We’ve known that the USA is in for a bi-coastal blast of cold air, snow, and heavy rains, but this map by Jesse Farrell shows just have much of the contiguous USA have below freezing temperatures this morning.
Here is a summary of temperatures seen this morning by states:
- All States except Florida (80% of US Land) are less than 32°F
- 25 States (30% Land) Below 0 °F
- 6 States Below -20°F
Of course, though not seen in the map above, Alaska has subfreezing temperatures, and Hawaii has subfreezing temperatures on the mountain peaks of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea -not unusual for this time of year, but it is important not to exclude the 49th, and 50th states from any discussion about the USA.
Meanwhile, a once in a decade storm will hit California this weekend.
And… lower arctic sea ice area I suppose.
You might want to check that. Currently, Arctic sea ice extent is pretty much where it has been at this time of the year during this decade.
I checked. The ice area is low-ish.
The heat has to go somewhere.
Paul Westhaver,
May be my misunderstanding, but not sure what you mean. What heat is going where?
It is lowish, but around where it has been at this time of year for the past several years.
And it is increasing rapidly over the past two weeks or so.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Menicholas,
Thanks for the response. DMI is one of my favorite websites. I understand that ice is “low-ish.” it was the comment about the heat that I was asking about. Not a climate scientist, but my thought was that because of the “low-ish” ice and warmer surface temperatures, and the fact that it is dark in the north, that a lot of that heat is radiating to space, or cooling.
By “lowish” i think you mean lowest it has ever been for this time of year since we started measuring it.
Happer’s comment on Artic sea ice.
Artic Sea ice is surrounded by land, it can never increase but only decrease.
Remarkably, the southern tip of Iceland and a small portion of the western coast of Greenland are currently a degree or two above freezing due to a warm moist blast of air originating from the Caribbean. Along with the heat there has been a lot of humidity pumped up there lately from these persistent meridional air flows.
Live global air currents, temp and humidity at all elevations at nullschool.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-76.58,50.47,451/loc=-54.670,66.277
Just click on the word “earth” in the lower left hand corner if you want to adjust the settings for windspeed, elevation, RH, particulates etc. If you click on the globe you can then spin it around and zoom in and out.
This is an amazing resource I think everyone here would be well advised to check out.
SC
A other good resource is the Stormsurf global jet stream forecast map.
A week ago it was pointing out to me that N America was in for a “ice age” scale Arctic blast.
Taxed,
It hit us hard here in the Pacific NW. Wed night was below zero F, but today we’ve warmed up and the overnight low will be a balmy 12 degrees F, which is what it is now. It’s sunny today, but the wind chill makes it feel like two F. Lack of clouds tonight promise more chilliness. But next week we’re supposed to be in the banana belt, with highs above freezing. That however means rain, which brings the danger of black ice. Will take a long time for all of our snow to melt.
This winter harks back to the 1960s and ’70s, during the Great Global Cooling Scare. In December 1968, WA State recorded its coldest temperature. In my part of OR, it hit 35 below F on the same day, which wasn’t a record.
If CO2 is keeping those frigid nights from happening again, then I’m all for generating more, but alas, that essential trace gas has a negligible effect on global temperature.
Thanks, SC, that is amazing.
Chimp
The cause of this Arctic blast is a large blocking high sitting over Alaska/ NE Russia area.
Which is driving warm air into the Arctic but pushing cold air down across N America. Expect over the next few days so heavy snowfall across the USA as warm moist air invades this pool of cold air.
Yes when these type of weather patterns turn up more often then climate cooling is on the cards.
lts when this type of weather patterning goes into overdrive is what l believe was a major tigger to the cause of the last ice age.
Chimp: looks like you’ll get moisture when the ‘river’ hits CA.
Taxed,
Blocking highs in the Arctic have been implicated in two of the most ferocious winters of the LIA, ie 1709 and 1740. The coldest winter in Europe (at least) in the past 500 years was 1708/09, which had a big effect on world history. It’s possible, for example, that Great Peter might have lost to Charles XII at Poltava had the previous winter been less harsh, and thus that Muscovy could have remained a minor backwater rather than becoming the mighty Russian Empire.
