From NASA Goddard:
The United States has seen a tale of two extremes this year, with drenching rains in the eastern half of the country and persistent drought in the west. A new visualization of rainfall data collected from space shows the stark contrast between east and west for the first half of 2015.
The precipitation data shown here, from Jan. 1 through July 16, is from the joint NASA-Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Global Precipitation Measurement mission. Accumulated rain totals are shown in different colors: 0 to 1 inch is light blue, up to 12 inches is green, up to 20 inches is yellow, and up to 40 inches is red. Purple shows an up to 76 inches in southern Louisiana, central Illinois, and a swath of Texas and Oklahoma that all saw severe flooding associated with heavy rainfall this spring and summer.
The accumulated precipitation product visualized here begins on Jan. 1, 2015, and runs through July 16, 2015. This visualization shows the heavy rainfall throughout Northern Texas and across Oklahoma as well as the drought in Southern California. Credits: NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio.
The GPM mission’s Core Observatory satellite launched February 2014, and unites precipitation data from an international network of 12 satellites into a single dataset. The result is NASA’s Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for GPM, or IMERG, data product, which seamlessly shows rain and snowfall across world in 30-minute timesteps.
Download the full data visualization from NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio
The pattern is a reflection of the increased meridional flow of the Circumpolar vortex.
I spoke to a Cattlemen’s conference in Austin Texas in 2011 during the drought, showed the pattern and predicted the end of the drought, as has occurred.
Too bad NASA and NOAA don’t know the basics of climatology, but then they are climate scientists who don’t know or understand the larger patterns and dynamics of climate. This lack is then further distorted by a political bias to their science.
Gee, I wonder if the Sooper Jeniuses at NASA noticed that Texas was one of those places with severe and persistent drought, only has had lot of rain.
Raining in Florida right now. The
grassweeds are growing well.Where is the analysis?
http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov/
Please remember circulation in winter.
http://vortex.accuweather.com/adc2004/pub/includes/columns/newsstory/2015/650x366_03251421_hd21.jpg
Ozone distribution shows the current circulation.
http://exp-studies.tor.ec.gc.ca/ozone/images/graphs/o3_hrmaps/current.gif
Really nice monsoon season in Tucson this year, rain comes on almost a daily basis, cools things off and makes Summer a very pleasant experience. Also noticed that the 100 degree days of May were totally missing. Pool didn’t heat up to a reasonable level until late June, usually mid-May. Certainly nothing to complain about hereabouts. Looks more like global cooling, though the Winter was also unusually mild- only one fire in the fireplace in December.
For the uninformed, there have been days (2004) when the daytime high in January has been 41 F.
“This visualization shows the heavy rainfall throughout Northern Texas and across Oklahoma as well as the drought in Southern California.”
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Must be getting old. I’ve heard it all before.
Albert Hammond – “It Never Rains In Southern California”
Stevie Ray Vaughan – “Texas Flood”
Let us see forecast circulating in North America.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2015/08/07/0000Z/wind/isobaric/700hPa/overlay=temp/orthographic=-23.54,61.00,347
That map shows clearly why whats been happening over NW Russia has been taken my interest. There have been area’s of low pressure sitting around that area for at least a month now. lt will be interesting to see what happens should this set up last as we move towards the winter. Because its sending cold air to just the right place to set up Europe with a bitterly cold winter. Should a blocking high form over northern europe during the winter. Also its given me new insights as to how the weather patterns could have been set up during the ice age.
The NASA map showing the pattern of extra rain in the east and lack of rain in the west is very similar to the annual temperature patterns as well with cold in the east and warm in the west . As long as there is a warmer than normal eastern and central Pacific ocean SST, an EL Nino and the warm ” blob” of warm water in the North Pacific , this situation will continue.
Seems it never rains in Southern California
Seems I’ve often heard that kind of talk before
It never rains in California, but girl, don’t they warn ya
It pours, man, it pours
Especially when El Nino kicks in……
“They tell me the fault line runs right through here.` (California Earthquake – John Hartford, Mamas and the Papas.)
Everything is just fine: too much rain in the east plus too few in the west equals a normal average CONUS precipitation. That’s the way the warmistas do their statistics with temperature, so it can’t be wrong with rain, can it???
