Partly its because I can’t think of anything else, brain pretty empty, but check this out:
Valid for May 9th. Shows the kind of “split flow” we expected from the Big Niño, storms dividing in the central Pac or so, parts going northeast, often just grazing the Pac NW, so that area ends up drier than normal, whilst a southern branch from the CenPac carries storms to lower latitudes of the West Coast, drenching southern Cal and the Great American Southwest that we live in. Was that too long for one sentence? Well, moving ahead, you can see this pattern in how the non-political red lines diverge in the eastern Pacific from the non-political blue ones to the north, which there is quite a bit of in politics today as well. Well, anyway, it was kind of interesting of me to point this classic “Niño” pattern out to you, even though it is seen in a computer output form that is largely incomprehensible to most. What does it mean for AZ and Sutherland Heights? The red lines down thisaway on most of these maps to this point mean that there will be chances for rain, AND lower than normal temperatures for the first 10 days of May. Nice! The resultant headline is below:
Measurable rain to fall in the Sutherland Heights, Catalina, in May 2016!
OK, got that “scoop” out…. Here’s the link to NOAA from whence the above map came.
BTW, here’s what a split flow storm looks like as it comes into southern Cal. Man, if it was January or Feb, this would be a real gully washer, a “get the sandbags out” kind of storm. I love this map so much!
Valid just ahead, really, for May 4th 11 PM AST. This is the best example output lately and its from yesterday, but who cares. We should see something resembling this come out of the lower latitudes of the Pac. From IPS MeteoStar.
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Now a little more on these kinds of crazy ensemble maps (“Lorenz”, as named here, or more known more generally as “spaghetti” plots)
This kind of map was telling us we had rain threats at this time in April and at the end of the month some 10-15 days in advance, so far in advance that media weather folk would likely consider it unprofessional to make such a prediction so far in advance. Since we’re not worried about being unprofessional here, we have leapt into the void! Just go ahead and say things! Get the story out now!
Today a strong upper level trough with precip in the mountains of central and northern AZ will indeed be occurring today and tomorrow as was indicated by those crazy maps so long ago. The hoped for rain here will not occur.
However, the storm near the end of the month, also indicated way back then, looks even stronger than the present one, and it will reach farther south than today’s, and so will not only bring some rain and very cool air to the central and northern AZ mountains, but likely around us, too!
All I can say about this plot is, “wow” here and then once more in the caption:
Valid at 5 PM AST, April 28th. Wow. The periodic storm threats will continue for AZ for the foreseeable future, which is about two weeks. Temperatures should be moderate, too, for April. Patterns like this also lead to tremendous storms in the Plains States. It might be time to get out there.
In the meantime, step aside; a cold front is upon us, a dry one, unfortunately. Should arrive by noon, bringing some small Cu here and there, some Stratocu piling up against the Catalinas, and maybe some lingering Altocumulus lenticular clouds which we got right now (4 AM) downwind of the Catalinas.
As of 4 AM AST, the 24 h temperature change. The blue blob shows the encroaching cold air.
Barometer will rise, too, as the cooler, denser air piles on top of it. There’ll likely be a brief windshift to the NW, followed by backing to the SW again.
Over the next couple of days, the deep cold air in the interior of a lingering, massive trough will settle over us, dry up top, but enough moisture in the lower layers below to produce eventually deeper Cumulus, though not today, ones likely to reach up to the “glaciation” level, which will be close to -12° C to -15° C in this situation beginning later tomorrow through the April 1st. The bases of the clouds will be near the freezing level.
Glaciation means that ice will form in those Cumulus clouds, and some (snow) virga will drop out the bottom. So, some snow showers or just light rain showers are likely on the Catalinas, maybe a trace or hundredth here, too, beginning later tomorrow through April 1st.
Should be some really pretty deep blue skies, too, cloud shadows producing quilt-like patterns on the mountains, that sort of thing we are so lucky to enjoy here.
As you know, this end of month March “lion” (at least in wind, anyway) was long foretold in the NOAA spaghetti. Remember how we could laugh at model outputs that didn’t have a big trough here at the end of the month?
But now we wait and see if we can drain a cloud or two of a hundredth. Overall rain chances not looking so “strong” now out of this whole several day situation. Dang.
Clouds will be around today, especially after the cold front goes by, but its unlikely they’ll have anything drop out the bottom.
Why?