As for 1740, this prediction based upon wiggle-matching was off by just one year:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/18/two-years-to-a-1740-type-event/
Steve,
Yup. Rain is forecast for one day, then more snow the next. Ugly.
The main water pulse is however forecast to hit CA rather than the PNW, where such events are called the Pineapple Express, as they originate in the vicinity of Hawaii.
If accompanied by warm winds, it’s called a Chinook, the opposite of which (cool winds from the east) is a Walla Walla, names based upon Indian tribes from west and east of the Cascade Mtn. Range.
Having lived 20 years + in Calgary, I know full well about Chinook winds, the best example of which I experienced was when ambient temp. went up 39 deg. C (71 F.) between 07.30 and noon one January(???) morning. This was apparently 1 deg. C. short of the all-time record. We shd remind ourselves that someone, somewhere on this planet is likely having *their* all-time weather record for *something* right now!
The Alarmists — as we have come to expect — cherry-pick every extreme & all-time record that’s useful to their cause and conflate the concoction into ‘Chicken-Little — sky is falling! — alarmist propaganda …. forget the fact that 99.999% of the Rest of the World is **NOT** HAVING ANY EXTREME CLIMATE EVENT AT THIS MOMENT, let alone the same Climate Extreme. Weather is like the ocean: while there’s a hurricane over there, it’s flat as a mill-pond over here!
So-called Extreme Climate Events are surely(??) statistically measurable by Bell-Curve: the issue becomes to what extent (if any) the mean and S.D. change with time within the sample-group. Of course, the Alarmists want us to believe that one day of record-high temperature at the N.Pole is “case-closed” proof of AGW …. but what about contemporaneous record snowfall & temps. in the Sahara? (Correct me if I’m wrong … I’m running on recent cerebral memory.)
Mind you, they will likely convolute themselves into pretzels and claim that the latter extremes are “case-closed” proof of AGW too, but the Court of Public Opinion is likely getting ever more jaded with such argumentation: they can’t have their cake and eat it, and claim cooling is warming. (May we bloggers be blessed for rubbing their noses in the crap they produce.)
Chimp
A more recent example of the same type of blocking was in 2010.
When a Greenland block set up in late November of that year and drove cold Polar air down across the UK.
Which lead to “January snows” in November and help set up England’s coldest December since 1890.
What’s keys to this “Ice age” blocking is that only the northern half pushes into the Arctic, but the rest sits to the south of the Arctic. This way warm air is then pushed up into the Arctic which then allows the Arctic blast to be set up.
SC – Agreed. I have the link on my desktop at work. I amaze my co-workers periodically by calling it up – the graphics are very visually tantalizing! The wind directional flow representations flow in near-real-time, and also CO2 representations (when that option is chosen) are available by clicking the mouse cursor at any spot on the sphere. A pretty fun toy – you can get lost in it, for sure!!
If the boss happens by while it fills the computer screen, well, I work in an Environmental Division – so I just call it research….
Regards,
MCR
Ross King
January 6, 2017 at 1:53 pm
The most powerful example of a Chinook which I recall was during a night when the temperature steadily climbed from sundown to sunrise, by about 40 degrees F, from below zero to above freezing. Your example puts that experience in the shade, so to speak.
Chimp & Ross King,
I live in southeast Virginia where the temps are generally fairly mild but we get some cold and snow in the winter sometimes (like is predicted for tonight, by the way). No Chinook winds, and actually warming to cooling because of the “Polar Vortex”, but back in January 2013 or 2014 (can’t remember, but can look up), we had a drop in temperature of over 52 °F in less than 24 hours. High was in the mid/upper 60s one afternoon and dropped to around 14 degrees the next morning. Probably the most dramatic temperature change I’ve ever experienced, and not even in an extreme part of the world.
Well seeing as everyone is posting their favourite weather sites here is mine. I like the pretty colors 🙂
http://www.findlocalweather.com/weather_maps/temperature_north_america.html
Seriously I always like to see the continental view rather than just a country by country view. Look at all that lovely “Barney” purple coming to say hello and give you a hug.
SC
Thank you very much for that resource.
It’s going to take a long time to even understand what I’m looking at.
