Atmosphere Comparison

[Jim]

The endless chatter of weather.

[Jim]

Yup, Snowbowl should have a good closing day, today. Tucson airport got 0.28", so the Catalinas probably got at least that much. Thats good, since it was so dry when I was down there last month. They can use just about anything they can get.

[azbackpackr]

Sure is cold this morning. Glad we got the precip, though.

[Jim]

You know for as "bad" as this winter was, Snowbowl was just over their average yearly snowfall of 260 inches (according to Wikipedia). They had 261 inches, reported on their website. Not bad, I think. I'm sure they would have preferred if last weeks 31 inches had come a month ago, but I think they still did OK. Besides, the forest is better off getting the snow later in the year like this. BTW, Flagstaff and Fort Valley had new record lows on the 10th. It was 7 and 3 in the two locations. More like January or February than April.

[Jim]

http://www.cbrfc.noaa.gov/station/swepl ... .cgi?xsca3

According to the above link, the San Francisco Peaks are actually a little above normal. They are pretty much the only location in the state that isn't well, well, below normal.

[azbackpackr]

Where's the fire? It's awfully smoky around here!

[Jim]

What makes you think there is a fire? There is no fire. I don't smell smoke, and there is nothing on the active fire detection map.

http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/data/ac ... 4_1500.jpg

It is hazy, though. Thats our spring haze. It is somewhat normal on the windy days around here. If you think it is bad when it is like this, you should see it when it really blows, or when a fire near the rim blows towards us and lays down in the evening. Back in late July of 2009, there was a fire on the Kaibab that the FS was letting burn in a prescribed area. it got to over 7,000 acres. For a few afternoons, right around 4:45 a smoke fog would settle in around my apartment. I had to close all of the windows for a while. I would be so bad, I couldn't see the traffic light 1000 feet away. It would move on after 15 minutes or so, so it wasn't a big deal.

The fire was the "Cross Fire". This was it in the early stages:
http://hikearizona.com/photo.php?ZIP=101271
Also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbs0owV9KOs

[azbackpackr]

I was out in Doney Park and then I was way out on Leupp Road, almost to Rez boundary, as I am every weekday, and it looked like there might have been a grass fire. It did smell like smoke, at least part of the time. If it was a grass fire, and if it was on the Rez, it might not be on the internet. I will ask the kids today if they heard about a grass fire on the Rez.

[Dschur]

Part of the Haze on Thurday the 14th they showed on the weather was a dust storm blowing the dust into AZ across from Asia. You could see it on the satellite picture as they moved it forward blowing across the Pacific...

[Jim]

Asian dust? Well, at least it is cheap and will probably break (down) easily. Well, unless Japanese.

[azbackpackr]

Wow! I have heard of that happening before. Hope it wasn't radioactive dust!

[Jim]

Wow! I have heard of that happening before. Hope it wasn't radioactive dust!

Haven't you noticed the odd burns on your skin and the blood you have been coughing up from your lungs?

[chumley]

This forecast has been inconsistent over the past few days, but is worth keeping an eye on, especially for those who will be on Te-Wa's and Grasshopper's events.

FOR SATURDAY INTO SUNDAY...A MUCH DEEPER WEATHER SYSTEM IS FORECAST
TO APPROACH THE REGION...FIRST WITH WINDY CONDITIONS SATURDAY
AFTERNOON INTO SATURDAY EVENING...FOLLOWED BY A GOOD CHANCE OF
SHOWERS LATE SUNDAY. CURRENT GUIDANCE SUGGESTS THAT SNOW LEVELS
WILL BE FAIRLY HIGH...SO THAT MOST SHOWERS WILL FALL AS RAIN. THE
LATEST FORECAST MODEL RUNS ARE SUGGESTING FROM 0.10 TO 0.50 INCHES
OF LIQUID. CHC`S OF PRECIP WERE INCREASED FOR SUNDAY AFTERNOON INTO
MONDAY MORNING.

[Jim]

Well that is good news. April is turning out to be fairly moist, but we could use a little more. In Flag, we've officially had 1.14 inches, and normal is 1.29 inches. Maybe we will be above normal this year. I think that is pretty rare in a La Nina year. However, March was dry as it has been for the last 5 years. We had 0.95" of the mean of 2.62", so we really could use rain.


