Northern California's coming super soaker event via the 'Pineapple Express'

Hi
Thanks for the heads up. Is there any significant snow pack in the Sierras yet — e.g. at Donner’s summit?
Jim

I remember the 1964 floods (the “thousand year” floods), so major flooding can happen from these type events. This doesn’t look to me like that class of event … at least I hope it doesn’t go that way 🙂 🙂 :).
For those who don’t know the history of N. Cal., there was flooding in 1955 that then gov. Brown (the elder) called the “hundred year floods”. Nine years later there were much worse floods which then gov. Reagan had to describe, hence the inflation of terms. Clearly there aren’t enough statistics to clearly describe the probability of either event.

Unsurprisingly, we’re still rerunning 1938.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_flood_of_1938
(Checking these cycles is like shooting fish in a barrel. I simply googled ‘California 1938 rain’ and sure enough, a record-breaker. You don’t need theories when you’ve got cycles.)

Gotta marvel at all this rain.
In Australia the whole AGW story a few years ago was all about incessant drought. It seems to barely stop raining here since then….. and most farmers are happy about that, in spite of occasional flooding.

Allways a good work, Anthony.
Something similar is appening here in NW Italy, with a strong vortex centered on the Ligurian Sea (Northern Thyrrenian Sea).
PS I’ve been there back in 1999, I remember Northern California as a very beautiful country; I’ve also spent a few hours in Sacramento at the Bureau of Mine and Geology…

Here in Blighty, we are all excited that we have recently received 2″ of rain in some areas!

polistra says:
Unsurprisingly, we’re still rerunning 1938.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_flood_of_1938
(Checking these cycles is like shooting fish in a barrel. I simply googled ‘California 1938 rain’ and sure enough, a record-breaker. You don’t need theories when you’ve got cycles.)
Indeed, the first thing I thought when I saw this was “global cooling”. As the atmosphere cools it will start dumping it’s water content.
Start writing articles now debunking more claims “extreme weather” BS from weeping Bill & co.
I’m sure they’re already writing some crap blaming this on global warming before the rain has even fallen.

so enjoy your weather and if others need to call it climate…what the heck

Reminds me that while I was driving through northern California on vacation in the mid 70s. I was driving down US101 after leaving Eureka when the highway took a more inland route. When coming around a curve there was suddenly a deep valley to the left. There was a sign on the right saying ‘High Water Mark’ for some floods maybe 10 years back or so. That valle’ was so deep I could barely see a small creek at the bottom. Must have been a couple 100 feet or more down to the creek. I think it was the Russian river? I grew up in western Oregon so the mountains on the west coast are familiar too me and that was no ravine, it was a deep valley. I still find it hard to believe.
I wonder if that flooding was caused by the same kind of event described here.

Bob: I have relatives in the UK, so keep up with the new there. Saw the BBC news shouting about 2″ of rain in 24 hours, checked my weather station and on the sam day, we had 2.5″ … just a normal day in the life, here in sunny Oregon.

So how much energy will be release into space?
How much of that energy will be what could be considered more than normal?

There’s some prime Bigfoot habitat in the Trinity Mountains. Will the Greenies be mounting a rescue mission for this endangered species?

I remember the New Year’s day flood in ’97 very well in greater Sacramento. Everyone was watching the American River, and the dang Cosumnes almost washed my neighborhood in the southern ‘burbs away.
I also remember the ’86 storms when water was coming over the top at Folsom dam for at least a few hours. I was working downtown Sacramento at the time, and when I got out of town that day to go home, I said to myself if it was still raining in the morning, I wasn’t even going to try to go downtown, because even if I got in, I might not get out again.

At least it will be snow above 6000′ which reduces the risk of flooding.
The NOAA WRF gives less precipitation, about 5″ to 7″ in 24h
Some nice snow maps here:
http://www.meteoexploration.com/snow/snowmapsUS.html
http://www.meteoexploration.com/forecasts/Sierra-at-Tahoe/

Les Johnson says:
November 28, 2012 at 8:12 am
…Ah heck, why even try. Even it just rains, its the fault of AGW.
____________________________________
And if it is too dry it is the fault of AGW and if it is too cold it is AGW and if it snows it is AGW….
Can we blame the stupidity of politicians on AGW too?

