Southwestern USA, 7 day cumulative percent of normal, shown below:
Source from water.weather.gov
Have a look at the 7day totals:
Source water.weather.gov
California benefits, Lake Mead benefits. That “Lake Mead will go dry due to global warming” is forestalled at the moment.
And the national composite (big file, 3400 pixels wide) for the last 24 hours:
My friend Jan Null who runs the Golden Gate Weather Services in San Franciscco writes in with these links:
The San Diego and Los Angeles NWS offices have posted some excellent briefing materials about the ongoing heavy rain event. See:
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/sgx/WeatherBrief1221.pdf and
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/lox/scripts/headline_download.php?get=20101221_1019.pdf
Since this event doesn’t follow the traditional ENSO patterns that NOAA predicts, I’m sure somebody will find a way to blame it on “global warming”:
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You call that rainfall !
A client of mine in Tweed Heads, New South Wales reported to me that they had received 14.5 inches in 36 hours a couple of weeks ago.
I’m in Waikane, Hawaii and the storm event stretched from 1,000 km west of here all the way to SoCal. We got about the same amount of rain (about 7″ or 180mm) as California did over the same dates and number of days. An intense Kona low formed west of here that briefly became a named tropical storm (Okama? since deceased). It’s rare when the same weather event (Pineapple Express) produces weather in Hawaii and California simultaneously.
It is probably that huge blocking High Pressure over Canada & Greenland that is forcing the La Nina Storm Track farther south
So definitely Global Warming caused
Reminds me of that ol’ Chicago song about being stuck in L.A., “South California Purples.” Now I know where the purple comes from. just check out the false colour maps!
Cheers
Coops
Well, perhaps, just maybe that Jet Stream slipped down a few states for a short bit and soon Wash. & B.C. will get back into wet again….naah, CAGW…yup….
/sarc off … just in case…
How much does that amount of liquid equal in snow in the Sierra Mountains in California? They might have said the total in the pdf but my computer won’t open pdfs.
Yes it certainly has been wet down here in SoCal. Unfortunately for the SoCal ski resorts it’s been relatively warm with snow levels between 8k and 9k feet meaning all rain. But snow levels should be dropping and hopefully they’ll get several feet of snow and the holiday season will be saved. Mammoth Mountain broke their record for most snow in December and most snow for the early season (a record set in 2004). They also claim “the most snow of any ski resort in the world” based on data from skiinfo.com.
It’s been a wild and crazy fall in California! Record heat, record cold, extremely wet. I can’t wait to see what winter brings!
Global warming is like is like the Neptune the ancient Greek god. Everything weather wise is caused by it. The worshipers of the ‘god’ must offer ‘sacrifices’ (preferably at other people’s expense) to keep the ‘god’ from getting angry and destroying civilization.
Just sayin’ but it seems like the effect of cosmic rays may be to dump water on coastal areas downwind of the oceans and leave continental interiors dry. California and UK are brothers in wetness.
And the usatoday.com headline is: “Drought-plagued California copes with near-record rainfall” … I guess they didn’t get the message … CA had near-normal rainfall in 2008-09 and above-average rainfall in 2009-10. Even the Chicken Little-esque Department of Water Resources hasn’t used the word “drought” during the 2010-11 water year. I wouldn’t be too surprised if we broke the records from 1982-83 (which incidentally was an El Nino year).
We have wet years and dry years. The hot political issue of 2005 was flood control, not epic drought. Even the Colorado Basin has wet and dry years … most years have below-average precipitation, but the periodic super-wet year refills Lake Powell and Lake Mead.
So another drought as predicted by the team computer models?
“Since this event doesn’t follow the traditional ENSO patterns that NOAA predicts, I’m sure somebody will find a way to blame it on “global warming””
Never fear, Anthony, they already have…
From the LA Times:
California farms, vineyards in peril from warming, U.S. energy secretary warns
‘February 04, 2009|Jim Tankersley
WASHINGTON — California’s farms and vineyards could vanish by the end of the century, and its major cities could be in jeopardy, if Americans do not act to slow the advance of global warming, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said Tuesday.
In his first interview since taking office last month, the Nobel-prize-winning physicist offered some of the starkest comments yet on how seriously President Obama’s cabinet views the threat of climate change, along with a detailed assessment of the administration’s plans to combat it.
Chu warned of water shortages plaguing the West and Upper Midwest and particularly dire consequences for California, his home state, the nation’s leading agricultural producer.
