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Will it Rain in California this Winter?
High on my list of: THINGS THAT COULD GO VERY WRONG, is the drought in the west coast. The three year run of below average rain has already had a big toll. Agricultural production is way off, fires are burning in all of the affected states, and there has been some curbs on water consumption by individuals. But there has been no real crisis as of yet as the major reservoirs are not completely dry. My question is:
What if there is another year of below average rainfall?
Over the past six months there has been some evidence that a normal rainfall pattern was coming to Cali this fall. But as of today, the forecast of fall/winter rain is now in doubt.
The folks at NOAA (and a lot of other scientific types) believe that Pacific Coast rain is driven by the El Nino/La Nina cycles in the Pacific ocean. When there are La Nina conditions rainfall is low (yellow) during El Nino conditions rainfall is higher (blue).
The west coast drought is now in its third year. It's no coincidence that there has been no El Ninos during this period:
Earlier this year there was a water temperature "anomaly" that lead a few weather folks to predict that a "Super El Nino" was coming to Cali. More charts:
This was a very big anomaly 'bump'. The media picked up on it:
But the bump went away, and with it went the expectation for a strong El Nino (lots of rain). NOAA has kept up its forecast of an El Nino this fall/winter. However, as of today NOAA downgraded the outlook (Link):
Clearly there has been an El Nino head-fake this year. It's now more probable that Pacific waters remain in neutral condition for the next six months. If we don't get an El Nino, the West Coast will likely see below average precipitation for another year. Another year of drought would mean that some large population areas will have real water problems (rationing). The consequences to agriculture, industry, tourism and wildfires will be multiples of what they are this year.
Notes:
#1) El Nino increases the potential for rain in the West, it also reduces the probability of Atlantic hurricanes (the prevailing El Nino winds shear off the tops of the big storms). NOAA has a very benign outlook for the 2014 hurricane season. That forecast is (was) supported by the 80% chance of an El Nin0. The NOAA forecast:
2014 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook: Summary
NOAA’s updated 2014 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook indicates that a below-normal season is likely. The outlook calls for a 70% chance of a below-normal season, a 25% chance of a near-normal season, and only a 5% chance of an above-normal season.
#2) I'm no weather expert - I read what the scientists are saying, and I watch the weekly numbers.
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Well, the answer to this question (as to Will It Rain?), is actually very well appreciated.
It is snarled up in the relationships of ENSO, El Nino, La Nina PDO, AMO, orbital mechanics and other natural variations over the millennia.
For some current insightful discussion of the whys and wherefores, read the following by Bob Tisdale:
The 2014/15 El Niño – Part 15 – August 2014 Update – An El Niño Mulligan?Note, this is Part 15, the series has been going on for a while.
Ever used a magnifying glass to focus the sun's rays and set a dried leaf on fire?
We have a range of mountains to the east of LA. I have long wondered what it would take to pipe sea water to the base of the mountains, focus the sun's rays on it with giant magnifying glasses, and have the resulting steam flow up the mountain in a pipe - heated along the way by more magnifying glasses - condensing into fresh water at the top and falling into a large resevoir. At night-time, the water could fall back down the mountain through a different pipe to a fresh-water reservoir at the bottom, and generate electricity as it falls.
This could be done along the mountain range as many times as needed to provide the needed amount of water, plus electricity. But too many people would need to cooperate on the water transport, from the seashore to the mountain, for this to be a feasible idea. Plus, what do we do with all the salt created through evaporation?
Forget El Nino and El Pinto......read Caddilac Desert.
The norm is drought, one lasted 220 yrs another 140 yrs.
Los Angeles never should have been.
Has anyone checked the "Farmer's Almanac"??
Supposedly pretty good track record.
most of the world is voting against rain in CA
Looks like Downey Cal. has really cleaned itself up and has eliminated it's illegal alien problem.
I'm certain that the water situation in CA is representative of a long term trend. Expect further water restrictions, rationing, drinking water imports, announcements of water desalination projects, toilet-to-tap systems, concurrent with increasing population exodus and decline and rapidly dwindling tax revenue.
The return to historical normal precipitation levels is upon CA.
http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_24993601/california-drought-past-d...
http://m.theatlantic.com/infocus/2014/03/californias-historic-drought/10...
It rained cats and dogs in February 2014 in Los Angeles. i was there. I had to drive on the 5 and 101 north bound to temp at Capitol Records, just a block away from where the Oscars were rained on.
Please see the photographs for the entire story.
http://economicasylum.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-i-dont-understand-about-...
February is typically the wettest month for So.Cal. This past Feb. was no exception. But we have no ability to capture the rain, other than a few holding areas in the San Fernando Valley north of LA. Runoff collects in these few areas and is allowed to soak down to the water table. Not enough to make a difference.
California has enough water for the people. 80% of our water is used for agriculture which can't afford to pay very much for it.