“2warm4ice”, to be that bit textual.
Model says today’s cloud tops won’t reach -10° Ç, our magic temperature where we can usually start to thinking about ice forming in AZ clouds, those with our usual cool bottoms.
Of course, if you’re really sophisticated, you know that the temperature at which onsets in “continental” Cumulus clouds like we have here in old Arizony, is related to cloud base temperature:
The warmer the cloud bottom, the higher the onset temperature for ice1, “strangely believe it”, as we like to say here after Jimmy Hatlo the cartooonist thought of it first when he was making fun of RIpley’s “Believe It Or Not.”
Now onto the forecasting frontier, forecasting weather patterns way ahead, to far in advance and too specific to be truly professional
Let’s start with something easy. Its gonna warm up real good after this big trough goes by– see spaghetti below, where a big ridge moves over us for a couple of days. It won’t last.
Valid at 5 PM AST, April 3rd. Notice, too, that unlike most of the spaghetti pe degree of chaos introduced by the deliberate errors input at the start, have little effect (as usual). The blue and red contours are bunched really well. So the positions of the ridges and troughs are normally well predicted out to this time.
Then, uh-oh, as Robert Ellis Orrall used to sing, in 192 h, predictability begins to fall apart, but not real bad, and it shows a trough is moving in over us.
Valid at 5 PM AST, April 5th. Red contours are bunched enough so that a nice sized trough in the SW is pretty guaranteed.
Finally, at the extreme end of the medium range forecasting frontier, this:
Valid at 5 PM AST, April 12th. Stormfest Southwest!
Hence, the conclusion that we share that April, will in fact, have measurable rain. Of course, we only average about half an inch in April, as the overall climatology begins a serious a battle against rain heading into the ovenly days of May and June.
The End
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1The old English cloud scientist, Frank Ludlow (1952, Quart J. Roy. (haha, “Royal”, oh my) Meteor. Soc.) noticed this first, then that great Soviet Communist cloud scientist, A. M. Borovikov and his companions did (1961, Israeli Translations). Finally, Rangno and Hobbs woke up and noticed this tendency in 1988, (Atmos. Res.) and then again in 1995 (J. Appl. Meteor.–you’ll have to go quite a ways to find the relevant diagram) in their cloud studies and in comparisons with other ice onset reports.
Imagine, rain! Yep, that’s right. You heard it first here, right or wrong, as we like to say, over and over again because we can’t think of anything else.
After a couple of minutes of intense scrutiny, cloud maven person has decided to wake up and go blogulent that the computer prog showing a huge upper trough over the SW in 13-15 days, March 29-32nd is accurate. Will be cold, too. Little crybaby snow birds might be heading back to Wisconsin or Michigan when this cold spell hits. Just kidding, flat landers! (Actually, they’ll be leaving us due to being little crybabies when the temperature hits the 90s-100s every day, temperatures we true Arizonans laugh at.)
Adding to the pile of “credibility” here is that this March came in like a “lamb” I think. Has to go out as a “lion.” Or so the saying goes. Science and folk lore, that’s what you get here.
Here’s the actual computer forecast of the trough from last evening’s global data as rendered by IPS MeteoStar:
Valid at 5 PM AST, March 29th. Potent trough takes over the whole of the western US. Note the critical wind jet at this height (500 millibars) is over and south of Tucson, a nearly mandatory requirement for cool season rain here. (Unpublished study, Rangno, 1974; covered the whole US, that study, too.
Pretty exciting isn’t it, jet stream way to the south like that?
And this after our too-long-dry-spell pretty much since the first week in January, the dry spell associated with the strong “El-None-yo”, to be sarcastic after ALL the high expectations for copious rains, the incredible wildflower bloom that would be our pleasure to experience this spring following the pounding rains due to the Big Niño meteorologists and media got so excited about.
Poppy hills, down Bowman Road here in Catalina. Yes, we have some poppies, but they’re stunted looking, as are the other wildflowers around, struggling to survive in all the dry air since the fall and early winter rains.
But, no. Moving ahead after draining some emotion…. Thanks for listening.
So’s why CMP going out of what seems to be a long, thin limb here, that other forecasters are afraid of doing, that is forecasting with confidence something so far in advance?
