BBC. He’s worse than Harrabin, if that’s possible! Bishop Hill wrote this.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/9/30/the-amazing-disappearing-roger-harrabin.html
As for this comment!
“Being able to introduce efficient wood stoves is not rocket science.”
Ewah Eleri, Int’l Centre for Energy, Environment and Development.
Oh yes, it is rocket science!
http://www.cato-projects.org/ArLivre/RocketStove1.htm
Regards,
Perry
@Ric Werme
Here in Western Oregon/Washington the due to the influence of the ocean the 1000mb-500mb thicknesses value that is an indicator for snow is 520. It may be even lower for southern CA