Atmosphere Comparison

[Jim]

The endless chatter of weather.

[SuperstitionGuy]

Forcast is for rain starting right now in Apache Junction but it is not here yet. 5:15 PM

[joebartels]

Do hope everyone is preparing for the GOES transition. It will change the way you hike, eat, sleep and dream! Perhaps a slight exaggeration, yet it will get really nice snapshots of lightning.

[chumley]

@joebartels
This is very exciting (though still nearly a year away). It's like when sports started being aired in HD and I would call around to find a bar that had actually had HD tvs and a service that delivered the HD signal. Anything less was unacceptable.

FWIW, Japan already has this technology active in the Himawari-8. We are not leading the world on this.

[chumley]

The sun is brutal today. Had to lower the blinds in my window.

[big_load]

It was pouring buckets between Kayenta and Tuba City. We went through gale-force winds that were going straight north and then straight south a few hundred yards west.

[big_load]

It's raining hard in Gilbert. This is the second big rain I've experienced in less than a week. Is this the desert?

[DallinW]

I'm shivering in 54F without a jacket... I'm officially a lizard.

[chumley]

@DallinW

I agree. It must be a little chilly. I wore shoes to work today!

[Jim]

There was ice on cars parked at 16th and Indian School this morning. I find this a bit early.

[Jim]

Was today the first brown cloud day, or is it just the first day I noticed it?

[azbackpackr]

@Jim_H
Ha. You are becoming Phoenix-centric! This is HikeARIZONA, not Hikephoenix!! (You didn't specify where the brown cloud is to be found, so since you live in Phoenix, I guess we must infer that the brown cloud is in Phoenix.)

It was clear and sunny at Topock Marsh, no brown cloud.

[Jim]

Does one have to specify, when referring to the brown cloud?

[azbackpackr]

@Jim_H
Yes. One must.

[chumley]

Are we still in the middle of Joe's two straight weeks of 62-degrees forecast?

It's damn nice these days. While I'll enjoy these 70s, I'm also looking forward to the pattern shift and maybe some rain next weekend.

[chumley]

I was just looking at the forecast for the storm at the end of this week. Looks like northern California is going to get hit hard again. While it's still early, the current winter precipitation observations are typical of a La Niña winter, with the northern states well above normal (over 200% in the northern Sierra) and lower than average amounts here in AZ and other southern areas.
http://wcc.sc.egov.usda.gov/reports/Upd ... tList=text

[flagscott]

I was just looking at the forecast for the storm at the end of this week. Looks like northern California is going to get hit hard again. While it's still early, the current winter precipitation observations are typical of a La Niña winter, with the northern states well above normal (over 200% in the northern Sierra) and lower than average amounts here in AZ and other southern areas.
http://wcc.sc.egov.usda.gov/reports/Upd ... tList=text

FYI, this map is a much better way to visualize the snowpack levels. http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/snotelanom/basinswen.html

Also, I think it's early to speculate what the peak snow levels will look like. I've been fooled by early-season totals before.

[big_load]

NJ is settled into its annual five-month overcast. We'll only see the sun during the deepest cold snaps.

[JimmyLyding]

We've received about 2" of rain over the last week here in Walnut Creek. That rain pattern was relatively warm with snow levels at 8,000-feet-plus. The large reservoirs like Oroville, Shasta, Trinity and Folsom are rapidly filling because the rain we had over the last few days has melted a lot of snow. The Truckee River was expected to flood this week which is good for Pyramid Lake, but obviously bad for the people who own homes on the floodplain. We're expected to receive an even bigger storm system starting tomorrow night that's supposed to have lower snow levels in the Sierra Nevada and areas further north. Most of the moisture has fallen north of the Bay Area and Yosemite much like the previous rain year (Jul 1 to Jun 30 here in California), but the southern Sierra Nevada in particular really needs some snow.

[Jim]

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-m ... story.html

I always find stuff like that interesting. Not likely to stop anytime soon, either. It is impossible to know what might have happened to forests in the 1200s when the Sierra Nevada was so dry then, that what are 100 foot deep lakes today, had trees growing on the bottom. Other than perhaps forests being more dense than they were 800 some years ago, big die offs in the Sierra have probably happened before.


The Pineapple Express has been flowing over the north half of CA for a week now, and into the inter-mountain west, dropping snow over a lot of the interior. A cold low from the Gulf of Alaska is moving south and will bring rain and snow to Southern California, for a change. First big one of the season. As it moves inland, we will pick some up. I like to see the webcam for San Jacinto, and hopefully that mountain gets a deep layer of snow, and I hope the Peaks get a couple of feet.

[flagscott]

I always find stuff like that interesting. Not likely to stop anytime soon, either. It is impossible to know what might have happened to forests in the 1200s when the Sierra Nevada was so dry then, that what are 100 foot deep lakes today, had trees growing on the bottom. Other than perhaps forests being more dense than they were 800 some years ago, big die offs in the Sierra have probably happened before.

I studied effects of tree mortality in grad school, and I'm not familiar with any paleo research on tree mortality. Dead trees don't leave a record for long enough to estimate mortality rates far back into the past. But I would bet that the current die off is largely unprecedented because trees tend to survive better in thinned forests than denser forests during droughts, and today's trees have all sorts of additional stressors that trees in the 1200s did not: air pollution, invasive pathogens and pests, grazing, fast-rising temperatures, etc.