Storm in a tea cup: The weather thread

[San Bernardhinault]

How's it going so far? Pictures from the in-laws in central CT show probably 8 inches or more.

[ursus arctos]

The same thing has been happening with the forecast here, though today's has gotten consistently worse.

She's with one of her dearest friends in a very comfortable cottage in West Palm Beach.

There are many worse situations in which to wait out weather (including all of those that I have experienced).

[San Bernardhinault]

Good luck to her. If she does get stranded, I hope it's somewhere nice.

Reports from New England acquaintances seem to be that nobody has any idea what to prepare for as the forecasts for any one location seem to have swing wildly between a dusting to a foot depending on which forecast and by the hour.

[ursus arctos]

ms ursus is scheduled to fly home tomorrow

One potential issue with that.

https://twitter.com/nycemergencymgt/status/1757131342158966870?s=20

[Moonlight Shadow]

The weather has finally cleared out. This is the view from the kitchen, this morning:

I'd be thinking about going up that mountain each time I was in the kitchen....

[S. aureus]

ooohhhhh

[San Bernardhinault]

The weather has finally cleared out. This is the view from the kitchen, this morning:

[S. aureus]

Where my daughter's volleyball tournament was yesterday:

Other recorded wind gusts include:
McClellan Air Force Base: 66 mph

[San Bernardhinault]

Christ. I've just seen some of the wind gust numbers. It's not quite hurricane equivalent winds because these are the windspeeds on the peaks of mountains rather than at sea level, but...

At Mammoth it was 125mph gusts
In the old Olympic park from 1960 (but not using its old name) they measured 148mph
And at Ward Mountain, a ski area just west of Tahoe, they recorded 162mph

Meanwhile, in the north LA hills - around Bel Air or Mulholland Drive around where it crosses the 405 - they've had 10 inches of rain in the last 24 hours.

Less than 50 miles from here, legendary surf-and-nuclear-power spot, San Onofre, where the beach parking was already washed out by last week's storm has had another 3 inches of rain.

And yet - so far - here we've just had a trace amount of drizzle and nothing else.

[Moonlight Shadow]

Surprised how wet the Ainsdale dunes were when I visited on Saturday

[San Bernardhinault]

It's been a relatively low snow winter so far, so without a couple more massive dumps it shouldn't be a big problem for people who start in mid-April.

No storm here yet, but the rainfall totals in the Malibu and Santa Barbara hills are beginning to mount up

[scratchmonkey]

Sections of it were basically closed two years ago, or at least were extremely treacherous.

We're getting smashed with high winds right now, I was typing as we lost power. Went up and down for sections of the afternoon/evening, appears to be fairly stable now.

[Moonlight Shadow]

It's going to give early PCT season thru hikers something to think about all that snow...

[San Bernardhinault]

If we have a few more of these atmospheric rivers this winter, there may not even be many forest fires in California. On the plus side, the ground is damper and the brush and forest wood have more water and find it harder to catch light. On the downside, it promotes a lot of vegetation growth that then becomes fuel - each year we don't have many fires is another year's growth of fuel for subsequent seasons.

This coming atmospheric river looks like an absolute brute for areas north of here. We'll get another inch or two of rain - which doesn't sound a lot but will make about 7 in the last 3 weeks: significant in an area where the mean for the full year* is usually just over 10.

But up in LA and Santa Barbara counties some forecasters are talking about a foot of rain falling in not much over 24 hours. Which is an insane amount of moisture and not really great for anyone because the reservoirs are already pretty much full and the ground is already saturated. And 4+ feet of snow in the Sierra which is mostly welcome because they're in a little bit of snow debt so far, but which is dangerous for the locals.

* mean rainfall isn't a particularly useful stat, mind you. It's kind of fun for the comparison, but in places that generally have wet or dry years, like southern California does, you generally either go way over or way under the mean. You actually rarely get close to mean rainfall in any given year.

[elguapo4]

Farmers are always tragically finding their gorse aflame on their marginal land in ireland each summer. No way would they be starting it, oh no...

That's a shocking statement, and there's a convoy of tractors on the way to north county Dublin as we speak.

[Lang Spoon]

Farmers are always tragically finding their gorse aflame on their marginal land in ireland each summer. No way would they be starting it, oh no...

[Balderdasha]

Forest fires happen all the time in Britain. Wild campers without the nous to put out their fucking fires cause merry havoc in the pine forests of the Cairngorms during dry spells.

Well yes, but I don't live in the Cairngorms.

By "I don't live in an area prone to forest fires", I didn't mean that the whole of Britain never has forest fires, I meant that my area doesn't.

During summer heatwaves and drought there have been occasional fires in the farmland round here. It doesn't take much for a field of wheat stubble to catch fire. There are bits and pieces of deciduous woodland nearby but they're much wetter than pine forests. We have a big walnut tree in our garden but it's one of only a handful of full-size trees on our street, and none of the others are very close, so it would struggle to cause a forest fire all by itself.

[Moonlight Shadow]

Forest fires happen all the time in Britain. Wild campers without the nous to put out their fucking fires cause merry havoc in the pine forests of the Cairngorms during dry spells.

Moorlands fire are surprisingly easy to start as well and there is not even need for a prolonged drought. Couple of weeks of dry weather and warmish temperatures and it does not take much to start one ..

[Lang Spoon]

I also don't live in an area prone to forest fires. It's far too wet here to be worrying about that. My main reason for ever removing sticks is to stop my son poking his sister's eyes out with them.

Forest fires happen all the time in Britain. Wild campers without the nous to put out their fucking fires cause merry havoc in the pine forests of the Cairngorms during dry spells.

[San Bernardhinault]

Oh yeah. There was flooding in town a week or so ago. Pretty bad, too, mostly because of badly maintained storm drains. Had another inch or so yesterday. There have been several days where I didn’t go for a bike ride or walk in the hills.

We usually get a few of these each year, and expect more in an El Niņo year, but yesterday and next week are prettt close together.

[Nocturnal Submission]

I don't recall you mentioning that some poor weather has been intruding upon your idyllic SoCal lifestyle San Bernardhinault:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68185319

[Sam]

This summer has been by a very long way the most pleasant, weather-wise (not politically, obviously) since I moved here: highs in the high twenties and occasionally low 30s, with lows mostly in the high teens. Of course it couldn't last all summer, and over the next week or two we're in for a period where the lows will be in the mid twenties, so sleep is going to get a bit less comfortable. But I wish every summer could be like the last month and a half. And even the stickiness we've got coming up is going to involve highs of around 34 or 35, when normally at this time of year it'd be 10 degrees hotter than that.

[blameless]

That corner of Scotland is notable for having a few places with surprising microclimates - a few miles up the road from Kinlochewe is a village called Poolewe, home of Inverewe Gardens (which has tropical ferns and palm trees growing outdoors)

[Fussbudget]

Bloody hell, that could have been in the WTF thread. Love this bit:

Donald MacLennan, manager of the Kinlochewe Hotel, confirmed it was "really hot outside".

"But I can't see anyone out enjoying it as it's blowing a hoolie," he added.

[Nocturnal Submission]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotla...lands-68119951