Well, of course its because we got us a pretty darn strong signal again in the NOAA “Lorenz” or spaghetti or “ensemble” plots, where errors1 are deliberately put in the data to see how wildly the outcomes vary. If the outputs don’t vary a lot, then confidence can be high about a forecast. “Varying” is seen in how wildly the lines (contours) on these plots are. Below, an example where there’s not a lot of confidence….
Valid 5 PM, Saturday, March 26th. Really can’t have too much confidence here. Arizona is in there somewhere. This came out a few days ago. Quite a knee-slapper.
(Below we discuss, in contrast, the one from last evening and how we used one of these crazy plots before):
Rememeber, first, how to spell “remember”, and then that’s how we knew for sure a big trough would be over us even 10-two weeks ahead back whenever it was when we got a little rain and it was damn cold for a few days this March.
Valid at 5 PM AST March 29th. Relative bunching of red contours of the 500 millibar height contours indicates forecast confidence can be high for a trough in Arizona and the West in the last couple of days of March. So, I’m going for it.
Since this forecast of a good chance of rain late in the month is likely to be quite accurate, there’ll be no need to update you after today.
The MAIN thing to remember, in a teaching moment, is to not be afraid when a model run comes out with something vastly different than what I just wrote about 5 minutes after I posted this, to wit, this VASTLY different model output based on data just 6 h after the model outputs above. I laughed at it, since spaghetti rules, not a single model output. That’s the teachable moment, I think.
Valid at 11 PM AST March 29th, almost the same time as the model output showing the giant trough in the West. Not here though. From a spaghetti frame of mind, a real laugher, this one. (I think.)
The End
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1 Hahah, as though we don’t make enough of them when we vote and stuff; remember that saying about why there’s an eraser on the top of a pencil? Very profound. And, “hey” look at the state of this planet? We need an awfully big “eraser” these days.
I dropped everything I was working on, a kindle-sized science piece, after I saw what is being presented to us today. Wanted to generate some happiness out there; its just who I am, except maybe when I am talking about cloud seeding. Then I get mad about all the shenanigans that have happened in that field, and I want you to be mad, too. (Kidding, sort of).
Check this out in the annotated spaghetti if you don’t believe me:
Valid in 14 days, 5 PM AST, February 28th I can’t wait! Its finally happening, that wet Niño period we’ve been waiting for all year, and have only seen sputtering in starts and stops.
Next, look at this behemoth, Mothra-sized jet street, oozing into the southern portion of the West Coast, the kind of thing we’ve been waiting for with the Godzilla-sized Niño, to allude to more monster movies, ones you probably went to, as a matter of fact. From IPS MeteoStar, these delicious progs valid in about two weeks:
Valid Monday, February 29th, 11 AM.Valid Monday February 29th 11 PM AST.Valid at 11 AM AST, Tuesday, March 1st.Valid 11 PM AST, Tuesday, March 1st. Oh, my, this is incredible how far south this powerful jet is, scooping loads of moisture toward Baja, southern Cal and Arizona. This would be something if it materializes….
Now let us recalll that the models had almost exactly these kinds of forecasts back in early January, as Catalinans enjoyed some beneficial rains associated with storms looking like those expected with Niño winters.
Recall, too, that in an overzealous blog, your cloud maven person announced the destruction of California in a couple of weeks due to those incredible progs; “FEMA get ready!” Homes to fall in ocean, couple feet to foot and a half of rain in the last two weeks or so alone. Well, there was only a little less than two feet of rain in that predicted time, and it was WAY up in the northern fringes of Cal. Homes, are falling into the ocean, though, due to the big surf that’s been occurring with big storms, too far off to make it rain much in Cal south of Frisco, though. Still going on, too.
Now about what’s ahead, way ahead.
Once again I announce the destruction of portions of California due to exceptional storms now on the horizon in the models. And, its not too late for those kinds of storms–remember what happened at the tail of February into the first few days in March 1938 in southern California and Arizona.
Why possibly make the SAME mistake again?
Because we got us such a BIG Niño, and….I can’t remember what else. Oh, yeah, I think it can’t be held off forever as far as generous SW rains go and I have been looking for this to happen.
Besides, let us, too, remember the 97-98 giant Niño. Remember how it appeared that not so much was happening into JANUARY except north of ‘Frisco in Cal, then the colossus hit all of the State and AZ in late January through February ’98?
Well, we’ve seen the northern portion of Cal get slammed, along with the Pac NW so far.
What if the transition to the blasters farther down the coast is a month late, in late February into March instead of late January into February as in ’98? Could be.