In a related note, I read an article in the Flagstaff paper about the FS wanting the city to re-route it's water line (the one that runs on the Water Line road or trail) away from it's current route and probably down and out through Lockett meadow and along the US 89 corridor. It makes sense, since that means the water line road can be closed to vehicles and no longer maintained. The access road up through lockett is still usable and can be repaired to allow for fuel trucks. So, the waterline itself must still be washed out and broken, and is therefore probably still not being used to transport water. Therefore, if the Inner Basin remains open this spring, as it is now, it might be worth going up to see free flowing springs and the normally dry wash flowing with snow melt. This will have an impact on the city water supply, but it might be the first time in 100 years since the snow melted off and went out to the north through it's old drainage channel.

[JimmyLyding]

re: La NIna
I thought that a La Nina event affected both Arizona and California in a similar fashion. I can't attest to what happened in Southern California, but we got pounded with precipitation here in Northern California while Arizona had a very dry winter. Perhaps something else is at work?

[chumley]

California is in a gray area between La Niña and El Niño patterns. The southwest and the northwest have much more pronounced and definite reactions to the change in Pacific temperatures. Southern California tends to follow the pattern of the southwest, but not always closely. Similarly, northern California tends to associate more with the Pacific northwest. There's a lot of good reading at this website, but here's a quote somewhat relevant to your question:

3. In the central Sierra there are no large-scale winter floods associated with El Nino. All but one of the biggest floods have occurred in La Nina winters. However, not all La Nina winters have large floods, and many have small or average winter flood peaks. Thus, La Nina opens the door to, but does not guarantee, large scale rain-on-snow conditions associated with the biggest Sierra floods--more so than El Nino. The deep tap to abundant tropical moisture (the so-called "pineapple connection") associated with major Sierra floods has a higher likelihood of occurrence in La Nina years than in El Nino years, but in both cases is not common. These very large floods can be generated in just a few days, and the weather pattern during that time may poorly represent the overall character of the winter. Both 1996-97 and 1985-86 illustrate this point very well: without the short period of intense rains, these two years with the largest floods would likely have entered the record books as drought winters.

[JimmyLyding]

Thanks Chumley. However, the big thing we've seen down here is the amount of snow. Some areas in the Sierra Nevadas have 200% of normal precipitation (not inches of snow, but inches of comparative water that's fallen onto the ground). All of the lakes are full, and with much of the snow still awaiting the spring melt, and significant portions of the Sierras that are normally drying out by now are still buried by over a dozen feet of snow. The state of California has officially declared an end to the most recent drought here, but who knows how long that will last. The CW is that those of us on the West Coast are going to suffer through alternating years of both intense precipitation and drought. We'll see. I'm not dumb enough to frame that idea through the template of politics.
Has the jet stream that moves moisture from west to east speeded up, and thus bypassing Arizona? Are we no longer seeing extended periods of low pressure over AZ that suck in moisture from said jet stream?

[azbackpackr]

Thanks Chumley. However, the big thing we've seen down here is the amount of snow. Some areas in the Sierra Nevadas have 200% of normal precipitation (not inches of snow, but inches of comparative water that's fallen onto the ground). All of the lakes are full, and with much of the snow still awaiting the spring melt, and significant portions of the Sierras that are normally drying out by now are still buried by over a dozen feet of snow. The state of California has officially declared an end to the most recent drought here, but who knows how long that will last. The CW is that those of us on the West Coast are going to suffer through alternating years of both intense precipitation and drought. We'll see. I'm not dumb enough to frame that idea through the template of politics.
Has the jet stream that moves moisture from west to east speeded up, and thus bypassing Arizona? Are we no longer seeing extended periods of low pressure over AZ that suck in moisture from said jet stream?

CW? Continuous wave? Chemical Warfare? Call Waiting? Child Welfare? Clockwise? Case Worker? Ah...maybe Code Word?

Sounds like June bp trips in the Sierra will need to stay out of the high passes.

[big_load]

The CW is that those of us on the West Coast are going to suffer through alternating years of both intense precipitation and drought.

The same appears true in the Northeast.

[azbackpackr]

I still don't know what CW is.

[Jim]

Conventional Wisdom.


Jim, SoCal did not have the big rains and snow the way the Sierra and NorCal did, but it still had several good storms and ended up above normal in the coastal areas and mountains. The deserts were pretty dry, especially after the New Year. Just like across most of the west, SoCal had a very dry January and early February before things got wet again. Most of the water that entered SoCal came from from the big Pine Apple Express event around the Solstice. Had that not occurred, winter would have been far worse, or very dry. I think roughly 2/3 of the winter precip came in December, and about 1/3 from mid-February to early April.