Agriculture is a big part of the state's economy. So the government is trying to get water for it, but the cities can pay more for the water than the farmers. Until recently, the state used 30% of its water on rice, hay and cotton. Each of them is cheap and use lots of water. There is no room for a 20% bump in the the price of water for those crops. The fields just gio idle.
Actually it would be cheaper to just give the farmer a check and let the fields go idle. Everyone else gets a check, so should the farmer.
California has enough water for the people. 80% of our water is used for agriculture which can't afford to pay very much for it.
Agriculture is a big part of the state's economy. So the government is trying to get water for it, but the cities can pay more for the water than the farmers. Until recently, the state used 30% of its water on rice, hay and cotton. Each of them is cheap and use lots of water. There is no room for a 20% bump in the the price of water for those crops. The fields just gio idle.
Actually it would be cheaper to just give the farmer a check and let the fields go idle. Everyone else gets a check, so should the farmer.
I visit Pittsburgh to jog in the rain during the summer. I go to UCLA to be with the girls during the rest of the year. My solution would be to find a way to move the land masses beneath the rain wherever it may be falling.
A simple yet elegant solution to the water shortage is the use of fast breeder reactors to generate electricity and, provide potable water. But, like all logical, simple solutions, the right people can't get filthy rich so, it won't happen...again!
How do you want to use the electricity? Pump water or desalination? Breeder reactors are unlikely to produce it cheaper than heavy water reactors, which never really reached the promised too cheap to meter level either ... this isn't going to be cheap.
We can ship all the water they need since Pennsylvania must be going thru the mirror opposite of Californica.
This is a good example of why a modest breakup of the United States would prove beneficial to EVERYONE, maybe even the top 1-9%, once they get over their megamomaniacal efforts to put one puppet in charge of everything:
http://www2.barchart.com/charts/futures/CC*0
keep watering the grass, washing your cars, filling up the swimming pools. who to blame? start with yourself, lemming. LMAO.
"In addition... future developments may well include automated or manned space warships, deep-sea installations, chemical and biological weapons, death rays, and still other forms of warfare--even the weather may be tampered with."
~Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages circa 1970, page 57
I'm not saying it **is** a waether weapon, I'm saying that Debt Money Monopolist technocrats have been envisioning weather weapons they can leverage to covertly attack people... drive down land prices, buy them up for pennies on the dollar, end the drought... badda bing, badda bang.
Where are the trillions in tax free CIA / mega bank drug money going again?
As an aside, Warren Buffet's Wells Fargo pays no taxes on up to $378 billion in drug money laundering, but he wants you to pay more taxes on your legitimate gig.
How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs [and didn't pay taxes on the drug money when they got caught! Hell, they didn't even have to return the $378 billion, sucka!)http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs
Buffet thinks we are all Muppets.
Can it be argued that because Buffet isn't swinging from a post or Wells Fargo (Wachovia) isn't on fire that we are all muppets?
No major plans are in the works here. Now on some days, the Colorado River doesn't "make it" to the Pacific.
They need to build desalinization and recycling (Orange County) plants on the double.
The Colorado hasn't made it to the Sea of Cortez for nearly 50 yrs. That's why the once richest and diverse marine ecosystem in the world ( Jacque Cousteau's words) is nearly dead. The Colorado emptied into it on the north end with all of its minerals and micro-nutrients, creating the beginning of a huge marine food chain.
The little bit of water that is only occasionally allowed to enter is now full of salts created by fertilizers and does not provide the same kickstart to the food chain.
They could also create electricity with the desal plant.
The fact that there are still rice fields in any part of CA means that the rest of the state agriculture should be penalized.
Don't they know that an atmosphere of mistrust and deceit is mandatory moving forward?
fuck el nino and el nina. i resent that they have spanish names.
i'm calling them , neptune and posseidon years. cause of greco-roman history MOTHERFUCKERS!
I believe it was Equadorian fisherman who 1st noticed the phenomenon and named it in their ( not so ) native tongue.
http://www.hcn.org/issues/44.22/underwater-forest-reveals-the-story-of-a... Medieval megadroughts allowed trees to grow on the bottom of Lake Tahoe. It could get worse...much worse.
Good link! But hey, we specialize in "chimeras." I mean, THAT'S what we do. Go, uh, Dophins! Go Bears! Go Rams! Go Broncos! Go Redskins? Wait! There'll be nobody left but us morons!
Wow!
That is pretty cool.
Really.
Southern California is a desert. I wonder if it will rain there enough this winter to support the 22 million people that live there when an average rainfall is enough to support about 1 million? LA was importing water starting in about 1913 destroying the Owens Valley.
And another 18 million up north where there's no water either.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqOru7imqvI
It'll rain alright. Acid fucking rain.
the amount of rain that actually falls in southern california has nothing to do with the amount of water in the state, which comes primarily from the eastern sierra snowpack. compare those two maps and you come up with some interesting differences. the colorado river basin is somewhat different between la nina and el nino, the real difference is the pacific northwest, which has nothing to do with californias drought. and while all of us in SoCal pay attention, because El Nino can cause flooding, its not significant to the drought problem. more significant is the number of consecutive high heat days which puts a burden on the energy grid. several days at 100 plus inland could cause more damage than a water shortage
If El Nino does another head fake, it is a touch down and match over for Cal.
