March 22, 2011

California Gets Hits

You want intense weather? Then head down to California! With a high amplitude trough over the eastern Pacific, one system after another is heading to California. Here are some amazing statistics noted by my colleague Mark Albright:

Point Reyes north of San Francisco reached 79 mph.

At Burns Canyon 20 miles N of Palm Springs at 6300 ft, there was a wind gust of 96 knots (110 mph) at noon Sunday 20 March 2011. In contrast, at 11 AM the wind was nearly calm at Palm Springs.

The 27-hr total ending last night at 10 PM 20 March 2011 was 6.06 inches in Santa Barbara of which 4.13 inches fell in just 12 hours. Their monthly (28 days) total has now mushroomed to 7.78 inches.

AT SANTA BARBARA YESTERDAY WAS THE WETTEST CALENDAR DAY ON RECORD...AS THE 5.23 INCHES OF RAIN WHICH FELL EXCEEDED THE PREVIOUS RECORD OF 4.74 INCHES RECORDED ON MARCH 15TH 2003. That is a big one.

Many of southern CA stations had their daily records.


The general pattern is going to continue for a while, but with a shift of the precipitation into central and northern CA. The mountains of northern CA will get hit by 2-5 inches of rain. We are going to be quite dry in comparison to those poor souls in CA. As I noted the current pattern would send any Japan radiation into CA,.


Good news. The National Weather Service has secured the property for the new coastal radar (on Langley Hill) and work on clearing and preparing the land is now beginning.

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for your continued updates. I'll pass this one on to my sister who moved down to CA to avoid all the rain. Good new about the radar property. That is really exciting.
    Thanks!

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  2. Hey stop saying the radiation is coming to California. We have enough crazies here and I've been spending a lot of time telling them not to worry. EPA want to deploy a suite of additional monitors but came to their senses. Any more comments and I'm going to post to picture of you as an example of "after 3 mile island"
    Rain here in Monterey has been decent. The last piece of energy reminded me of Northwest. Sigh! Tonights won't be too bad.

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  3. Amen - they can have the rain. We have had enough, and I am enjoying the beautiful sunny day view of the snowy Olympic Range out the office window.

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  4. 64F at my place! Time to pull out the BBQ! Mmmmm...and it's almost time for Mariners baseball!! Meanwhile, Lk. Tahoe is getting slammed! 2-3ft on top of what they got last week. Wow!

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  5. and What a Tease the sunny weather was.!!!

    Glad to hear about radar starting to move into construction phase. Im happy to know we will now have warnings on our homes on the coast this winter.

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