The thing is, no Climate Alarmist predicted that there would be high rainfall from Texas into New England for spring and early summer. Everyone knew California would be dry; but no one predicted the deluge in the Southern Plains to Great Lakes.
The Alarmists are doing what they accuse skeptics of – mixing weather with climate.
Wow! NASA’s sensors really suck. 50 miles west of DC they have me around 20 when I’m at 31.
Again I must submit the easy solution, similar to my entry regarding sea level changes. I totally have the easiest, low cost solution for rising sea levels, and California droughts. Death Valley in eastern California is as much as 282 feet below sea level and has an area of about 3,000 square miles. All that is required is a suitable sized pipeline from the nearby Pacific ocean, running over the mountains and terminating so it drains into the deepest point in Death Valley. Once a pumping system is put in place and the sea water begins to flow downhill, gravity will take over and a constant flow of water will be established, lowering the ocean level slowly, and gradually filling the Death Valley basin. The new inland lake would be non-tidal, so the salt would settle out, providing a potential huge fresh water supply for California, and the cooler lake surface would have an effect on the regional temperature, reversing global warming. For the first time, humans could test the effect by adjusting and regulating the flow into the new lake, increasing its size to cool things, decreasing it if things get too cool. Once the lake reaches an adequate volume, fresh water would settle and also could be pumped into the California aquifer, even utilizing local river systems, to support irrigation and consumer needs for millenia.
The EPA would never allow you to destroy an ecosystem (death valley).
Sounds like a good idea. Run with it!
“lowering the ocean level slowly, and gradually filling the Death Valley basin. The new inland lake would be non-tidal, so the salt would settle out, providing a potential huge fresh water supply for California”
Salt does not settle out. The great salt lake in Utah is also none tidal and yet it has been filed with salt water throughout recorded history and according to geologist it has always been full of salt water. Another example is the Salten Sea in southern California. The sea was formed when a leeve broke on the Colorado river. The Colorado river flowed uncontrolled for over a year into the salten sink creating the lake. The lake was originally filled with fresh water. Now it is salt water and the salinity is slowly climbing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea
Looks rather normal to me and not extreme at all. Go to wikipedia and search Pedocal. The page you will be taken to has a little gif map of Pedocal soils (west US) and Pedalfer soils (east US) with the little red line in between being the demarcation of 30 inches annual precipitation, i.e. east of the red line is greater than 30 inches and west of the red line is less than 30 inches. This has been known since 1938!
Ha ha
The map shows a lot of rain where I live in Washington, but we have had an extremely dry year for us. It also shows lots of accumulation in normally dry places like Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, so the division of east versus west doesn’t rally hold water, so to speak
Thank you so very much for this. I have been observing rainfall here in Iowa for the past year and have seen storms approach our area just north of I-80 on the Mississipi River time and again, only to split up around Des Moines or wash out just twenty miles west of us. You can see this phenomenon on the map as an east-west line of yellow all the way across the state and following almost exactly the path of I-80 in the midst of all the red. I thought I was either paranoid or nuts. This map confirms my observations beyond a doubt.
Now, if someone would only explain what causes this. There’s a nuke plant just twelve miles downstream and another sixty miles to the west. Those and the interstate (the busiest road in the country) seem to be possible explanations. The river may play some part in the washing out of rain as it enters our county from the west, especially since it flows almost east-west here. But I don’t know enough science to make an argument for any of these.
Whatever the reason, our local crops are suffering while the rest of the state is looking at a record harvest. Very disconcerting.
Creeper: definitely not the nuke plant. The better part of the US’s 100+ nuke plants are in the present wet zone and they not affecting the rains in any way. Look at the jet stream graph that Ren posted at 11:44 P.M. There can be very sharp demarcations of weather patterns due to the jet stream. Iowa is right at the demarcation line. Terribly sorry to hear about your crops. I have farmer friends in Nebraska and understand how the vagaries of weather can be boom or bust for the farmer.
So the southeastern US is largely swamp and the southwestern US is largely desert. Is this really news? I would think that both the Bald Cypress and the Saguaros and Joshua Trees have been around for a loooong time.