Should California Ship Water to the Pacific Northwest?

President Trump has suggested that water be transported from the Pacific Northwest to California to help fight fires and for agricultural use.

This idea was strongly criticized by many, including the authoritative Seattle Times ClimateLab, which is supported by disinterested, civic-minded advocacy groups and individuals (see below).

But perhaps, examining the weather situation this year, President Trump's error was not in the general idea, but in the direction of water flow.  

Specifically, California should consider sending water to the Pacific Northwest, particularly this year.

To illustrate, below is the latest 180-hour forecast precipitation accumulation over the western U.S.  

The mountains of northern California and the Sierra Nevada will receive at least twice what will fall on the Cascades and Olympics. 

Los Angeles, yes, LA... will get about the same precipitation amount as Seattle.

Do you want to be shocked?    If so, look at the forecast precipitation during the next week at Blue Canyon Airport on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada (just northwest of Lake Tahoe).  The high-resolution US GFS model is going for about 50 inches of snow!

This pattern has happened again and against this winter.   As a result, the reservoirs in California are above average, with some close to being full, EVEN BEFORE the massive CA snowpack starts to melt.

Contrast California's wet bounty with the current situation of the Yakima drainage, which is currently well below normal (see below).

Now that I have convinced many of you of the necessity of shipping water north from sodden northern California to the parched Pacific Northwest, is this idea practical?

It may be! 

Far easier than the famous water works of southern California, in which water from the Owens Valley was shipped hundreds of miles to LA across formidable terrain.

Using Google Maps,  it only took me seconds to find a nice route from the wet northern CA mountains to the dry domain of Yakima and eastern WA.  I am sure many of you could do better.

Mostly level or downhill...and I have hardly optimized the route!

In short, out-of-the-box thinking is needed to allow the West Coast to deal with the frequent north-south imbalances in precipitation.  Northern CA water is not fated to only go south.  In many ways, going north is more practical.

The Sun is Back!

For those who suffer from seasonal affective disorder or a bit of dark-day low spirits, this is a special time of the year.   

Relief is on the way!  The sun is coming back...very quickly.

Consider the solar radiation reaching the surface in Seattle over the past year (below).  

It was pretty depressing near the turn of the year, with values consistently below 5 (megajoules per square meter, if you want to know the units).  But during the last few days we have received almost three times as much!

The length of day has also gotten longer...much longer, something shown graphically by the "Sun Graph" for Seattle (below)

This figure shows the length of day, with the light blue color indicating the period between morning and evening civil twilights.   We have gained several hours of light compared to the depth of winter and are now in the period when the length of day is increasing most rapidly.

Feels very good.

For a meteorologist like myself, the return of the sun has implications far beyond its pleasant feel on the skin.

The increasing solar radiation results in the warming of the surface, while the atmosphere above remains quite cool.

The result is that temperature change with height, the cooling with height, becomes very large this time of the year...and that has big implications.

A large temperature decline with height (also called a large lapse rate) results in the atmosphere becoming unstable and convecting, not unlike the situation in a lava lamp that is heated from below (see example below).

In the atmosphere, such instability leads to fields of cumulus clouds, such as shown below.

Today, large fields of sun-driven cumulus clouds were observed all over Washington State (below). 

 You see all the little white dots over land across the western side of the Olympic Peninsula?  Or the little white specks southwest of Spokane?  Lots of cumulus clouds.

 Blame the warming effects of the incipient sun of spring.