Flash Flood In A Drought? Happens Often, Actually. Even Here In Vermont

Flash flooding in Burlington, Vermont back in 2012. Very localized
flash flooding can occur even during very dry conditions,
if the downpour is torrential enough. 

I've been whining since at least May about how dry it is here in Vermont and surrounding areas.

Despite a bit of recent rain, the southern half of Vermont is in a moderate drought, while the northern half is abnormally dry, not quite a drought, according to the most recent U.S. Drought Monitor. 

So why does the subject of flash flooding keeping popping up during this weather regime?

The reason: Tis the season for local downpours. It's the summer doldrums, when the humidity is highest and scattered thunderstorms often move very slowly, or sometimes not at all.

The best way to end a drought or a dry spell is to get an area wide, steady, soaking rain.  A torrential downpour will mostly just run off.

We've seen that a few times already this summer in Vermont.  The more intense thunderstorm rains can overwhelm the drainage in a particular area pretty quickly.  Plus, if the thunderstorm parks itself over a particular spot for an hour or two instead of moving on as usual, the rain can get pretty extreme.

We saw some flash flooding around Starksboro in late June from a stalled thunderstorm while surrounding towns remained dry.  I spotted some minor flash flooding in downtown St. Albans during last week's thunderstorms.  A flash flood warning went up very early Sunday morning for a small area of the Adirondacks due to a pocket of heavy rains.

You'll get a situation where it  rains so hard and so fast in one town that there's washouts and high water on small streams.  Meanwhile, two towns away, people are watering their dusty, wilting gardens.

The reason I bring all this up today is that, interestingly, the National Weather Service's daily Excessive Rain Outlook puts almost all of Vermont and New Hampshire, northern New York, western Maine and central New England in a slight risk zone for flash flooding over the next 24 hours.

A slight risk zone means there's a 10 to 20 percent chance of rainfall heavy enough to trigger flash flooding within 25 miles of any point within the slight risk zone.

These risk levels are akin to severe thunderstorm risks. Both are a five point scale going from marginal, to slight, to elevated, to moderate to high risk. So Vermont is at level two of a five point scale later today and tonight.

As the slight risk implies, there might well be no flash flooding. Based on current forecasts, there might be a few areas in Vermont that actually get  no rain at all between now and tomorrow.

Most of us will see some showers and storms as an upper level disturbance moves slowly into the region.  Moisture will feed into this from the southeast, forecasters are telling us. Also, an upper level disturbance consists of a pool of colder air aloft, so the temperature contrast will increase between ground level and several thousand feet above of us. That encourages showers to form.

If any locally torrential rains develop at all, I bet any instances of that would be isolated at most. The forward motion of the showers and storms will be slow, which is why there's that slight risk guidance on flash floods.

While the the National Weather Service's  U.S. level guidance has that slight risk of a pocket or two of flash flooding around here, the local office of the National Weather Service in South Burlington is less bullish with the idea.

The local office definitely has showers and a few isolated thunderstorms in the forecast today thruogh Tuesday, there's no mention of torrential rains. The South Burlington office of the NWS in this morning's forecast discussion correctly describes the expected showers as beneficial, as we definitely need the rain.

The bottom line: Most of us should see some rains in the next 24 hours that won't amount to anything too spectacular.  There's a low risk somebody could get unlucky with too much water.

Real Winter Has Finally Descended On Vermont, Even With Rain Chances

The sun rises behind snow and ice covered trees in St. Albans, Vermont
Sunday, the coldest morning of the winter so far. 

Over the past few days, winter has finally truly established itself in Vermont and will stick around for a least a week.

Even with that flat statement, you know the kind of "winter" we've had.

Even with this new weather regime, there are still rain chances in parts of Vermont Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Still, there are snow chances during the same period as well, and we're also not done with Arctic outbreaks like this weekend's just yet.  

First of all, can I say what a gorgeous day we had Saturday. Yes, it was cold, with temperatures never rising above the upper single numbers to mid-teens. But that brilliant blue sky with sun shining on sparkling snow and whitened trees was something to behold.

In the mountains, the setting sun created a beautiful salmon pink alpenglow on the snow covered mountains with a full moon rising behind them. I wish I was able to go out and take photos yesterday, but at least I saw some of it.

