Daniel Swain, of Weather West, whose great blog is found here, has confirmed that this week El Niño is making its way into Northern California. He has this to say:
“First, I want to reassure everyone that reports of El Niño’s demise have been -greatly exaggerated-demonstrably false. Very much to the contrary, El Niño is presently maintaining its record-breaking peak intensity, and temperature anomalies in the key Niño 3.4 region of the tropical Pacific Ocean are higher on both a weekly and monthly basis than they have been at any time since at least the 1950s (surpassing even the 1982-1983 and 1997-1998 events). Clearly, an extremely strong El Niño remains deeply entrenched in the Pacific–and, as I’ll discuss shortly, California weather impacts are starting to emerge.”
Our local forecast is for rain to begin Thursday afternoon/evening and continue into Friday, with another storm possible on Sunday. Most of us have been getting ready for months. Now we will find out how ready we really are. I bought myself a radio/flashlight that has the Monterey Weather station on it that runs via solar power or hand crank. It can even charge my cell phone, if necessary! Extra wool socks and heavy leggings were tucked in my Amazon box, too (as well as some things for others).
Start slow dear rain clouds to re-open the pores of the soil which has been prepped by earlier precipitation then fill ‘er* up …. ! * the Santa Lucias
I’ve got my “Emergency Watercolor Set” ready, in case of an ART attack on those rainy days!
I can paint ANYWHERE!!!
Great post Kate. Your blog is El Nino HQ for me and others, I’m sure. Bring the rain.