Hi Terry, Yep, the sign was from the ’64 flood. It was very impressive. All land routes were cut off for more than a month. The army had to create their own roads and temporary bridges to finally get in. It was a real challenge to get support back into the hill communities. There was an aircraft carrier offshore after a week or two, but it was longer before helicopters could fly. When they did finally reach some of the small communities they found that the local fixed wing aircraft had already gotten there (landing on a section of road).

Hope Willis doesn’t get stranded. West Sonoma county can get some serious flooding.

Sorry. Here is the correct link.
http://www.cnrfc.noaa.gov/storm_summaries/jan1997storms.php

For those of you us who obsess over water supply:
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/resapp/getResGraphsMain.action
An interactive graphic that tracks CA Reservoir Levels.

Dave Trimble, Ferndale survived just fine. The bridge across to Ferndale was one of the few that didn’t wash out. The flooding was exacerbated by two things. First, there used to be a lot of clear-cutting back then, meaning that in some areas there wasn’t much to hold the runoff back. Second, the rivers tend to run parallel to the coast, so that with a large storm you get rainfall over the entire watershed at the same time. Flood waters come up fast. There’s no time for warnings and no time to decide to get out.
A bit OT, but I remember as a kid spending the night in a pullout in the Big Thompson canyon in CO. My father, the next day, said that he couldn’t sleep for listening to the creek to see if it was rising. A couple of years later, a storm sat over the upper basin. The resulting rain overwhelmed the dam near Estes Park and a number of people in the canyon didn’t make it. Some were never found. The thought of being in a narrow canyon when the water’s rising is beyond scary.
In the ’64 flood, all rivers north of S.F into western Oregon were like that.

Dave Trimble says: “As far as I know nothing has been done to prevent the same thing from happening again.”
What would you propose be done, Dave? This is the human mental fallacy that comes up over and over. That we can ‘do’ something about overwhelming forces of nature. Nothing can be done when it rains enough to send the river to 750,000 cubic feet per second as it did in 1964. That flow is enough to fill Lake Shasta, the largest reservoir in California, from dead empty to the top in just about 70 hours.
So what would you propose should be done? I would propose nothing. It is often the answer, we are just not prone to accept it.

I’m currently in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The main rain just finished coming through here.
Brief heavy rain and a couple of gusts, now light rain.
This is residual “Sandy Superstorm Hype” judging by what just came through.
It didn’t even qualify as a “storm” in my book, just rain.
I won’t be surprised to hear about something “unprecedented” about this weather in the local lefty news.
Butte County looks to be getting a good wetting. But like here, it might not last very long.

for a real California flood, google the 1861-1862 floods

I’ve just seen the update. I remember much more impressive storm trains from when I was young. Maybe we’re entering a decade or two where such things will become common again? After all, the far north of CA was hit with significant flooding in ’55, ’64, and ’68. I remember that when growing up (’53-’72) it rained heavily every winter, a pattern that has certainly not continued after I left the region.

Uh oh… the sun just broke through….
Holes in the Clouds !!! Help !!
Yes it’s a Rotten Pineapple Express full of holes !!
“Unprecedented” after all.
Since the sun is out, I’m going out for a walk to survey the damage…
so far I’m not impressed. Too bad it stopped… we can use the rain.

“That sort of “blame the witches” thinking went out with the middle ages.”
Yea, it went out, but came right back – rebranded.
At one time we had indeed started moving away from mythical explanations for natural phenomena like rainbows and whatnot towards scientific explanations and reasoning, but just when one might have thought science and reason were dominating over mysticism and fear along comes global warming, radical environmentalism, and precautionism. Even some “scientists” are preaching the new religion and look at us now, on the verge of regulating CO2 as a pollutant. Some future school teacher will one day be lecturing on the rocky path to reason and point to this period as one of the back slides. Yes, I’m optimistic that we’ll get there one day. I’m sure I’ll be long gone by then.

I’m disappointed – but not surprised – that snow levels will rise so high but at least this series of storms will do wonders for our water storage.

