HikeArizona.COM

The endless chatter of weather.

21" in Woodland Park 4 miles up the highway yesterday. No wonder I had to shovel twice yesterday. 24 east which is the road we took Monday to hike in 70 degree temps is still closed. They were rescuing stranded motorists with snowcats.

@MtnBart01
Which side of the divide are you on? We need that snowpack to fill up our Colorado River!

@azbackpackr
East

There's a potential for some magic sky water over the desert sometime around next Tuesday.

@chumley

Nevermind.

Spring rains have arrived in NJ. I'm not sure how to size up the el niño here impact overall. December was the warmest in history, but January and February were pretty close to average. December was so freakishly warm that even with the other two average months, it was still the 5th warmest meteorological winter on record. Oddly, the prevailing storm pattern gave us much more rain than snow, despite average temps in January and February. That's probably not good for the groundwater, since the rain fell mostly on frozen ground and drained quickly downstream. Snow gets a better chance to seep in.

Since this winter/spring has been a bust precipitation-wise, I'm now keeping my fingers crossed for the monsoon. I remember reading this article a few years ago, and since this year's snowpack is below average, I'm hoping for a decent monsoon...

http://news.wisc.edu/snow-in-the-rockie ... southwest/

@lindaagm
Very interesting study. I wonder if it aligns with the inverse proportionality of actual rainfall observed versus the modeled probability of "being like Seattle". ;)

Enjoy today. It's almost like winter! :GB:

I even momentarily considered wearing pants today, but that would have clearly been an overreaction! :FG:

hopefully the last igloo cold day after tomorrow until November

I consider the rare @joebartels post in the weather thread to be a kind of personal victory.

Winning!

@chumley
Aren't pants some sort of a requirement where you work? At least shorts...

@The Eagle
I'm not really sure. And I probably wouldn't care anyway. I think there's a "safe space" somewhere around here now though. But it's unrelated to me not wearing pants.

Jim_H 1248
azbackpackr 810
chumley 782
big_load 246
rwstorm 147
MtnBart01 98
Rob del Desierto 93
hippiepunkpirate 87
joebartels 83+1
Outdoor Lover 77
Jim Lyding 64
Nighthiker 62
The Eagle 57
PatrickL 56
Dschur 54
writelots 49
tibber 49
friendofThundergod 49
SuperstitionGuy 47

@joebartels
Oh sure. But can you break them down to the name they had at the time of posting? I bet there are more than a few from PageRob, Jim_H, coanbru, TheHammer, etc.

uh that'd be a big fat no

joebartels wrote:big_load 246

That's only 35 times a year. Most people complain about the weather at least twice a day (even in Arizona).

Post #1249:

With no storms of any substance forecast for at least the next week, the April 1 snowpack for the Sierra is pretty much at it's peak for the season and this El Nino winter is far from what I would have expected. North, Central and Southern Sierra Survey Regions are running at 98%, 88%, and 72% of normal for April 1. Hardly a banner year, and the opposite of what is typical for distribution of the precipitation in an El Nino. Southern California also did poorly, with something like 50% to 60% of normal precip falling at best, much like us in Arizona, and it too, was mostly in January. Hey, at least I got my Humphrey summit in winter in when I did in early February, as winter was over a week later!

If anything ,this winter felt like a La Nina event, not an El Nino. It also reminds me of 2007, which was my first winter in AZ and one where the El Nino went belly up half way through the winter with dry warm weather up in Flag from February on. So, if this year is like 2007, we might have a late monsoon season. That is, if it is cooler to our north. I mention that, because our Phoenix water supplies are low, too. Roosevelt Lake is at 53% of full, and the Salt-Verde Lakes at 60%. I don't think we even have any snowpack intact to melt, at this point. Do we?

At least northern California had a "normal" winter that while it won't end any droughts, provided some relief for the plants and their water supplies. However, if you read the articles about huge areas of tree death in the Sierra, that likely won't stop from this year, and can sometimes actually increase as if the trees were weak from drought stress and a wet period follows that allowed fungus to get in their roots, they can continue to die off for years.

Is it too early for me to gloat (again?)

Re: 2015: Rain, Snow, Wind, and Sun!!!!!!
Post by chumley » Jul 20 2015 05:33 pm

It's this alarmist click-bait media crap that makes me think whatever El Niño actually does occur is going to result in none of the weather phenomena typically associated with El Niño.

Re: 2015: Rain, Snow, Wind, and Sun!!!!!!
Post by chumley » Aug 13 2015 04:33 pm

I feel like I will be linking to my non-scientific prognostication over and over again as this winter nears. I hope I'm wrong, but history shows that when meteorologists are 99% sure of something they are wrong 4 out of 5 times. Though there's only a 10 percent chance of that.
;)