Rain Coming And Folks Are Excited

gfs-bufkit

“It will be good for the state.” Those were Helaine’s words a few minutes ago. We were talking about the threat of rain in SoCal. We’ve had hardly any since last year’s rainy season–also a dud.

The image above is a screengrab from the afternoon GFS, using BUFKIT. If you want to know what kind of person I am, I find it fascinating. I like charts, graphs and numbers. They like me back!

I’m not going to be a whiner. Drought sounds and is bad. However, our infrastructure was designed knowing we get droughts. It needs much less than normal rain to work properly. No one is being forced to conserve.

We will finally end the fire season. That will be a relief to many. California has a tendency to burn.

Our first rain comes Wednesday evening. A cold front off a low hitting the California Coast near the Oregon border is the trigger. Not a lot. The GFS says around a quarter inch.

Meteorologists are lucky here. I’ve read and seen all sorts of quantitative precipitation forecasts (QPF). It’s our least accurate prediction. They’ll all be wrong, but unlike snow, no one will check up on them.

The rain (and snow) should be significantly heavier farther north, including the Sierra Mountains. They are our sponge! Snowfall in the mountains is slowly released through early summer. Much of what would run to the ocean now flows toward the Southland.

Water from the Sierras is California’s lifeline. It’s how we house people and grow crops in the desert! Like so many other spots in America, we have overcome nature to tame a place not naturally suited for any of what now happens on it.

The second wave of rain arrives Friday morning. The GFS shows three inch range, much more than this area can easily perc. Flooded intersections and slow traffic will follow. Thunderstorms, less frequent here than back east, are possible with heavy embedded downpours.

NEXRAD is pretty bad here. Too much topography. There are lots of holes using individual radars. This is one place where composites help.

During these storms our temperature will stay in the 60s.

Friday’s deluge will taper to showers then some scattered drizzle under cloudy skies through Sunday. People here are looking forward to this brief change. I will miss my friend, the blue sky.

I Agree. The Weather Is Nuts

wtnh pkng lot snow

Bill Koczocik posted the photo above to Facebook. He didn’t say where, but I recognize the Channel 8 parking lot. Not much in that scene has changed over the last thirty years. Well, except that damn snow.

For those counting at home, Connecticut DOT’s plows have been on the road 19 separate times this season!

Over 29″ of snow at Bridgeport in February alone! Hartford’s at 23″.

Everything’s topsy turvy this season. The polar vortex event. Heavy snow this week in Northern Japan. Historic floods on the Thames and along the coast in Britain.

I look back and wonder how I operated in that? After all, before Connecticut I lived in Buffalo!

But you do.

You play the hand you’re dealt. Is there really a choice?

Exotic Vacations While Connected

gangesTwo friends of mine are out of the country. It’s a very exotic vacation to India and now Bhutan. She’s been sending emails. He’s been taking photos.

I am loving their vacation. Being there would be better, but this is pretty good. They are living a dream.

30 years ago, before Bhutan was open to the west, I saw a National Geographic photo of that monastery, perched precariously on the side of a mountain, and made up my mind to get there some day. That day is supposed to be tomorrow….the last excursion to wrap up the trip. We will see what happens.

800px-Taktshang_editThat was written yesterday. Well, yesterday to me. They’re 10 1/2 time zones away. Day and night become a jumble.

It’s snowing in Paro, Bhutan as I type. Just light snow. It’s a steep climb to Tiger’s Nest. Light snow might be too much.

Until they went I didn’t know about Tiger’s Nest, but I did know about Paro’s airport. It’s one of a handful of most dangerous airports in the world. There are dozens of YouTube videos showing ganges 2airplanes on approach. Getting there involves threading the needle through narrow gorges and mountain passes.

We had our second Skype session tonight. Late afternoon for them. Middle-of-the-night for me. We chatted like we were in the same room, though nearly 7,900 miles apart.

The conversation ended when their hotel suffered a power failure. Some things remain rooted in the past.

I never saw this day coming, where distance isn’t a barrier to communicating. It’s like science fiction, except it’s not.

If I Complained About Our Weather Would You Listen?

sunset-in-irvine

california-drought-mapFrom a human being day-to-day standpoint, it would seem we moved to an idyllic meteorological utopia. The sun shines nearly every day. It’s hardly ever humid, nor hot, nor cold. Since we arrived in late June it’s been totally dry every day but six!

We really need rain. More importantly, the Sierras need snow! We’re already in a drought with no sign it’s abating.

Most of Southern California uses water from the Sierra Mountains. How it gets here is an engineering marvel just over 100 years old. The water takes a 230 mile gravity powered trip to the LA area.

First_Los_Angeles_Aqueduct_Cascades,_SylmarRight now the Northern Sierras have 7% of their expected snowpack. The rest of the mountains range from 15 to 25% of normal. That’s exceptionally dry.

Snowpack is a great water source. It’s released slowly as temperatures rise. Less wasted runoff. It is mainly dependable, but as this year shows, not totally.

Not only does LA and much of SoCal depend on this distant source¹, so does California’s Central Valley. That affects us all, even outside the West.

Virtually all non-tropical crops are grown in the Central Valley, which is the primary source for a number of food products throughout the United States, including tomatoes, almonds, grapes, cotton, apricots, and asparagus. – Wikipedia

There’s also the enhanced fire danger when it’s this dry. Fire season should be over in January, but Red Flag Warnings will likely go up late this weekend as the wind blows from the east–Santa Ana winds.

I relish these beautifully salubrious winter days, but I hope we get some rain soon and the Sierras get blanketed in snow. It’s really needed.

There will be little sympathy from those reading this while shivering.

¹ – We use mountain water too, but Irvine has local sources for the vast majority of our needs. Shhh. Don’t tell.

The Winter Storm Thing… Again

That’s not to say the models didn’t venture guesses. It’s just the guesses changed each time the programs were run!

KBDL precip from coolwx.pngOne of the weaknesses of making long range forecasts is you get to anguish over storms for a l-o-n-g time. Take tonight’s little doozie. This system has been well modeled by the computers for more than a week–since it was well out in the Pacific.

With each succeeding run it seemed more likely Connecticut would have some impact. The question was how much impact and from what? Would it be snowy or just rainy and raw? This part of the equation seemed beyond the computer’s expertise.

That’s not to say the models didn’t venture guesses. It’s just the guesses changed each time the programs were run! Though some of the prior results are seeded into the next run’s initialization, there’s little memory these machines maintain from forecast-to-forecast.

Now it looks like the rain/snow line was so hard to get at because it will be moving over us. The storm will be snow then rain. But when the turnover?

There will be plenty of quality number time today. My love of math will be tested with charts and graphs and maps. It’s a geek’s paradise.

I’ve got a horse in the race this time. Helaine’s due back in Connecticut late tomorrow night. I am in charge of transport.
Predicting the weather’s impact on airlines is rough. Most likely she will make it to Connecticut without problem, but face some snowy roads on our way home.

Spring is almost here and I can’t wait. I really can’t!