McComber, From Wikipedia:
Many floods occurred later in the city of Sacramento and other low lying cities along the Sierra born rivers due to hydraulic mining at locations in the foothills e.g. malakoff diggings in which sludge runoffs purportedly raised the river beds in the valley below, an additional 2 ft.
Hydraulic Gold mining became a hot topic for the time and was eventually stopped by Ca. Lawmakers. Malokoff diggings is now a State Park missing a whole mountain due to the massive water jets that can still be seen there. Well worth the visit. Camping allowed, the old city still stands.[4]

I lived in Artesia (southern Cal) when I was 12 and I remember huge floods and people going down the streets in small fishing boats. I have a few peictures even.

News flash this is just another Lunar declinational surge in the global circulation, the moon is maximum North declination today, 11-29-2012, for this 27.32 day cycle. The real kicker that causes the extra rainfall and larger storm, greater wind intensity is that we are having a heliocentric conjunction with Jupiter on December 3rd, which is adding extra ionic energy gradient across the frontal boundary.
There is a charge up period for the five days before synod conjunction, that drives positive ions from the equator into the mid-latitudes, that peaks at maximum declinational extent, then as the moon starts to move South again, it drags in the (negatively – charged) cold polar air mass to wring the moisture out of the (positively + charged) fetch of tropical air giving rise to the enhanced rainfall rates and resultant totals.
As this system moves East, Texas will probably see some of this rainfall, and by the 2nd and 3rd the position of the tropical fetch of moisture will be poised over the Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and Mississippi, area and spawn a winter outbreak of tornadoes, just as the synod conjunction with Jupiter passes peak alignment and enhances the effect, so expect the severe weather to extend on to the East coast the 4th and 5th as well.
Most extreme weather events are the result of these outer planet enhancements of the normal lunar declinational tidal effects, which is why we are having a lull in hurricanes (no conjunctions till fall, mid winter) and severe tornado outbreaks the past couple of years with Saturn synods with the earth in March 22 2010, April 3rd 2011, April 15th 2012, and April 28th 2013, driving the intense tornado outbreaks in the springs.
CO2 has nothing to do with it, check the dates for past severe weather events with the heliocentric (Synod) conjunctions with the outer planets, much is explained and it adds a lot to the ability to forecast severe weather years in advance, try it you will like it.

OssQss, Graeme M, more soylent green:
Climate scientists don’t use the 14 or 15 C. or any other temperature for determining how much/how fast the world has warmed.
What they use is deviations from a baseline in each measured location; the baseline is specific to the location; it is the average of temperatures at that location over an agreed-upon baseline period, e.g., 1950-1980. The deviations are called “anomalies.” In this context, “global mean temperature” refers to an anomaly, not a temperature; it is the average of current anomalies at all measured locations. It is a “temperature” in the sense that rising/falling anomalies imply rising/falling temperature, whatever the temperature may be. (There’s more to the averaging than I’ve indicated, but what I’ve indicated is the basic idea.)
The fact that, in some other context, an actual temperature, such as 14 C. or 15 C. is called “global mean temperature” has nothing to do with this.
I find it remarkable that anyone who didn’t even know this basic fact would have the nerve to write for publication, but this seems to me to be the situation with Kumar in American Thinker.

Very little rain in San Rafael so far

eyesonu says:
November 29, 2012 at 9:13 pm
What you have written in your comment is interesting. I will be watching next weeks weather.
Since the concept of the planetary alignments is somewhat beyond my reach, could you direct me to a more detailed description with some graphics for the “beginner” on this?
Links to part of 102 posts, of my and others blog comments, references, and four lengthy pages of charts, a couple of movies, and graphs that can be found here: http://research.aerology.com/
http://research.aerology.com/lunar-declinational-affects-on-tornado-production/
http://research.aerology.com/aerology-analog-weather-forecasting-method/
http://research.aerology.com/natural-processes/galactic-perspective/

[snip. Your ad hominem trolling is unwelcome. — mod.]

Brandy Creek, CA, got 23 inches from this “Pineapple Express”. The forecasters, who said up to 20 inches was possible, were right. Even Anthony’s expectations were exceeded!