Very happy to post this breaking future news here on February 24th. Close rain call on the 27th, too, as the first of two significant troughs with their low pressure centers march into California, bringing a drought break there of some consequence. Likely an inch or two in the coastal areas south of SFO (“Frisco”; rhymes with Crisco), and maybe even LA area as well with the first storm. That first one continues across Arizona bringing widespread, though light rains the central and northern mountains on Thursday the 27th.
Then “Big Brother” hits Cal beginning on the evening of the 28th, gets here late on the first or early on March 2nd. The LA Basin rains in the second one look like they’ll amount to 2-4 inches, and maybe something from a quarter to half an inch here in Catalinaland when it arrives.
Model?
Canadian GEM (General Environmental Model). Sometimes, like their hockey team, it defeats the US models in weather forecasting, and I am riding the fence that it will this time. In the interest of disclosure, the US WRF-GFS model has virtually NO RAIN in Arizona on the 27th (!), whilst the Canadian one has widespread rains (both using global data from 5 PM AST yesterday). So, I reject the US model, one that takes the first storm too far north to affect AZ much. (This has sometimes been a problem for our US models.)
Second storm?
Both models have rain on the 1st-2nd, but the Canadian, much larger amounts in southern California where I grew up and, while having poor grades after puberty and the realization of girls (!) hit, nevertheless had some success playing baseball. Could be nearly a month’s worth of rain in one storm in the LA area, which averages about 3 inches in Feb and March, both, IF the Canadian model verifies. Those kind of amounts upstream would also mean more rain potential for us here, too. But, the fact that they BOTH have rain, is really great to see. One would think that some rain is pretty much in the bag. I hope they put rain barrels out in Cal!
After the storm…
Oh, me, look at this “Lorenz” (the chaos guy) plot:
A pattern like the one above is hard to maintain in March since the climatology of March-May leads to a trough in the western US. So hoping the awful pattern above will give way by mid-March or soon thereafter, as do easterners I would bet. Below, likely fantasy, since its WAY out on the forecast horizon, but this historic forecast (would produce historically cold weather in the East if it did verify, chances probably less than 30% as a wild guess. I just now saw it and it was AMAZING!
Yesterday’s clouds
The End.