That Downey looks like a nice place to put solar panels on. No El Nino, lots of sun, lots of solar electricity with which to desalinate the Pacific sea water and...bingo...problem solved!
RIP Robin.
Downey is a suburb near Anaheim, that land is somewhere near Barstow i think.
I think you're struggling with your illiteracy.
Fall mountains, just don't fall on me
You steal from Hendrix without attribution? History is dead.
This your first time on the interwebs boy, or you still using lynx?
Let's say that there is nitric oxide in the air,
http://www.belleville.k12.wi.us/bhs/health/environment/nitrogen_oxide.htm
It's also produced in the body with.... ARGININE.
REad what the scaremongers write:
"
How Can Humans be Affected by Nitrogen Oxide?Guess what? Our bodies already develop nitric oxide. AS a matter of fact, many sports substances are ornathine//arginine that causes nitric oxide.
Which is combatted by ornathine decarboxylase which requires riboflavin uptake in the cells of the mammilian body.
OR.
LYSINE. From Tryptophan.
UNCOLLATERALIZED "collateralized" carbon credits traded on the Goldman Sachs owned CCX is not going to clear that up.
Wonder if you can spray the air with lysine.
The science here is so wishy washy-
Edit for double post. It rained cats and dogs for a week in Los Angeles.
I find it hard to believe that we're even in a drought. Except for water speculators.
I wonder if our legislators sold the water to Oregon like Gray Davis sold electricity to Oregon and had to buy it back early 2000.
Cats and dogs for a week. Which Los Angeles are you referring to? Your statement is not accurate. It has not rained cast and dogs in Socal for a long time.
It didn't rain on the Ocsars? http://www.justjared.com/2014/03/02/its-raining-at-the-oscars-2014-wet-r...
I was in Hollywood, Midtown LA and Downey and on the 5, 10, 101 freeways when it was raining cats at dogs. I sat on the rush hour traffic on the 101 for over an hour in that rain, my stuff was in the trunk that leaked and many of my personal belongings are damaged.
It rained more in socal 2014 than 2000-2005 altogether.
Dude, I LIVE here.
Don't tell me that it didnt' rain when the streets are flooded.
I thought you were referring to recently. So it rained a bit 4-5 months ago - that's called a drought. Before you jump on me - it might have rained a bit last year too.
As a Santa Cruz conservative (that is, fiscally conservative and socially liberal - I don't give a damn who's fucking who because I'm not a Middle School girl) I'm not entirely sure who's really to blame but I'm suspecting it's everybody, along with Mother Nature.
Nothing a new Red Hot Chili Peppers home concert can't fix. The concert goers will load up on draught and piss the drought away.
Pink Flyod would bring in a lake in every back yard.
A Waters and Flyod reunion tour. There. All done.
Worth noting that in the Pacific Northwest, La Nino years result in higher than average rainfall (blue), but lower in California. Clearly, surface evaporation from oceans are not the only thing controlling the rainfall on the West coast. Non-linear, chaotic systems are rarely predicted via on or two variables like surface sea temperature, SST. Cloud formation, and rain are much more complex. One can easily have lots of clouds but little rain due to lack of proper temperature gradients and not enough nucleating agents (e.g. dust or cosmic rays) at the right height. Since clouds control the surface temperature via albedo effects- both temperature and rainfall are totally unpredictable as is the weather.
One more example of how easily humans, those great pattern recognizers, are fooled by randomness. If you're an AGW statist control freak this reality could drive you crazy. Liberatarian anarchists not so much.
Statism and anarchism have nothing to do with science. It's abstract projections like yours that are non-scientific, and also top-down, with your own beliefs being the dictator of your outlook, as they refuse to acknowledge those pesky unruly data points that show that AGW is a very likely (~95% confidence) a reality, perhaps because admitting major environmental limits would undermine your self-proclaimed libertarian anarchism. Do your homework and learn about climate change.
True. The driving force behind the variation in rainfall totals in different geographic areas during El Nino/La Nina years is the displacement of the high pressure in the N.E. Pacific.
During La Nina the high pressure zone is anchored right off the California coast causing the storm track to ridge over Washington/Oregon then dip down over Montana/Colorado once it hits the continental US. Hence, the polar vortex and why Colorado received so much snowfall this last year. During El Nino the high pressure moves further off the coast (and south I think?) allowing the storm track to take a much more western approach right at California. Thus the rain/storms that usually hit Washington/Oregon is now dumped on Ca and proceeds eastward across the US to the Atlantic where it then causes the shearing winds off of Florida reducing hurricane formation.
It's EL Nino and LA Nina (But in L.A. maybe it's La Nino). Don't Deep Water Horizon or Fukushima or Geo-engineering or sucking the water tables dry count as "non-linear chaotic systems"? More nucleating agents please!
Halleluja ! ... somebody gets it !