Atmospheric river en route to Sierra
By Darrell Smith, Sacramento Bee
Water vapor – Mississippi River-size amounts of it flowing at hurricane speeds miles above the Earth – is hurtling across the Pacific, an atmospheric river poised to drench a parched Northern California and the Sacramento region as early as Thursday night.
A crack team of science experts is going along for the ride, part of an experiment known as CalWater 2015, many of whom gathered at McClellan Park near Sacramento on Tuesday in preparation for the major weather event and the vital information they hope to pull from the phenomenon.
“It’s a real milestone for us. Nothing of this scope has happened,” said Marty Ralph, director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, of the project he’s helping to lead. “One of the drivers of CalWater was the uncertainty of climate projections. We haven’t had the data to measure the strength and structure of ARs. … There’s so much potential for the monitoring of atmospheric rivers.”
Guess I’d better stock up on beer.
Another “Super Storm” heading our way. We haven’t had a real storm in almost two months. Sorry, I’ll believe it when I see it on the ground.
Atmoshperic river en route? Lets hope so! Snow would be best, but if this storm makes it our way without breaking up, I’ll take rain any time. Snow level kinda high according to NOAA so maybe not much at lake level, if any, of the white stuff arounnd town.
Lets hope this system comes thru and we get a good blanket of snow or a drenching of rain or maybe both!! Always optimisic, OLS
OK. now is the time to ensure this happens by doing all we can ..wash the cars, put away the snow blower, dont buy groceries for the long haul, get out lawn chairs, uncover the wood pile. And definately dont do any rain or snow dances…we dont want to jinx this thing…
Sure, I’ll contribute…just washed my car today. :-)
Sure, avoid any Snow Dances, especially by the ‘Reebok’ tribe !!
Well, that storm-river thing was over fast; back to 60% again… in February.