In a worst case, Chu said, up to 90% of the Sierra snowpack could disappear, all but eliminating a natural storage system for water vital to agriculture.
“I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen,” he said. “We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California.” And, he added, “I don’t actually see how they can keep their cities going” either.
From Christmas eve ’62 to the end of Jan ’63, Southern California got 4 yrs. of rain in 5 weeks. Most of the flat land was lakes. The disruptions to cattle ranching bankrupted most of the remaining Spanish land grant ranchers. If you lived in SoCal back in the 60s you can’t remember that happening because it happened a century earlier, in 1862/63. The deluge is mentioned in William H. Brewer’s enjoyable book; ‘Up and Down California” which is about his strenuous time in the Whitney Geological Survey of the state. So much for the CO2 caused global climate disruption touted by B.O.’s Junk Science Advisor, John Holdren.
I remember the former governor decrying the fires and blaming it on global warming.
[Even though the fires of a few years ago were strongly related to the cold flip of the PDO].
Now, Arnold, are you going to blame the exceptional precipitation on global warming too, right??
Probably.
Wow….cold PDO…..strong La Nina.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Mother Nature fools us again!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Aren’t we in a La Nina period, thus your map predicts average to dry for Southern California?
Well ,we aren’t exactly getting the typical El Nino dry/warmish winter, here in NE
Oregon either.
I’d blame it on a persistent ridge over the western Pacific likely caused by warmer than normal water in that region, which has locked a trough in over the Gulf of Alaska-eastern Pacific where the water is cold compared to average. This pattern is tenacious and has held on for over a month.
I thought it never rains in Southern California?
Here’s something I never knew. Back in 1861, it rained for 45 consecutive days.
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local-beat/Scientists-cite-Atmospheric-River-for-Near-Continuous-Rain-112228904.html?dr
(If this happened today, I’m sure it would be blame on you know what… )
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
December 21, 2010 at 8:06 pm
How much does that amount of liquid equal in snow in the Sierra Mountains in California? They might have said the total in the pdf but my computer won’t open pdfs.
———————————————————————————-
Answer on news tonight = 4 meters of snow in 3 days -WOW
If you want snow and cold, invite Al Gore.
If you want rain, ask Steven Chu.
Mother nature clearly takes care of climate hacks.
It’s our task to remind them and the public about their failed statements.
Not often discussed here on WUWT, but the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is an import very large scale atmospheric disturbance that is at the root of the current wet-weather in CA. A nice overview can be found here:
http://wwa.colorado.edu/IWCS/archive/IWCS_2008_May_focus.pdf
It is highly varible during La Nina periods, and usually less prominent during El Ninos. The last big MJO event for CA was during the strong La Nina of 2008.
Reports of tremendous amounts of rain in Southern California in the early 1860’s are obviously fabrications put fourth by Republican Earth Haters. Everyone knows that before humans started messing up the atmosphere, all was in perfect harmony, and extreme weather events did not happen. Did you know that there are almost no reports of hurricanes or tornadoes in North America until the evil white man moved onto the Continent? And the more evil, polluting, white men moved in…the more tornadoes and hurricanes. Thats a fact!
Oh… and the Johnstown Flood was Bush’s fault.
(May I have another happy pill now and could you loosen the straps on this jacket?)
mammoth pass received 5 inches of water per day for 3 days
mammoth mountain, 15ft of snow total.
that’s at the snow plot, it would be higher up on the ridges (the sierra crest). at our ski area it was at least twice as deep on top as at the snow plot, mostly due to higher snow ratios.
town of mammoth lakes, 3-6ft of snow
http://www.ladwp.com/ladwp/cms/ladwp013390.pdf
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/queryF?MHP
http://patrol.mammothmountain.com/
R. Gates says:
December 21, 2010 at 8:52 pm
Not often discussed here on WUWT, but the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is an import very large scale atmospheric disturbance that is at the root of the current wet-weather in CA. A nice overview can be found here:
http://wwa.colorado.edu/IWCS/archive/IWCS_2008_May_focus.pdf
It is highly varible during La Nina periods, and usually less prominent during El Ninos. The last big MJO event for CA was during the strong La Nina of 2008.
rgates is correct, our local weatherman is on top of the mjo and regularly makes much better long term predictions than noaa based on adding the mjo into the mix
http://mammothweather.com
REPLY: And it comes full circle, Howard is one of my clients. I supplied his weather station – Anthony