That’s what I am thinking/kind of hoping for, too.
These “outlier” model predictions from the 06Z (11 PM AST global data) that just came in a couple of hours ago–there’s been NOTHING like them in ALL of the prior model runs, so that’s why they’re outliers at this point I think–represent the “REAL DEAL.” This is it.
The Cal calamity expected in January begins with these model runs, that is, occurs at the end of February into March. And who knows how long after that? Remember, the best of the Niños is in late winter and SPRING!
Disclaimer. Cloud Maven Person is overly worked up here, and credibility naturally goes downward if being worked up is going up.
This lowered credibility is due to subjective internal influences such as looking for a return of those astounding progs that came out in early January ever since.
But, I am SURE this time (like a compulsive gambler would say), the above progs have got it right now. That Niño storms we have been looking for all this time will start to arrive before much longer.
“Yep, rain’s on the way; yay”, to burst out with a little poetry there. But, it will be awhile before it gets here. See caption below.
Valid at 5 PM AST, February 21st. Pretty clear that undercutting flow from the lower latitudes will slip into Arizona bringing much needed rain to Catalina beginning around this time.12:55 PM. Wavy Cirrus showing waves in the atmosphere. Kind of reminds you of driving down the old Tangerine Road before they ruined it by filling in all the dips and rises that made it a fun drive at 50-60 mph, if you could drive that fast on it! I remind the reader that the speed limit is 45 mph on Tangerine Road. So, this is only a fantasy description of how much fun it would have been if you COULD drive that fast.
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Non-meteorological entry:
Gas now down to 21 cents a gallon in 1967 dollars (that’s what that $1.53 a gal here in Catalina now converts to in ’67 dollars). Here’s a history of gas prices, FYI.
As of February 6, 2016. This seems a little crazy.
Remember when it rained so much in early January here? We were so excited, Big Niño being underway! And all the washes were running then?
Here what this MJO update rehashes about early January and the MJO, in case you’re too lazy to read it:
“During early January, a strong westerly wind burst near the Date Line was related to constructive interference with the ongoing El Niño.”
I didn’t want you to miss the important words. “Constructive interference.” To help you grasp this phrase, this would be when TWO or THREE lineman, instead of one, create a “crease” for a running back who then runs a long ways, to get into the current sports ambience ahead of Superbowl Sunday, just ahead. That would be an example of, “constructive interference”; for the team and its running back on offense in a football game1.
That was early January, and now its early February (the 6th), in case you were wondering how old this post is…. Lets see what the MJO experts say later in this same briefing:
“The intraseasonal signal weakened by late January as it destructively interfered
with the El Niño. Suppressed convection became less widespread across the Maritime Continent and shifted eastward to the SPCZ.”
You never want to read that your treasured El Niño (aka, Big Niño here) is being “interfered” with. Dammitall!2
We were counting on the current Big Niño to make droughty things right again all over the Great Southwest!
But no, now its struggling against the Dark Forces of the MJO wind regime out there, doing its thing and is now messing around in “Phase Space 4”, this latter location is also is, historically associated with poor rains in the Southwest.3
So, WHERE the eastward meandering MJO is right now, and the wind anomalies associated with it, are likely taking some steam out of the action the Big Niño, by itself, would have normally produced in the SW.
And it doesn’t seem any Nino like storms are in our immediate future, but rather what’s in our immediate future is a reprise of last year’s “Warm in the West, Cold in the East4” pattern where storms are generally shunted far to the north of us.
At least, this is now what I think is happening and why we have had such disappointingly dry weather for the past few weeks after reading this MJO updated briefing.
By the way, don’t forget to use that acronym, “MJO” in casual conversations about weather. It will be great to toss that out if you with neighbors or at a party, and someone sarcastically says, to no one in particular, “What happened to the big, wet winter we were supposed to have?” That’s when you jump in with “MJO” and what’ going on and how its messing with Niño, is YOUR take on things. I think this would be a great moment for you5!
The weather ahead
No real rain in site over the next two weeks, only passing weak troughs, maybe some marginal rain with one maybe, as a ridge of high pressure aloft, something resembling last year’s pattern, recurs along the West Coast over the next two weeks. Boohoo.