Last night was something, too.  The full moon shining on that fresh snow meant it never really got dark last night.  People took photos at midnight last night and the landscape was clearly visible.

Of course, a clear, calm night with light winds over a deep snow cover meant temperatures really bottomed  out.  It was the the first truly Arctic night of the winter  (though we had a rather chilly spell in mid-December, too).

A white pine on my St. Albans, Vermont property greets a cold
Sunday February morning under the weight of snow and ice.

This morning, though, was the first 30 below night in Vermont. Island Pond reached 31 below and it was 30 below on Lake Seymour, according to Jennifer Hannux, a Vermont outdoor photographer and weather enthusiast.

In the Banana Belt of the Champlain Valley, it only got down to 9 below in Burlington. Still quite cold, but nothing extreme. To put this all in perspective, we missed record lows last night by ten to 20 degrees.  So this wasn't unusual at all.

Today will warm up under skies that will cloud up.  That means more precipitation is coming.  It won't be a big storm. But this is the mild winter of 2019-20, so it won't be all snow.

Broader, warmer valleys should get a dusting to two inches of snow before the precipitation mixes with rain before ending Monday.  Higher elevations should stay all snow, with an expected accumulation of one to four inches.

The Monday morning commute might be a little slow, so keep that in consideration. It won't be impossible like it was Friday, but you'll still want to allow some extra time.

A weak system Tuesday will probably throw a few snowflakes or rain drops at us.  A larger potential storm Thursday will probably give us more snow and/or rain or mixed precipitation. It's too soon to tell.  I'm calling this a larger potential storm, but it won't be enormous.  At this point it looks like it will be light to moderate, and quick.

After that storm, it looks like another Arctic shot of air will come in.  There's indications that one will be even colder than the one we got yesterday and last night.  It won't last for a long time, however. Maybe we'll get two of three days of really cold weather before it warms up again.

Wicked Fast Jet Stream Meant Speedy Cross Country Flights

A schematic of the force of Tuesday's jet stream winds in the
United States from CBS News. The whitish shading over
the Northeast depicts record strong jet stream winds
of more than 200 mph.

Like everybody else, I don't like flight delays.

But I understand that weather, mechanical issues, staffing, coordination between airports and all kinds of other factors frequently conspire from letting you make your connecting flight on time.

Every once in awhile, you get lucky and your plane lands a little ahead of schedule. That happened a lot this week as what could be a record fast jet stream rocketed roughly west to east across the nation this week.

Eastbound flights got caught up in this jet stream and often made it to their destination in record time.

For instance, a Virgin Atlantic flight from Los Angeles to London landed at Heathrow 48 minutes early because of the boost given by the jet stream over the United States.

That plane was clocked at going 801 mph over Pennsylvania. Usually, cruising speed is around 560 mph. That 801 mph is faster than the speed of sound and airliners are generally not designed to go that fast. But nothing bad happened because the aircraft was being propelled by 200 mph jet stream winds and not by revved up plane engines.

That meant the air speed of the plane was 800 mph, but the ground speed - what the plane's engines could produce - was well below that.

In any event, most flights heading west to east across the nation in the past couple of day landed earlier than normal. Of course, planes heading in the opposite direction were a little late, because they either had to fight the jet stream head winds or detour around the jet stream.

Jet streams thrive on the contrast between the warm tropics and the cold Arctic. Because there's a bigger temperature contrast between the North Pole and the Equator in the winter, the jet stream is fastest in the winter.

The jet stream got an added boost this week because of a conspiracy of three different branches of the jet stream. A very fast stream coming across the Pacific zoomed into Mexico and the southwestern United States.

Meanwhile, the polar jet stream split, with one arm heading southeastward through the western states, then turning northeastward toward New England. The other branch of the polar jet stream made a beeline from Alaska to the Great Lakes.

All three of these jet stream branches merged over the northeastern United States. They combined their collective power and voila! A record fast jet stream was born over places like Pennsylvania.

The jet stream is 35,000 feet or so overhead. The incredibly fast winds of a jet stream don't usually translate to the surface and that's what happened this time.

Tuesday afternoon, the jet stream was screaming above our heads in Vermont at roughly 200 mph. Here on the ground, it was a delightfully sunny, calm winter day with wind speeds of less than 10 mph.