Jack Simmons
And minus 20°C in Southern Germany this night. Some pluming went frozen in my daughters house.
But CO2 and climate change made all the cold disappear in the Arctic.
So where did all this cold come from?
“So where did all this cold come from?”
It’s not where the cold went to, it’s where the heat went to be lost to space, and that’s the Arctic. While a bunch of folks were taking about the extraordinary heat anomalies up there, they likely didn’t notice that there is only one place for heat to go this time of year, and that’s into space. Not hot enough to melt ice, so out it goes, and since that heat came up from the southern latitudes, where not enough heat is being created (low sun, low albedo this time of year, etc.), then the lost heat doesn’t get replaced and the hemisphere cools. NSIDC and others were “surprised” by the rapid ice growth in December (50% greater than average), but some old hands were not – open water and imported heat equals record surface cooling and that means rapid freezing. Will be interesting to see how January and February continue – Arctic above 80 degrees latitude is about -20C, higher than normal, but easily cold enough to keep growing ice. Note that Pacific total ice is about normal, only big gap is on the Atlantic side around 80% latitude, and that seems to be filling in nicely over the last few weeks. Watch for some spin after all the alarmism.
I posted a few comments on this over at Tamino’s site, enough calm reasoning and thoughtful questions to get me slandered and then banned. I think they are worried that the alarmist stuff re: “Hottest year ever” is not going to end well…
Does freezing the ice result in any rise in temperature, either water or air?
I have been keenly watching this happen for several weeks now. (See above post)
In addition to massive flows of heat being pumped up to the arctic (and off into space), there has also been quite a bit of moisture traveling along with it. If it falls on sea ice it probably has an insulating effect that may inhibit thickness. If it falls on land however we might witness higher arctic albedo this spring and perhaps even some mass gains on the Baffin Island ice caps.
CO2 is an amazing gas.
Joel, if all else are the same (and of course it’s not) freezing of water to ice would tend to keep the temperature more constant.
Joel: freezing water releases heat.
Joel @11:14
Does freezing the ice …</em"
Should be — Does freezing the water … .
The change to ice does not involve a temperature change – a change of state.
Water temperature drops to the point where freezing occurs.
After it becomes ice, the temperature can then drop more.
Liquid water that becomes solid ice releases energy. This results in a heat transfer from water to air. Such terms as fusion, freezing, and solidification are used. If ice forms on a window (Jack Frost produces intricate patterns; do image search) the term deposition is sometimes used. The term "latent" or "hidden" is used to indicate the energy needed to make a phase change, or change of state.
One will find many instances where the terms are used in a confusing manner.
The trick is to think of what the molecules are doing. Temperature is a measure of the random motion of the molecules. If they are increasing in motion it is because there is heat coming to them. Cooling means the heat transfer is from them to somewhere else.
As things change from gas to liquid, or liquid to solid, heat is released.
Going the other way, heat is absorbed. These are "phase" changes, or change of state.
Boil water. Once it is boiling the temperature stays the same because the heat is being used to change the state from liquid to gas.
Hope that above gives info so you can go and learn more.
That’s easy peasy to answer. According to 97% of Climate Scientists(tm), the cold that we are experiencing is “hidden cold” that has hidden undetected in the abyssal ocean, only to rise to the surface to terrorize life as we know it. The hidden cold has been sharing the abyssal depths with “hidden heat”, Bathybius haecklii, and Polywater. Perhaps the other three kicked the cold out of bed, so to speak.
Very good Neil. I laughed out loud!!
Neil….you got me laughing with that one.
it’s probably just rotten cold.
“.. the cold that we are experiencing is “hidden cold” that has hidden undetected in the abyssal ocean”
Conservation of energy says that this “hidden cold” was forced out of the oceans by the extra heat that went in. Can anybody confirm this? Preferably with a model.
Here is a graphic representation of the mechanism, Neil:
http://www.livescience.com/images/i/000/056/379/original/newtons-cradle.jpg?1377724909
in Maine we say “wicked cold”, Not the same as “rotten cold”, but more like “very, very” cold. It’s going to be wicked cold this weekend, down around -1F at the coast, more like -10F or lower inland and north. That’s a bit extreme for early January, more like average February weather. Most ponds and lakes are frozen over and walkable, even on the coast. After this weekend, most will be drivable.
