NC Media Watch

White Christmas - early forecast

Russ Steele

Checking the Unisys Weather forecast models it does not look like we will have a white Christmas in Nevada County this year. However, that can change we are still ten days out. Northern California is forecast to have light rain on the 23rd, but there is no cold air to produce snow.

Temperatures

Precipitation

California Winter weather update

Russ Steele

Anthony Watts at WUWT has an El Nino update here. The El Nino is gaining strength. Here is an estimate of the impact on California from the Climate Prediction Center.

The Climate Prediction Center has an analysis of the El Niño impact by state. These impacts are derived from looking at what happened during moderate to strong El Niños of the last 100 years (1895-1997). In the image below, California rankings are shown for precipitation (top; wet [green] to dry [red]) and temperature (bottom; cold [blue] to warm [red]) by climate division. These rankings are for 3 three-month intervals over the winter-spring season: November to January, January to March and March to May.

How cold was it, and how cold could it get?

 Russ Steele



October 2009 3rd Coldest for US in 115 Years, but how about the Local Temperatures?

What about our local temperatures?  The mean October temperatures for Grass Valley, based on the average from 1966 to 2009, is 57.5 (F) degrees. According to the National Weather Station at the Grass Valley Waste Water Plant, the October mean temperature was 54.95 (F) This is about 2.5 degrees below the average. 

What about the coming winter? Looks a little cooler than normal.

H/T to Icecap and Watts Up With That.

Winter warmer for some, wetter for us, off to a cold start

Russ Steele

A post by Anthony Watts at Watts Up With That: A cold start to fall: over 4500 new snowfall, low temp, and lowest max temp records set in the USA this last week introduced me to HAMWeather. More on HAMWeather below, first here is the graph showing the distribution of the cold records. Click for larger image.



In addition to some other interesting climate information, HAMWeather has a blog, with a peek at what an El Nino winter might look like.  

It’s been a wintry October for many in the Midwest and Northeast so far, but I come with some good news that will hopefully pan out this Winter. It seems that El Niño is going to be a factor in our winter weather outlook–between the months of December and February is what we’re specifically talking about. It is amazing how changes in the weather pattern thousands of miles away can impact global weather. This is a good example of just that! As you may or may not know, the equatorial surface waters in the Pacific can change in temperature. When it warms, the phenomena is known as “El Niño” and can give us clues as to what our general weather pattern is going to be like.


We are off to a wet start, with twice the normal rain fall for October in Nevada County. We go five inches of rain on Banner Mountain, the average is about 2.5 inches. Click for a larger image.

Rain, rain and more rain

Russ Steele

NOAA's Climate Prediction Center has released its latest El Nino Forecast:

•El Niño is present across the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

•Sea surface temperatures (SST) were at least 1.0ºC above-average across much of the central and east-central equatorial Pacific.

•Based on current observations and dynamical model forecasts, El Niño is expected to strengthen and last through Northern Hemisphere winter 2009-10.

With a moderate to strong El Nino in the Pacific, the consequences for California and Nevada County are shown in the following graphics for November-December-January and December-January-February. Accompanying probability graphics show a better then 50% probability of these conditions over the winter of 2009-2010

November-December-January

December-January-February

Looks line we are going to have a wet winter that will fill the reservoirs  and damp the drought!

Batten down the hatches (updated)

Russ Steele

Here is the latest forecast for next week, if the model holds up, we can see some significant moisture in Nevada County, and a couple of feet of snow in the Sierra. Ski season is looking up!

 

Click for a larger image. Please note the above forecast is for 12 hours.

Update:  The model has been updated and it looks like the storm will come one day earlier and be less intense.

Forecast is for 12 hours. Here is the second 12 hour period