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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All of these storms are pounding the Colorado mountains with snow while Denver and the plains get nada. It’s been the driest autumn I can remember. Nice not to have to commute in white stuff though.
Crested Butte is expected to get 8 FEET of snow just from this current storm.
Denver? It MAY rain some on Thursday, whoop-de-do. I really need to water the garden.
With due deference to Mick ‘Crocodile’ Dundee, that’s not rain….
(In Northern Queensland we are expecting over 400mm to 500mm between xmas day and new year.)
…..this is rain.
Here in Victoria we just get the edge wind.
“Since this event doesn’t follow the traditional ENSO patterns that NOAA predicts ….”
The biggest problem with NOAA is all they look at (basically) is Nino 3.4. No other teleconnection patterns are really factored into their forecasts – which is why you get major busts like we are seeing now. If all other teleconnections are weak, MEI can be used to generate a reasonable forecast. If other teleconnections are strong, then MEI is just another variable in the equation. But why should this surprise us – they put all their long term climate eggs in 1 CO2 basket. The busts we routinely see in seasonal forecasts should indicate to all that no aspect of weather or climate can be characterized by one variable. That is simply naive thinking.
In looking at what has happened with this event, IMHO, it looks like the normal position of the Gulf of Alaska low has moved considerably south – so instead of storms rotating around this center & into the Pacific northwest (as they would with a standard position), they are rotating around around into central & southern California. I could strong make an argument for global cooling based on this observation – and in fact we are seeing the monthly data trending down. I might make a longer post on this later as I think this event has some interesting climatological implications / inferences that can be made.
I have been noticing what seems to me to be a lot of unusual patterns this winter in terms of the position of surface & upper level features relative to each other – unusual offsets both south & north. Any other mets think they are seeing these anomalies as well?
Re Bill Jamison says: December 21, 2010 at 8:09 pm
BTW Bill, the record heat was one or two days. Consistently it has been cooler then normal.
Looking at the radar here, it looks like nearly all of the California coast is getting rain. This would be from Eureka all the way down to San Diego.
http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/
C’mon, people!
The Science is Settled!
Quit gazing out of the window and concentrate on what your computer models are telling you!
Now if only we had even more Teraflops……
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”:
I blame it on the lack of ”
globalsolar warming”.La Nino or El Nina, take your pick.
After looking at the pic of the ‘eye’ in the Pacific storm this week, I am tempted to call this a dead-stick solar phenomenon what with those huge Jet Stream loops that NASA was so kind to point out.
Take a look at my forecast made three years ago, for the past week, let me know how much you think I missed it.
Amino Acid,
My Met lecturer said the rule of thumb was 12″ of snow = 1″ of water.
Clearly it’s global climate disruption. But for the past 31 years it’s been all about the warming. Until the warming stopped and the disruptions began. I predict, however, that they will start with the “new and unprecedented disruption” line of reasoning and then the next decade will be calm as a lamb. Nature simply doesn’t want to cooperate with these foolish AGW folks that think they are so smart and so wise. My grandmother would say “do not trust prophets that eat bread”.
Can we really trust those imaginary satellite picture, however colorful and pretty they might seem at first glance instead of trusting in the Schmidt-Hansen litany, which goes something like this: Do not trust in the observed results from puny human built mechanical apparatus’s, but feel and feel that tingling sensation of warmth that feeling give rise to as you feel your models results are true.
I only ask because that Schmidt-Hansen litany might actually work, it seems. Yesterday the instrument told of -16.7° C, but brave as I am I ventured outside. The global warming induced snowing that had been going on for weeks had stopped and I calculated the probability to be on the up and up that it could be fairly safe what with the whole thing about instruments not being completely trustworthy. Any how, so I went outside, in my beach shorts, re-iterating the Schmidt-Hansen litany over and over again, for almost 17 minutes, at which point I started to feel warm all over, from the nether parts up, well, in the one limb I still could feel something with after the involuntary micturate–which I readily observed, as I did with the purple skin going blue and black from, what appeared to might be, hypothermic freezer burn, but with equally scientific and climatic reasoning ignored as a potential probable explanation to infer into the Schmidt-Hansen Feel-Good Model. I did feel a warm tingling sensation of utter cozy back-at-home-hearth warmth before the angels came and took me away with the pretty blue swooshing lights and the trumpets calling and all.