Neil,
I’m not a scientist or (g*d forbid) a climate scientist, but are you describing a new concept of latent cold?
Is there some sort of global, hidden Vitamin C for this global cold?
Or should we be thinking of a global Umcka cold cure?
Amazing image of the current weather situation in North America (well, most of it, Canada is somewhat clipped but never fear, there aren’t any “hotter” colors up there!).
Such is the way with weather. Climate is doing just fine, IMHO.
Claimed batting average?
.485
http://weather.gc.ca/data/saisons/images/pc_jfm010203_temp.gif
Does that mean that Hawaii will be below freezing also? Or, is that not included in Obama’s 57 state visit?
Hawaii is included in the below freezing states. Mauna Loa is experiencing highs barely above freezing and lows in the 20s F.
Forecast is for low of 21 on Sunday. The main Hawaiian Islands are just barely in the tropics (Midway to Necker Island indeed lie out of them), and there’s nothing between them and the Gulf of Alaska and Aleutians.
HI, like FL, actually has crummy WX a lot of the time. It’s windy, for instance, not to mention hurricanes.
Looks like South Carolina is above 32F on the map. May need to wait an hour for it to catch up…
It was 26 F on top of Mauna Kea just after midnight on Jan 6. Typical temperatures for the summit this time of year, but there is also a snow cover which has lasted for a month so far this winter. An uninterrupted wintertime snow cover harks back to the 80s and before when the snow was steady and good for skiing much of the winter and well into April.
http://louxeng.com/pictures/gemdome%201-6-17.jpg
And yet, on the beach it is a balmy 77 and pleasant. Altitude. Makes all the difference, yet you can’t get that through to the watermellons.
I wonder what my friends would say if I booked a “ski” trip to Hawaii?????
(Just added to my bucket list.)
Yeah but we are forecast to be 40 F (4.5C) early Sunday morning. To us that’s freakin cold.
Break out the Frozen Orange Juice
You might as well be at your neighbors place kitty corner from you, Tom. In Seattle, on Sunday, 1/8, the predicted high is 38F. Well. Don’t bump into the sliding glass door (since it is usually open 🙂 ).
😀
On the fringes of that map, Yuma, AZ, will hit about 74 degrees for a high that day.
West of Chicago this morning -3F.
Just a mile north of Chicago this morning at 7 o’clock it was minus 5 degrees F in my back yard.
And atop Mauna Loa the atmospheric CO2 ppm count is still INCREASING.
And all those freezing temperatures in all 53 states are not affecting the rapid rate of microbial decay of all the dead biomass.
I’m further north than you. It’s forecast to be 29 Sunday morning here in northcentral FL.
Yeah, but back in mid-seventies by Monday, and eighties by Wednesday.
Only one day where it will not get up to seventy all day…it will be 62 or so Sunday.
Personally…I’ll take it, eckspecially after seeing what is going on in the rest of the country.
Tom, here in the Panhandle we are projected to get temps between 29 and 25 degrees tonight and tomorrow night. If that happens then ALL fifty states will have freezing temperatures.
It’s all fine until electric grid collapses
Cold spell in Europe got French grid under severe strain,
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/france/
the UK isn’t far off since the UK depends on imports from France.
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
AND some OCGT is up as well. AND we still have some wind left…not good..at all.
Been predicting this for months. The UK reserve estimated included 2GW French interconnector. Half of that was damaged by a dragging anchor in December and won’t be repaiered until March. French nuclear safety inspections means they have nothing to spare for the other half. Wind stops, then the slightest perturbation will cause blackout. Grid should have ~10 percent spinning reserve for grid inertia. UK effectively has zero.
On positive side in London and the SE England (the most populated part) outside temperature has been steadily rising in the late afternoon; greed frequency has recovered from 49.75 to 50.05 Hz
(hope the airport emergency is over, my relatives are still in the area)
Wouldn’t it be fun if Paris gets 2 meters of snow and an Atctic blast that overloads the grid just in time for O’bummer’s trip there…
will we ever be told how often the huge banks of diesel generators are used when the grid is struggling i wonder ?
ristvan: “then the slightest perturbation will cause blackout.”