The End
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1Offense is when you have the ball and you are trying to move it forward toward the “goal line.” Men like football in particular, though it may be a subconscious thing, because there is a clear metaphor3 to a football crossing a goal line and fertilization of female ovaries. This, of course, explains in this context, the exaggerated celebratory mode of the specific player who has carried the ball over “the goal line.” Nothing knew here, well known in Freudian circles.
2Sometimes you have to cuss to get the emotions out, an author in this month’s Atlantic Magazine wrote. Caution, this piece contains cuss words. Personally, I don’t cuss myself. So get the HELL off this blog if you want a lot of cussing.
3You will see this if you go to the last page of the MJO link in this post.
4Of course, “cold in the East” can always help the Arizona economy by getting more folks to bail on the awful winter climate they have there for AZ. That would be good.
5While I normally don’t recommend cussing, it could be that using the phrase, “….that f……g MJO is f……..g with our Big Niño” might deliver more impact and release more of your negative emotions about it. Scorsese would approve (see Atlantic link above)
If you don’t believe me, and slept through it during the power outages when it was COMPLETELY dark last night, here is a MEASUREMENT of the event from a private weather station, The arrow points to the event, 58 knots, which is about 67 mph. This is the greatest wind measured by the PWA in seven years, here and a few down there on Wilds. The measured (here, the max one-minute speed) wind is, of course, LESS than the actual greatest 1s or 2s puff, likely well over 67 mph. Unless you have a fancy ultrasonic anemometer, too much inertia in the cheaper ones to get those instantaneous puffs.
NEW: Got to 100 mph on Mt. Sara Lemmon before tower on which an ultrasonic anemometer was installed blew away.
Hope your trees are intact:
WInd measurement over the past 24 h from a Davis Vantage Pro Personal Weather Station located somewhere in Sutherland Heights. (Remember in Israel, that popular top 40 radio station that said, “Braodcasting from SOMEWHERE in the Medeterranean” and every one knew it was that ship located a half mile or so offshore of Tel Aviv. Played Springstein, that kind of thing for all to hear.
Only 0.17 inches tipped by the Davis Vantage Pro, but with wind blowing as it was, you KNOW that’s going to be substantially low. We really can’t measure rain that accurately in any thing but perfectly calm conditions. The more accurate measurements are made if your gauge is sheltered by vegetation that is about the height of the gauge top right near the gauge, but then increases like the inside of a bowl as you gradually move away from it in all directions. No trees, please, too close! Preferably your gauge is on the ground not up somewhere, too, which would exaggerate the losses from wind.
Now, I will go outside and measure the rain in two ground mounted gauges, one a NWS-style 8-inch gauge, and the little toy 4-inch gauge from CoCoRahs, that national group that wants your measurements! Sign up now. Here are the other totals:
NWS gauge, 0.22 inches
CoCoRahs gauge, blew over, no total! Dammitall! Wasn’t as protected in the weeds as I thought. That total “likely” was around 0.24 or 0.25 inches. CMP had privately predicted, 0.28 inches for this storm, whilst a major forecast professor from CSU who lives in Catalina predicted an INCH1!
Brutal out there, too. Temp only 43° F, still windy.
The weather way ahead
Sorry to say no rain for Catalinaland in our latest computer forecasts through the middle of February as the Big Niño hyped so much here and elsewhere is turning out to be big poop so far.
Cal rains only great in the far north of the State during January, and in the northern Sierras.
Sucked in by the Big Niño thoughts here, CMP was predicting quite the mayhem in Cal during the last 15-16 days of January, and 25-30 inches at some locations during that time here is a table for that period from CoCoRahs. Note Shelter Cove, near the King Range, has the most. Totals are sorted in descending order, Jan 13-31.
No doubt your curiosity was piqued and peaked by seeing how much rain could fall on you if you lived in Shelter Cove, on the Lost Coast of California. Well, here’s what its like there. Has an AP, too!
A view of Shelter Cove, showing airport and control tower. Yep, you can fly right in!Another view of Shelter Cove. King Range is in the distance. NO DOUBT, rainfall up there WAS more than 25 inches if about 22 fell at Shelter Cove!
May try to get some more of that Cal precip since Jan 13, finding a modicum o direct verification of that huge amount of rain prediction.
No Mavericks surf competition yet, though larger waves have been battering the Cal coast over the past two-three weeks. Below, surf for today.
