Big change coming to the weather this week. A cut-off low that has been sitting off the coast for about a week will finally come onshore into NorCal on Thursday. This is an unusually strong cold front & storm for the month of August. Showers & thunderstorms should be the norm on Thursday, but the main story is that this is not convective thunderstorms like we see during the summer due to instability. This is a storm coming in off the Pacific. Snow levels could drop to 9000 ft. on Thursday night which could mean a dusting up on top of Mount Rose for Friday morning. Temps will also only be in the 70’s this week & maybe only 60’s on Thursday.
I have been thinking that this could be a wet fall, especially compared to the last few years. It makes me nervous because my firewood could use at least 2 more months to dry out in the sun before I have to stack it under the tarps for the winter. Storms like this one could be a sign of what’s to come in September & October if they continue. I’m personally rooting for a Halloween opening for some of the resorts, as rare as it is it does happen.
Latest El Nino conditions show the SSTs (Sea Surface Temps) in the equatorial Pacific have cooled a little but still are running around .8 degrees above normal. Three month ONI is not out yet. Remember Apr.- Jun. was only .2 & we need it above .5 for 5 consecutive months for an official El Nino. Latest models have the El Nino flat lining or even going down slightly in the near term before going higher in the fall. This could be them beginning to adjust to the conditions that I talked about in the last post that I believe may limit the strength of this El Nino. Winds have begun to kick up out of the West in the Eastern equatorial Pacific & convection along with cloud cover has increased. This is a good sign for the source of the fuel for this upcoming winter’s storms beginning to brew!
The month of July was another below avg. month in Truckee with temps averaging 2.2 degrees below avg. Only two months have been above average since Nov. 07, those being Nov. 08 & May 09. We hit 90 deg. 5 days but never went above which is unusual as well. It was a dry month with Truckee reporting only 5% of avg. precip. Still waiting for the figures on the Tahoe Basin as a whole.
I am working on a new website for this winter that will be full of graphs, tools, & links which will be helpful. I hope to have it to a point where you can at least check it out soon. Also, the sun is still acting very strange. Check out spaceweather.com. The sun has been spotless for over 3 weeks now, continuing it’s minimum which has now lasted since 2004. Last year was the quietest year since 1913 with 73% of the days spotless. This year we are ahead of that pace at 77% so far! BA
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
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4 comments:
looking forward to the new website, keep you the good work!
I have a few questions about this news. 1) I thought there were some thunderstorms scattered through the month. Didn't you also say the precipitation average was low for July? 2) Is the news of the spotless sun good news or bad news? 3) In general, is there still a high likely hood of el niño?
was there any reports of snow at Mt. Rose from the storm?
A spotless sun is normal during the low end of the 11 year cycles. problem is that the next cycle of spots should have started by now. No spots in the past for this long has led to a period of global cooling. They call it a minima & we are getting close to having one as low as the late 1800's which triggered the mini ice age.
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