6 Day Wet Storm Cycle for the West Coasts ends, while the East Coasts waits for Snow in 65 Degree Weather!
Weather Followers,
What a season it has been so far in California and SoCal. I haven’t seen the snow levels this low in close to a decade, as it is so refreshing to see it. When is the last time you saw a picture like this?
Currently the weather is very cold all over CA, as frost/hard freeze advisories have been posted all over the state. Hard to believe currently that it is colder in LA than in NYC, as NYC and Boston were 65 degrees yesterday and 55 today. Unreal! A lot of people think this is El Nino that is pounding CA with rain and snow. I beg to differ, as the nature of these storms are not El Nino influenced. I will discuss why these are not El Nino and what I believe is making CA get such intense rain/snow in a 6 day period in my next discussion.
Moving on, now that the rain has stopped for a few days, everyone can dry out, plow the snow in the mountains and highways, and the burn areas can prepare for what might be coming this weekend and really for the end of next week. I am going to recap briefly the past 6 day rain event in the State of CA, then I will turn our attention to the small weekend’s storms and then to possibly a huge Atmospheric River potential for next week.
Weather Recap for the last 6 days:
Below are the Rain/Snow totals from the NWS in San Diego and LA. Pretty impressive numbers:
San Diego NWS Totals, Through Feb 5th: https://nwschat.weather.gov/p.php?pid=201902061234-KSGX-SRUS46-RRMSGX
Los Angeles NWS Totals through Feb 5th: https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/total_forecast/getprod.php?wfo=lox&pil=RRM&sid=LOX
For those of you who are skiers/boarders, look at the totals that my buddy BA put out on his Open Snow blog today for the Tahoe Basin:
(Click to Enlarge)
Pretty hefty totals if I say so myself. Here are the totals for Mammoth, for those that are going up there:
Mammoth has almost 400″ of snow on the top of the mountain…insane!! Here is their mountain snow total update. Click the link: https://www.mammothmountain.com/winter/mountain-information/mountain-information
Pretty impressive. And the season is not even half over. If you are going anywhere in the mountains of CA, I would check the local road conditions from Caltrans: http://www.dot.ca.gov/d9/road_con/Road_con.html
Weekend Forecast:
Attention turns to this weekend, as there are two small to medium size storms poised to hit CA. One is Friday/Saturday and another minor one. The storms will be a bit stronger in NorCal then SoCal. Maybe 1ft to 2ft will fall in the Sierra’s, while SoCal will get .50″ to .75″ between these two storms. The SoCal mountains should get some dusting, or light snow showers. No hydrological issues will occur from these two storms, so burn areas will not be effected.
Long Term:
The Climate Prediction Center’s 8-14 day forecast is below and it continues the theme this month as it is forecasting more heavy rain for CA/SoCal and below average temps. See below
(Click to Enlarge)
These images are pretty self explanatory. It is showing a a possible major Atmospheric River (AR), which is aimed directly at CA, especially SoCal. For those of you who don’t know what an AR is, please see the explanation graphics below:
Here is the link to NOAA’s explanation of an AR: https://www.noaa.gov/stories/what-are-atmospheric-rivers. Time will tell if, and where the AR setups, as the models are still out of sync. I need a few more days to see where everything lines up, but I believe that CA/SoCal is in for a major rain event starting on February 13th. I will update everyone Friday night as next week becomes more clearer. If you are in the burn areas, you might want to start preparing for major rain starting around the 13th, as the snow levels might be very high with this AR. Stay Tuned!
Next update on Friday! Enjoy the clear and jacket weather!
–JM