4:04 PM. Nice lenticular, devolving into flocculated Altocumulus downwind. The cells the form downwind from the smooth upwind edge are likely due to the latent heat released when condensation occurs, causing weak up and downdrafts to develop father downwind.5:58 PM. Dusty sunset. No worrisome dark spotting on sun.
The End
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1Maybe the “Ivory Tower” has not only protected him from the hiccups of the “real world” due to tenure and that kind of thing, but also from discerning what real weather will be like. hahaha. Just kidding. Sort of. Recall CMP was NOT tenured, but just a “staff” meteorologist with a “light” at the end of the funding grant tunnel, year after year for about 30 years. So, I am pretty mad about “tenure”. Hahahaha, just kidding maybe.
“Tenure” was a recent subject of a Science Mag editorial (“Wither (wither) Tenure“), too; costs everybody, especially students, a LOT of money, it was said.
Too, often young bright researchers are blocked by senior professors having tenure and making large amounts of money that hang on well past their productive years.
Cloud Maven Person: Resigned from the U of WA Cloud and Aerosol Research Group due to feeling he wasn’t earning his high “Research Scientist III” pay anymore, brain dimming, though there was a pile of money that he could have continued on with. Title of resignation letter: “Time to Go”. This free-ed up monies for staff folks that remained in our group, too.
Com’on decrepit tenured faculty, give up! Resign now!
PS: My friend tenured fac is STILL active, gives talks/presentations around the world still, even though he’s quite a geezer now, as is CMP.
Have had 1.75 inches here in the Heights last few days. Horsies are tromping around in significant mud.
But, to resume a theme about others from the prior entry, those in California, they’d better be paying close attention to the weather a week and more out. In this weather watcher’s opinion, which should count for something, California may be in for an unforgettable January.
Why?
Recall how those “ensemble-spaghetti-Lorenz” plots had an unusually constrained (contours of flow, red and blue lines that were unusually bunched together all the way from Hong Kong to ‘Frisco even 10-15 days out? That indicated a high confidence forecast of where the jet stream would be.
USUALLY, the contours are pretty wild, scattered all over the eastern Pac after about 10 days or so, and Cloud Maven Person got overly excited about this esoteric part of weather forecasting, and decided to write a partially decipherable tome on it.
Well, that constrained jet, blasting into Cal from the subtropical latitudes with a terrible ferocity, has continued in model run after model run now, and CMP’s excitement has been further elevated, maybe to penthouse level now, hard to elevate it more.
Way below are a few examples from just last night’s model run based on global obs at 5 PM AST, showing a few sample of the jet stream predicted pattern at 500 millibars, or around 18, 000 feet (from IPS MeteoStar, as usual).
THESE are extraordinary maps, and extraordinary maps mean extraordinary storms, AND they are appearing with extraordinary consistency.
They are also compatible with what we saw in those ensemble-spaghetti plots of a few days ago. So, like the “Frankenstorm” of 2010 that hit California, this series of strong storms hitting Cal in just over a week, will be considered to have been “well-predicted” by those crazy plots.
Is FEMA ready?
I think they will be involved at some point.
But, too, this is a forecast series where we (those in Cal) have lots of time to get ready for big, destructive events.
Like what?
For Cal, the usual.
1) Huge waves smash the coast, some home roll into the ocean. With a jet having a gigantic fetch from the Pac, huge waves are a certainty, surf will definitely be up, if that’s what you do because the surface winds will ALSO have a huge fetch to build those giant rollers.
2) Winds. At some point, hurricane force winds blow stuff around in one of more of the low centers generated by such a powerful jet stream. Looking at the pattern, I think one within this storm series may produce 100 mph winds or more somewhere in Cal.
3) Flooding. Can the nearly empty Cal reservoirs we’ve heard so much about be filled up in a series like this, something that might go on for one to two weeks? I think so, some anyway. But this is a truly wild thought, and as you can see, CMP is kind of out of control here.
It is certain that the rains with one or more of the low centers that slam the West Coast during this series will produce rains of 10 or more inches in a day in the hill and mountain regions of Cal.
Also, the series begins with a strong, but maybe not exceptional storm about 8 days from now, this after a pretty good rain has already occurred, so the ground is going to be pretty wet when the Big Series hits.
The jet stream pattern strengthens and shifts farther south with each day after this first major storm, and that’s when the real onslaught will hit.
I don’t want to get people overly excited like I am, but I am terming these, and the whole recent series of unbelievable jet streams bashing into Cal, and even Baja!, “the California calamity maps.”