The doctor did say I might feel a bit confused until I get properly hydrated. OMG, right, I got warmer and drier even do ’twas cold as hell. :p
‘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.’ 11ft and counting in Mammoth – they have some of the highest snowfall totals I’ve ever seen for a valley station. Only once in Feb 1990 in Europe where a similar storm dumped 4m across swathes of France and Italy compared in my experience.
oldseadog says:
December 22, 2010 at 1:10 am
> My Met lecturer said the rule of thumb was 12″ of snow = 1″ of water.
The general rule of thumb in New England is 10″ of snow from 1″ of water, a “fluff factor” of 10. However, it varies hugely. Heavy, wet, choke-the-snowblower snow is about 5, I’ve seen it as high as 30X or so but usually with light snow fall.
Lake effect, ocean effect, and something called a “NorLun trough” often bring deep fluffy snow. Three years and a day ago I got 15.2″ of fluff factor 14.1 snow from a norlun trough.
As a matter of fact, three years ago today, I had 24″ of snow on the ground. Today I have none! The biggest snow event this season is 0.8″. There’s been more south of me, north of me, west of me, and there would more more east of me but it’s just ocean that way. Well, east of me is ME (Maine) first, and I think they’ve had more than me too.
And Joe D’Aleo had the temerity to suggest 2007/2008 as an analog year. He even used one of my photos of the 8 foot snowblower pile I made. It would be higher, but I had to shovel it down because that was as high as the snowblower could reach. Ultimated I had 129.5″ (329 cm) of snow, by far the most of any season here. Sigh.
Forgot to posted this related bit of information –
Here on the Colorado Front Range (east side of the mtns), we are actually setting a record for the least cumulative snow to date. As of today, Denver has 1.5″ of snow total for the season. We have records back through 1881 & have never seen this little snow by this late in the season (we should be approaching 25″ by this date).
Data source:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/bou/?n=denver_snowfall
As I said before – very unique pattern right now.
How come the Cumulative Percent of Normal map scale starts at zero? Shouldn’t negatives be possible?
Does anyone know if the Lake Mead water level data is available on a daily basis? When I saw all the rain coming in, I wanted to see how quickly the level rose but didn’t find anything.
TIA
Maybe California can make some money during La Nina’s piping water to Texas. We could use some rain.
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.
=============================
Like you are introducing it to us for the first time!
Pretty funny on another thread at an earlier time stamp about 45 minutes before this one you were still calling it the “MJO Oscillation.”
What does that “O” stand for in “MJO”, R?
Also, to put to rest something that you were “winging it” on (as is the case of nearly all of your posts)….such subject matter of the pineapple express more appropriately discussed on THIS thread……fresh off the press from Joe Bastardi this morning:
“As it is, THIS IS NOT of the same genre of last year. There is NO PINEAPPLE express, unless someone is growing pineapples midway between the Aleutians and Hawaii. Amazing how that is being said. The reason for this is that lower thickness air ( colder in the deep means) has been helped out by the cold PDO and there has been plenty of warmth over the southwest.”
“The natural clash of that jet aimed at that warm air produces heavy precip. I did not think it would get this far south, but just like the east better get while the getting is good with the chance of the major storm, much of the rest of the winter and into the spring should be dry in so cal.”
“Its just that this la nina, and I suspect its because it is being driven by a large scale climatic event.. the PDO turning old, is making its point. For those that want to argue global warming, I will tell you the same thing I told people in Europe 2 Novembers ago when it was raining so much.. wet means colder.”
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
cloud fraction
may be from you can get an impression how things look now
and 1 year ago
“Does anyone know if the Lake Mead water level data is available on a daily basis? ”
Lake Mead data can be found here:
http://lakemead.water-data.com/index2.php
That’s some remarkable conveyor-belt of heavy moisture — from LA, CA, east-northeast to Cheyenne, WY. Punched thru all those mountains. That’ll recharge the Colorado R. watershed.
When I spent Christmas in Salt Lake City ~1990 or so, nearby Park City got 80″ snow in 2 days (and the northeast corner of Salt Lake City got ~25″), but these current amounts put that to shame.
People in SoCal are whimps, if it isn’t 80 degrees F and sunny they rant about how climate change is destroying their lovely Californistan S.S.R.
Baa Humbug says:
December 21, 2010 at 10:10 pm
With due deference to Mick ‘Crocodile’ Dundee, that’s not rain….
savethesharks says:
December 22, 2010 at 6:12 am
Only (365/4) -2 days left until Spring.
Winter is just getting started.
Global Warming in California – well known since 1972…..