New week, new edition
In which we learn about dropsondes and break some records.
Weekly drought monitor
Here’s the weekly drought monitor from 3/7. It had kind of a neat rundown on the storms that hit the West coast and worked their way across the U.S. last week.
📰 Read highlights about this week's U.S. Drought Monitor with links to more information: bit.ly/USDM030723 #DroughtMonitor
— NOAA NCEI (@NOAANCEI) 2:03 PM ∙ Mar 10, 2023
If that’s too broad a topic, check this out.
How is drought affecting your neighborhood❓ Enter your city or zip code at drought.gov/drought/ #DroughtMonitor
— NOAA NCEI (@NOAANCEI) 3:02 PM ∙ Mar 10, 2023
You can punch in your zip code and it brings up a bunch of local drought info.
No, I’m not teaching
But I am always learning.
Teaching Climate and the carbon cycle? This interactive animation focuses on the carbon cycle and includes embedded videos and captioned images to provide greater clarification and detail of the cycle than by a single static visual alone.
— NOAA Climate.gov (@NOAAClimate) 4:00 PM ∙ Mar 10, 2023
climate.gov/teaching/resou…
Gathering AR data
This is kind of a neat video. It talks about how they fly into ARs and collect data. It’s sort of the opposite of a weather balloon. They fly into the storm and then release dropsondes that collect data as they fall.
Had a chance to fly with the @53rdWRS crew last year, here’s a look at flight / data gathering process and how much that data helps improve weather forecasts in #AtmosphericRiver events nbcbayarea.com/video/hurrican…
— Rob Mayeda (@RobMayeda) 7:32 PM ∙ Mar 10, 2023
Never gets old
Clouds + mountain.
The last light of tonight's sunset hit's Lenticular clouds at the top of Mt. Rainier. @spann
— Christopher V. Sherman (@cvsherman) 2:23 AM ∙ Mar 11, 2023
Southern Sierra breakin’ records
And more to come of course, so we’ll see where we end up.
Brief thread about...snow. As of this weekend, the Southern Sierra now appears to have largest snowpack in recorded history (as measured by snow water equivalent, or SWE). Not just for the calendar date, but for *any* date! #CAwx #CAwater [1/n]
— Daniel Swain (@Weather_West) 7:44 PM ∙ Mar 12, 2023
The Southern Sierra Nevada now officially has its largest snowpack in recorded history, passing 1982-1983.
— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch) 6:34 PM ∙ Mar 11, 2023
The snowpack is a staggering 244% of the peak snowpack average.
Last update on Freddy?
Maybe. It’s breaking all the records.
Cyclone #Freddy continues to obliterate records.
— MyRadar Weather (@MyRadarWX) 10:47 PM ∙ Mar 12, 2023
— longest-lived ever recorded
— most instances of rapid intensification on record
— greatest ACE, or energy expenditure, of any recorded storm
Follow MyRadar on TikTok: tiktok.com/t/ZTR7FAntU/
Fresh Weather West post
Here ya go. He did offices hours today too and covered a few things I found interesting (among other stuff):
- Really wet winters don’t necessarily mean a reduced fire season
- Potential flood risk later this spring depending on how the snowpack melts
- How to communicate about atmospheric rivers and weather impacts in general
New Weather West post on upcoming Mon-Tue storm. Thoughts on why this "moderate to strong" AR may "outperform" in terms of flood/wind impacts (relative to what strict interpretation of weather models would suggest). #CAwx #CAwater
— Daniel Swain (@Weather_West) 9:46 PM ∙ Mar 12, 2023
Seems like there’s still uncertainty on the exact timing and location. Whatever the case though, rain and wind are coming.
#AtmosphericRiver landfall expected later Monday into CA with continued uncertainty in *exact* landfall & impacts to Bay Area. @NWSWPC graphic has cluster of (stronger, more impactful) n'rly storm tracks. GFS (shown) still follows s'rly options. Santa Cruz south still focus.#CAwx
— CW3E Scripps (@CW3E_Scripps) 12:46 PM ∙ Mar 13, 2023
This was over my head, but if you’re interested in some of the details, feel free to read on.
@AndyS_Research @Weather_West Happy to hear his thoughts. Our @jaycordeira has done some work on this; here is a very tech snapshot from Cordeira et al. (2013; journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/…) w/ sim. processes that cld be foundation for investigating hypothesis. Long story short, condensational heating is important.
— CW3E Scripps (@CW3E_Scripps) 6:53 PM ∙ Mar 12, 2023
That’s it, happy Monday!
See you next time weather fam.
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