Valid Monday, January 18, 5 AM AST.Valid, Monday, January 18, 5 PM AST.
Skipping ahead:
Valid Thursday, January 21st, at 5 PM AST. EGAD! WHAT a monster!Valid 5 PM, January 22nd. One blast is finishing up, but look at the jet entering on the left/west side. Once again, “egad!”
Skipping ahead some more….
Valid at 5 PM AST, January 24. Upper cut to jaw of Cal from the Pacific. This one would be quite bad in rain, wind, floods.
Now the timing of these things WILL VARY as the mod runs keep churning out results, but in CMP’s view, the pattern that will cause CA havoc is locked in now, promulgated ALMOST without doubt by our Big Niño.
Here is another amazing map from a prior run, that just makes your jaw drop due to what the models are sensing is “out there” for Cal and the West Coast:
This is looks like it was for another planet, the jet SO POWERFUL and heading into Baja!Crespuscular rays due to light rain from precipitating Stratocumulus (i.e., “praecipitatio.”, if you want to impress your friends.)Pretty good sunset color. The clouds? Stratocumulus.Weather station and mountain sunset color. You don’t see those together too often. Mountains topped by non-precipitating Stratocumulus clouds.
How will SE AZ do?
Seems like passing rains will hit during this CA bludgeoning period, but floody weather not expected.
Since we’re pretty much at our average total for the month of January right NOW, CMP is going out on a limb and predicting an above normal total for the WHOLE month.
Been working on a talk for Feb 23, 1990…..at the U of WA, so not blogging too much. Will likely post “back to the future” talk in a few days. Its a science story, really, not quite a “talk.”
But enough of my blabbing, as Rob Reiner might say, lets move along to some INTERESTING spaghetti.
First of all, things rolling along pretty much as foretold in spaghetti at our last meeting, a week or so ago. Storms are rolling in on schedule now. Had 0.50 inches in the first one, here in Sutherland Heights.
Below, is the five day from now spaghetti or Lorenz plot. You may recall, though I doubt it, that spaghetti was foretelling a big ridge that would break off into the Arctic and help shunt storms into Cal and the West Coast.
Well, that was spot on because it is going to happen after a little break from the current storms. Of those, the rainiest one for us is tomorrow and the next day. Likely to see an inch or more here in Sutherland Heights from that one storm! Looks like a quarter of an inch will be the total for the current one.
All this is so great for the spring bloom, too, that time of year we all love.
But enough of my blabbing #2, as Rob Reiner might say again, lets move along to some INTERESTING spaghetti.
The weather pattern way ahead
But the real news I wanted to inform you about through excessive speculation is the spaghetti plots for about two weeks out, shown below. This ios amazing in my view.
I wonder if my one reader can detect the amazing part?
Its the grouping of the blue and red lines in the eastern Pacific that seems extraoardinary in a plot like this where “chaos” usually rules in this sector THAT far away in time.
Here, the grouping of red and blue, a coming together which can never happen in the political color realm, means there is a very strong signal in the measurements. The slight errors input at the beginning of the model runs leads to close to the same forecast even 15 days out!
So, what does it all mean?
This is no doubt in CMP’s mind that this strength in a medium range forecast is due to the constraining of weather patterns by the Big Niño now in progress. That feature is keeping the jet stream constrained to bash the West Coast and Cal, and that’s what you get out of this plot above. Very strong storms are now setting up to bash the West Coast, ones associated constrained to do so by the powerful El Niño.
The current storms, as you likely know from media weather folk, are classic in their El Niño appearance, streaming into Cal and AZ at lower latitudes out of the Pacific. So far this winter, in Cal and AZ, we haven’t seen much effects of a Big Niño until now.
That 15 day spaghetti plot is not one that we here can pin confidence on about a lot precip, but hang on in Cal, especially beginning about a week from now when this pattern really sets up and then crescendoes.
Below, just decided to add the 10 day spaghetti, kind of out of control due to excitement. The bunching of red and blue contours is astounding to me in this one, that in the east Pac resembling that of the geographically-forced bunching we see all the time in the extreme western Pacific off China. This bunching, with a dip to the south (trough) off the West Coast indicates a very reliable forecast of a huge trough bashing the West Coast about then (Friday, 5 PM AST, Jan 15th). Maybe, just MAYBE, those Cal reservoirs WILL be filled up in a single winter!