Not explicitly; NOT if proper practice and procedure is followed. First step is to shed unnecessary load on the system to the point where a sufficient reserve is re-established.in case of loss of some pre-determined generation capacity (as gens DO on occasion trip) …. next step is “rolling temporary blackouts” or load shedding performed at the substation level. This is normally done until restore of sufficient generation capacity is made to the grid.
All this is part of a “N-1 Contingency Planning” taken by most system operators/power grid real-time control and supervisory agencies.
Of course, YMMV, but we have some level of contingency planing here in the USA and Texas in particular.
Besides, a lot of the London Tube won’t be running tomorrow, and Southern Railways likewise for three days this week. Strikes.
The unions come across as extremely politically motivated.
Now, the unions say it is about safety.
Safety is important, obviously.
The rail industry safety boards say the proposed working systems are completely safe.
Your call.
But if the [largely electric] trains aren’t running, their drain doesn’t exist.
So no black out until Friday . . . .
Auto
More and more disillusioned with politicians not using the power they have, potentially, for the greatest good of the greatest number.
And thanks, vukcevic, for the grid data.
Oh – look!
Not a lot from solar since about 1600 local time – but a chunk from pumped hydro.
Trouble is, the UK isn’t very mountainous; most of our usable hydro is already online, I gather.
I see that the “traditional” nuke/ff plants are running flat out and the solar panels are producing nothing since it is now nighttime. That’s ok, lets close the coal plants anyway. You can’t fix stupid.
Great links Vuk.
I was laughing at the French power consumption graphic hitting the ‘red danger zone’ and thinking “Good on them” for hosting the COP20 farce until I realized that if it goes down people are probably going to die.
No you can’t fix stupid… and the UN’s globalist green movement and those behind it should be held to account at the ICC in the Hague for what they have done.
“people are going to die”
Rough I know, but it is the only way to get the public’s attention about Green Power.
Unfortunately the Main Stream Media in most countries won’t report the deaths or blame something else.
@ur momisugly Vuk… imagine what Europe will experience if the Siberia cold wave continues to move westward. Look how far the western edge has moved in the last 5 days. …https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=159.95,72.58,302/loc=70.885,64.394
Yep. Makes North America look positively lovely
http://www.findlocalweather.com/weather_maps/temperature_north_asia.html
So far it is only as far as Belarus but Poland etc could get hit with it.
Hello. Tonight we had -20 C hear in Warsaw Poland .On southern borders in Silesia region -30 C
Thanks Vuk.
You know how they keep saying that solar generates even when it is cloudy? Well why do some days have 1/8th the solar energy than others? Looks like it does not work so well, in cloudy conditions.
R
Hi Ralf
Solar power density (time rate of extractable energy transfer per unit of area) in the ex-tropical regions is woefully low. Solar electric energy generation is OK for the DIY enthusiasts but not as a major enterprise, and certainly not worth of the taxpayers subsidies.
Ja
Ja
I don’t want to say it
But I told you so
Gobal cooling is here
A cold winter does not make for Global Cooling.
How would you know it is not cooling already
[bring your own results]
This is the third winter in a row where the SMB for Greenland ice has pushed above the average trend line. This years gain is the highest yet at around 110 Gt, and apparently still growing, above the trend line. That is a large change…http://beta.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/
A hot summer makes for Global Warming.
Apart from that “graph”, got anything else?
What is wrong with the graph?
Thats rather odd coming from you given you are always posting graphs and nothing else.
> What is wrong with the graph?
A polynomial fit should never be used for prediction.
If you follow that parabola forward, how long does it take to reach absolute zero?
-14F last night in Denver Metro western suburbs. It’s crept up to 3 this morning with bright sunshine and about a foot of snow.
Stock Show weather!
5F in central Oklahoma overnight. Balmy, compared to Denver. Heat wave compared to points North.
I have been told that Laramie was in the group of coldest ten cities, globally, last night. The amazing this is how much the temperature varies from one part of the city to another.
But, It’s a dry cold.
Meanwhile, the sun has been spot-free for 67% of 2017. Coincidence?
