El Niño Report, next 2-3 weeks

From Daniel Swain, of Westher West, where the full report can be found Here, comes this report:

“The area along of just north of the jet stream is a favorable position for storm development and intensification. Usually, California is located near the regional minimum of jet stream strength as it veers northward, but the imminent pattern shift will create a situation in which storms are much more likely to maintain their open-ocean strength or even strengthen as the approach California from the west. There is very strong multi-model support for an extended period (of at least 3 weeks, starting on Sunday) of greatly enhanced storminess and widespread precipitation throughout California.

A powerful and likely El Niño-influenced subtropical jet will develop over and south of California, creating a favorable condition for significant precipitation. (NCEP via tropicaltidbits.com)
A powerful and likely El Niño-influenced subtropical jet will develop over and south of California, creating a favorable condition for significant precipitation. (NCEP via tropicaltidbits.com)
I won’t even attempt to be specific regarding the details of individual storms at this point, since California’s favorable position to the north of a very strong subtropical jet leads to large instability in model solutions due to the much faster growth rate of storm systems than would typically be the case here (and, therefore, we should all expect forecasts to bounce around quite a bit in the coming days). But the screaming message, at this point, is that quite a few storms will affect California over the next 2-3 weeks. Not all of them will be strong, but some of them probably will be. Some may preferentially affect the northern part of the state; others will focus on the far southern region. But it seems very likely at this point that virtually all of California will significant, perhaps heavy, precipitation. Some of these systems may also bring strong winds and even some vigorous convective activity (thunderstorms), but these details are even harder to ascertain more than a few days in advance.”

2 thoughts on “El Niño Report, next 2-3 weeks

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.