UPDATE: Added this HiDef imag showing a trio of lows (commas shaped clouds) in the Gulf of Alaska and southward:
There’s lots of buzz here in Northern California about a series of upcoming storms starting today and through the weekend that are expected to bring gusty winds and significant rain. So much rain in fact, that there is likely to be flooding. Some reports have my area of NorCal getting as much as 20″ of rain (~75% of the normal seasonal total). I think that is over-forecasted, but it certainly is a possibility.
I remember one similar event in the El Niño years of the 1990’s, a “March Miracle” that dropped ~17″ of rain in a 24 hour period in the mountains just east of me at a DWR weather station called “Four Trees” above the Feather River Canyon. It was such an anomaly that former California State Climatologist Jim Goodridge and I set out to see if maybe the rain gauge had a urinal attached or some other such issue. It turned out that the station was fine.
The setup of this series of storm systems in not unlike that event though, a strong, deep, Arctic low will guide the storms with its rotation right into Northern California as an “Atmospheric River” (AR) or “Pineapple Express” as we often call it.
TWC writes:
Amazingly, according to NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL), a strong AR can transport as water vapor up to 15 times the average flow of liquid water at the mouth of the Mississippi River!
Suffice to say, if an AR stalls over a particular area, significant flooding can be the result. In fact, a study by Ralph et al. (2006) found ARs responsible for every flood of northern Calfornia’s Russian River in a 7-year period.
According to NOAA/ESRL, 30-50% of the average annual precipitation in the West Coast states typically occurs in just a few AR events. With that in mind, one such AR is poised to soak parts of the West Coast this week.
The Quantitative Precipitation Forecast (QPF) model for this event is quite striking, putting the most significant rainfall into Butte County (where I live), Tehama County, and Plumas County from about Midnight Thursday to 10AM PST Friday as seen in these two plots:
That works out to ~ 5 inches in a 12 hour period for those two hotspots in NE Butte County. This image below shows the 5 day total expected rainfall courtesy of the NOAA NWS Hydrometeorological Prediction Center.
That should place some significant strain on the Feather River and Russian River watersheds.
There’s also concern over burn areas from summer fires that may get so saturated that mud and debris flows might be issues:
NWS Sacramento has prepared a video briefing:
Note that no place does NWS say there’s any connection to climate, CO2, or global warming. But just watch, the first news report of some related event or disaster will likely prompt those political activists that want to make you believe things like this are “unprecedented” and exacerbated by “global warming” to make some connection for their purposes.
My local newspaper, the Enterprise Record has a good editorial today about preparedness and Hurricane Sandy. I especially liked this part:
Most of us live in an environment of asphalt and sturdy buildings, with nature tamed into lawns and shrubs and shade trees. Even our “natural” parks are pretty polite places. We throw the switch and the lights come on. We turn the tap, and water comes out of the faucet. Nature is distant and remembered through a romantic mist.
(Read it all here.)
Which is why when political activists like Bill McKibben try to stir up emotions over routine weather events, he is often successful at convincing the gullible that somehow, the weather has changed and turned more sinister, and that people are to blame.
That sort of “blame the witches” thinking went out with the middle ages.
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McComber, A suggestion for CA would be to not build in a flood plain. A lot of subdivisions down LA way are and will flood if there’s a repeat of ’38. A lot of the Sacto suburbs are completely dependent on the levees to protect them. Back in 1862, one of the reasons the flooding around Sacto was so bad was that there had been uncontrolled hydraulic mining in the Trinity Alps for a number of years prior. The resulting sediment runoff raised the level of the river beds in Sacto by quite a bit. After the flood, hydraulic mining was banned. IMHO Sacto is still quite vulnerable to any large-scale major rain event.
In the north, there’s a subdivision called Shelter Cove that was created on a small peninsula, the only place the San Andreas comes ashore much north of SF. The soil is fine grind. The slopes are visibly sliding into the ocean.
Just using some common sense in building locations and (simple!) land use rules would go a long ways.
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.
Meanwhile, back in Blighty.
Water: cut out and keep
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.
MComber,
Sorry, no partaking of the local crop – I actually have to work for a living,
What I was trying to point out (poorly I’ll admit) was not that the Eel was less of flood – as you correctly point out it’s 10 times the size of Navarro but the proportional amount of water flowing through that short watershed was “impressive” to say the least.
anyway, as Kbray points out the sun is out and no one is at the range, think I’ll head over and punch holes in paper before the next wave
> I remember one similar event in the El Niño years of the 1990′s, a “March Miracle” that dropped ~17″ of rain in a 24 hour period ….