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_512_HMIIC.jpg
I have been checking on this most days for the past few months.
There have been a lot of spotless days over the past month or so.
Still waiting to see the trend chart updated for December…I suspect we will see that the projections are way too high, in spite of being adjusted downwards numerous times over the current cycle.
It will be interesting to see what the coming years have in store.
But I will be happy if we can just find out what is actually happening without a bunch of fake adjusting and misrepresentation.
January 20th…the date that the Earth will emerge from the Ajustocene Epoch?
Mother Nature’s personally debunking global warming…it’s a beautiful world!
…thanks for reminding me, got’a find THAT shaker of salt…
Some people claim
That it’s the warming to blame
But I know
It’s all AlGores fault
If you’re referring to the song you’d be: Searching for my lost shaker of salt
Otherwise we’re sitting kind of smug in the FL right now having endured the yearly 9 months of global warming; we’ve got January mosquitoes this year. We get knocked down a few degrees this weekend (sigh)
Ooooo, MAN! Watch — out — TOM! You’re gonna have to board over that sliding glass door, now. About 500 sick-to-death-of-cold-rainy (or snowy) — weather WUWTers are a HEADED YOUR WAY!
Sigh. Not really. But, some — day, SOOOMMMME DAY!!! I am going to swim in warm salt water again.
“Margaritaville” — Jimmy Buffet
(youtube)
(You can hold the Tequila on mine — just love that lime! Yummy!)
Uh, “you,” is YOU, Tom. Better stock up. 🙂
We’ll be knockin’ on your door come next Wednesday. Marty and Glenn, up above, already have their carry-on packed!
Don’t worry. Liberals will double and triple down on Global Warming no matter HOW cold it gets.
Oh sh.. brrr, it’s so cold outside even in Western-Europe! Could we please get some more CO2? Support the Minnesotans for global warming!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtWIzMY7Dqs
We certainly live in interesting times.
Cult of CAGW: What are you going to believe? What the cult of CAGW (IPCC models/reports and endless ‘climate change’ propaganda media articles) tells you or your own eyes (observations) and/or independent scientific analysis.
http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/coldest-air-since-at-least-1996-to-raise-risk-of-frozen-pipes-water-main-bursts-in-southern-us/70000480
https://www.gismeteo.ru/news/klimat/22236-v-tsentralnuyu-rossiyu-prihodyat-40-gradusnye-morozy/
Record cold in Europe.
Record cold temperatures in Europe this summer.
http://notrickszone.com/2016/08/12/surface-frost-strikes-germany-mid-august-temperatures-shatter-old-records/#sthash.5butIMlM.dpbs
It is just weather, but it’s a great sendoff for the climate fraudsters and their administrators.
Where is the next UN climate beach party?
Beach Party is correct. It will be held in Bonn Germany and presided over by Fiji
It’s a great time of year for an outdoor WH press conference.
Still more proof of the effectiveness Dr. Gore’s Magic Global Warming Elixir.
One side cheers for cold.
The other for warmth.
I’m cheering for cold and wishing for warmth.
We have lost our minds.
Agreed!!!
Remember Robert Frost’s little ditty:
“Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.”
That from a New Englander that knew something of cold.
ENSO “metrics” aside, conditions on the ground are screaming La Nina.
We must be so grateful for global warming. Just think how cold would it have been without global warming?
-4F this morning in our part of California.
Snow totals from last few days storm up to 89″ at some Tahoe areas, 84″ at Mammoth Pass.
Unfortunately, the next storm may bring another 8-12″ water equivalent but with 10k FT freezing levels. At least it’s water I guess.
Even though much of the ground in California is “saturated” and there’s a lot of
flood advisories and flash flood warnings posted for the near term, NOAA, the
USGS and the Department of the Interior are still putzing around in their updates
of the U.S.Drought Monitor:
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/data/pngs/20170103/20170103_usdm_home.png
They can’t seem to give up the never ending climate change California drought
meme when they update the map.
I commented in another article on the California portion of that map, last updated on 3 January. How often do they normally update that map? The days since 3 January (inclusive) have been very wet in most of CA.
Really depends on what constitutes an outbreak from drought conditions(as defined by them) vs short term rain