Rain first week of October?
Category: 2015-2016 El Niño
Rain!
10:00 am – My SLO forecaster has this to say about today and tomorrow:
“In fact, the European weather model is advertising nearly a half of an inch of rain today into Tuesday. So far this morning, many stations have reported between a trace and 0.04 of an inch of rain.
Scattered thundershowers may develop along the Tehachapis, Sierra Nevada and higher elevations of Santa Lucia Mountains. Today’s high temperatures will range between the mid 60 and high 70s throughout
the Central Coast.”
At 8:00 am, I noticed drops on my deck. My rain gauge isn’t recording anything yet, but it is definitely raining. Drops on the deck and drops on the windows. My two most sensitive dogs are acting like there is thunder about, also, although I can’t hear anything, myself. The dawn brought the look of rain – dark, overcast, and it was right. Anything will help settle the dust! Welcome! Make yourself at home, rain!
El Niño Journal – Jan 3, 1998
i found my journal from 1998, as well as the scrap book I made in February 1998. The scrapbook has photos, newspaper clippings, notes, and all manner of historical significance, but only covers that month. I also have a VHS that a friend in town recorded for me of the news reports of the El Niño in Monterey County and Highway One.
As we transition from summer to fall, I thought it might be of interest to this blog’s followers to see what was written and photographed at the time of the last big El Niño, so we can remember a bit more accurately what is predicted to repeat this winter. Therefore, every so often, I will reproduce part of what I recorded back then. Today, I take you back to January 3, 1998.
“Saturday, Jan. 3rd – 8am and I’ve already been awake for 2 1/2 hours. [Rock Knocker] is off to work. It has been raining, but it seems to have stopped. I didn’t get outside at all yesterday because of the rain.
Our small gauge recorded 1 1/2″ but the big one recorded 3″! Last night we got .3″ in the small one and .5″ in the large. The large one is in the open, so I’ll start recording from that one – if we remember to dump it after each recordation. More rain is expected tonight and tomorrow.”
Remember, these are journal entries I made for myself, so the writing is nothing elegant, just factual. I will scan pages from the scrapbook and post them when possible, and when I get to February’s journal entries. If I can get the VHS into digital form, I will consider adding video to this blog for the first time. I finally get Excede installed today, so video should be a possibility.
i hope you will enjoy this series over the next few months.
El Niño precipitation and temperature charts
From NOAA
El Niño 2015-2016
From Daniel Swain, of Weather West. For niffty charts and graphs and all manner of things, see his blog “Weather West” – link in the right column.
“Early 2015 brought similar news, with several new bursts of westerly winds and corresponding model forecasts of a building El Niño. This time, however, the anomalous westerly winds did not abate. The East Pacific had already built up considerable tropical and extratropical warmth during the “non-El Niño” of 2014, and additional heat quickly accumulated through the spring and early summer months of 2015. Much unlike 2014, ocean-atmosphere model forecasts continued to grow more emphatic regarding the potential for a very significant El Niño event by late summer. And this time, they were right: warmth the eastern tropical Pacific has recently reached values only seen previously during the strongest El Niño on record in 1997-1998. The atmosphere, too, has gotten its act together this time around—and is exhibiting a more strongly El Niño-like circulation pattern than has ever been observed previously during the summer months. Nearly every record that exists regarding tropical cyclones in the tropical Pacific has been broken over the past six months—and as of this writing, 3 major hurricanes were churning simultaneously over the central and eastern Pacific for the first time in recorded history. In fact, the combination of a powerful El Niño event and the sudden re-emergence of accumulated heat from the tropical West Pacific has created unprecedented warmth over a vast expanse of ocean, stretching thousands of miles from coastal Peru to the Gulf of Alaska.”
“It’s hard to imagine a more powerful predictive signal for California winter precipitation than the occurrence of a very strong El Niño event. Weak to moderate El Niño events can have highly variable effects in California, and are in most cases poor predictors of how much precipitation might fall in the Golden State. But the big events are a whole different ballgame—and the presence of a powerful El Niño in the tropical Pacific is the single most useful piece of information we have regarding what might take place in the months to come.
While even a record-strength El Niño in the tropical Pacific does not mean that California will experience record rains this winter—since there are always other factors at play—it does strongly shift the odds in favor of a wet winter. This not only fits with conceptual models regarding the atmospheric effects of El Niño, but is also strongly supported by model predictions. While the models do disagree upon the details, there is a very clear signal toward a classic “El Niño” winter dipole along the West Coast of North America, with much below-average precipitation in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia and much above-average precipitation over essentially all of California from the Oregon border to Baja California.”
There you have it. Stocking up on extra food, dog food, wine, propane, and gas. Am I forgetting anything?
Lighthouse Wildfire
6:45 update – eyewitness says ff are on it and should be able to control it.
reported to be in grass, should be able to control easily, but it is impacting traffic on Highway One.
07/28/2015 17:46 LPF-2227
Lighthouse Wildfire MM 1 53.9 M . BC12LPF CRW7LPF E15LPF 4X4 E319LPF PAT18LPF Q BC12, Krenkel, Luke Effective 18:05 . . 36.308 x 121.884
Foto Friday, 7/24/15, by NOAA
Lightning over the Bay by Mike Morales, 7/19/15
Wow, great shot, my friend!
El Niño, 2015-2016
From David Swain, of Weather West:
“[T]he flagship American and European models (the CFS and ECMWF, respectively) continue to hint at the possibility that this event could eventually become the strongest on record. That’s a pretty tall order–given the enormous magnitude of the events which occurred in 1982-1983 and 1997-1998. On the other hand, model projections have become increasingly eyebrow-raising at the same time of year when our confidence in their reliability increases dramatically, so it would be unwise to discount them outright. Generally speaking, healthy skepticism is warranted when complex dynamical models make predictions that involve totally unprecedented extreme events. But 2015 has already been a year of record-breaking meteorological extremes across vast swaths of the Northern Hemisphere, and considerable evidence suggests that there will be more to come. At this point, it seems quite likely that very strong El Niño conditions will be in place by late autumn 2015, and there is some risk that the present event could eclipse even the extreme events of 1982-1983 and 1997-1998….
Overall summary: a very strong El Niño event in the tropical Pacific is now highly likely, and although the likelihood of a wetter-than-average winter in California is increasing, considerable uncertainty remains due to a highly unusual temperature configuration elsewhere in the Pacific.”