If that’s the March Miracle I remember, I was San Jose at an event called Connectathon. We were there for something like 12 days working on getting our computers to share files with other vendors (and arch-rivals in the marketplace). This was the tail end of a five year drought and people were wringing their hands about the lack of rain that winter. It rained 11 days of that trip and no one seemed apologetic. The convention hall (not the big one in SJ) roof leaked, I don’t think there were floods in the San Jose area, but some reservoirs filled and mud slides happened in the places where mud used to slide. I don’t think there has been as serious a drought since.
It was probably 1991, wouldn’t be too hard to check.
In another year, a series of storms from Alaska brought snow levels lower and lower and almost into Silicon Valley. Another rainy year raised the Guadaloupe River in San Jose from its normal “you call that a river?” state to flooding that threatened the convention hall. We had a group meeting to talk about the possibility of evacuation, but the water never reached the sand bags. I took photos at a “land office” that had a foot of water in it, and CNN had footage of the same spot that night on their programs.
I haven’t been to a Connectathon in at least seven years, but I learned a lot about Northern California weather during them. They finally fixed the roof as part of the preparation for the 1998 El Nino. The weather for that week was pretty boring.
This happens once or twice every couple of years.
Two years ago the 14 inch bullseye was right over us….we got 21 feet of snow in 3 days. It was later season so there was already a good base too.
I saved the qpf jpg and I have awesome pics from that one.
“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.
MikeP,
I could agree with not building in a flood plain, however that would include the entire Central Valley of California, so probably not. During the 1862 floods a lake formed that was estimated to be from 300-400 miles long and 50-70 miles wide. While it is true that hydraulic mining exacerbated localized flooding, the floods of 1862/63 were caused by massive amounts or rain for a period of over four weeks.
Are we still vulnerable? Certainly. The only reason we did not have catastrophic flooding in January 1997 was that the rain stopped. Oroville dam was within 8 hours of increasing releases from 160,000 CFS to 300,000 CFS when the rain stopped. Since Sacramento levees were already at the top, the additional water would most likely have resulted in widespread overtopping of levees in the region.
Remember, all of the valley is filled with silt from storm run off! There is no really safe place when the pineapple express in running full from the west. It does make a great place to grow nearly any kind of crop you might desire though.
PS: No water (or hydraulic mine tailings) from the Trinity Alps will reach Sacramento. The runoff from the Trinity Alps flows into the Trinity or Klamath Rivers.
“… comma-shaped clouds …”
Starting to look more like @-signs than commas. In any case, very strongly punctuated weather patterns!
http://www.goes.noaa.gov/GSSLOOPS/wcwv.html
Roger Knights says:
November 28, 2012 at 9:48 am
It’s just started to rain in SW Seattle.
Are you sure?
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/022051.html
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.
Every year we hear the [snip] in California whining about the teeny, tiny bit of fluff they call rain they get each fall. Man up. Grow a pair and head north 1000 miles and see some real rain. Every year we get a couple of Kalifornians step outside at the wrong time. Single drop hits em and they drown less we start CPR.
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’m one of the few jumping up and down and cheering about this. I have been dying for some real weather.
Mind you, some places (parts of Stockton and Sacramento) are not, shall we say, *ideally* sited for this kind of thing.
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.
Superstorm Sammy? Anyway, what are the chances that this is the event that submerges Sacremento? That looks like a bit of rain; so I was curious. Then there’s the mudslides. Just figure an expectation is needed to inform beforehand, while expecting ‘climate change’ agitprop afterward. Well, that combined with every level of government incompetence in the reaction.
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.
H.R. says:
November 28, 2012 at 12:19 pm
Get out the snorkels.
(FEMA might just see fit to order in 100 trainloads of Brawny paper towels. Your tax dollars at wor
—————————————————————————————————
Well H.R.. they will really save you when you find out Homeland security is transporting you to the same location where they shipped their millions of rounds of hollow point bullets.
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.
Let me clarify something. I do not mean that anyone says that the global anomaly (of, say) 0.52 is the “global mean temperature.” It’s just that the term “global mean temperature” comes up in the context of talking about the anomaly.
Very little rain in San Rafael so far
San Francisco Peninsula:
2nd wave pineapple express:
Just a trickle so far.
At least 3 waves predicted.
So far it’s been a Swiss Cheese Express, full of holes.
For me anyway.
This is not a typical California winter storm that rains solid for several days.
Hoping for more solid continuous rain.
Richard Holle says:
November 29, 2012 at 12:11 am
============
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?
UPDATE FROM NORTHERN CALIFORNIA:
Human activities cause reduction in projected rainfall from Pineapple Expresses.
Still not raining here. 9:53pm PST