Jet streams do help steer weather systems. The southern jet stream is carrying moisture from the tropical Pacific, which helps explain why it has been snowing so hard in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, and raining so hard in the Ohio and Tennessee River valleys this week.

The northern stream that approaches from the west is helping shunt the deeper moisture to our south, which explains why the precipitation with these storms has generally not been that heavy here in Vermont.

The jet stream has slowed down a bit overhead since yesterday but it is still wicked fast. The overall speed and orientation of it is expected to remain roughly the same as it has been the past couple of days, so the current general weather pattern will last that long, too.

Extreme Weather Pattern Is About To Create Lots Of Extreme Weather

As of Sunday afternoon, the map on the home
page of the National Weather Service was lit up
with lots of colors. That signifies lots of weather
watches, warnings and alerts, meaning there will
be a lot to talk about in the weather over the coming days.
The dark green you see in Vermont is a flood watch.

The jet stream and the weather is going haywire again, which means we here in Vermont, and a lot of people throughout Earth's Northern Hemisphere are going to have plenty of extreme and bizarre weather over the next week or so.

THE PATTERN:

The polar vortex, that whirlpool of very cold air that pretty much always wanders around the Arctic, or at least near it, all the time has split into two pieces. That's rare, but it does happen occasionally.

One piece is ending up roughly over central and northwestern Canada, while the other piece is somewhere around Siberia. That means western North America and parts of Europe and interior Asia are turning quite cold.

The split in the polar vortex means another big squirt of warm air will enter the far northern Arctic, including around the North Pole. (This has been going on a lot lately.)

That's bad, because it's been very warm (for them) across much of the Arctic most of this winter. Sea ice extent is running at record lows.

That burst of above freezing air coming in for the high Arctic will just make things worse.

UNITED STATES SCREWED, TOO

Meanwhile, down here in the United States, a big, strong ridge of high pressure - basically an out of season Bermuda High, is about to pump record warm temperatures into the eastern third of the nation.

Out west, the position of one piece of the polar vortex means it's going to be quite cold over the next several days in the western third of the United States. Again, that's bad. It's been incredibly warm in California all winter. Plants and crops are blooming much earlier than normal as a result.

This cold air is going to nip lots of agricultural crops, especially in California's Central Valley. Hard freeze warnings are up, and it looks like the too-early blooming plants are going to get nailed. I expect millions of dollars in agricultural losses because of this. There also might be some shortages of produce in your supermarket.

More inland, winter storm warnings, watches and advisories are up for wide areas of the Rockies and northwestern Plains state.

Big chunks of The eastern half of the country is in trouble with this weather pattern, too. The orientation of this Bermuda high will help draw massive amounts of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, leading to repeated rounds of torrential rains in a broad band from Texas to Michigan.

Many - but not all -  of these areas have had quite a lot of rain this month already. Some areas from northeastern Texas through Arkansas and into southern Ilinois could get seven or more inches of rain over the next week. There is a high chance of flooding, as you'd imagine.

VERMONT EFFECTS:

We barely got clipped by that storm that zipped by to our south last night. Most of us got one to three inches of snow, with a little less around Burlington and up to six inches and southern and eastern parts of the state.

It's kind of mild today, and some of the snow is starting to melt. But you haven't seen anything yet!

After the 30s today, it'll get into the 40s Monday and 50s to low 60s Tuesday and Wednesday. That's definitely record territory.  This will be an unusually humid warm spell for this time of year. When the air is moist, snow tends to melt much faster than when the air is dry.

The start of a thaw. Snow sliding off my St. Albans, Vermont
roof today clings to the eaves in foot-long sheets. With
forecasts for highs near 60 by Tuesday and Wednesday,
this snow will be gone soon. 

Also, partly because of the humidity, temperatures will remain extremely warm Tuesday might.

Lows early Wednesday will probably stay above 50 degrees in the Champlain Valley. That's normal for late May, not February! That'll keep the snow melt going at a fast clip.

Also, there will be a fair bit of rain during this, especially over northern areas, which will be closer to a stalled front.

The combination of melting snow and the rain could lead to flooding. Most of Vermont and northern New York is now under a flood watch Monday through Wednesday.

The biggest problem here is the ice jams left behind from that other mega-thaw in January. They're still there, and this thaw and rain will either dam up water behind the ice jams, make the ice jams even bigger, or move them into more populated areas.

As we found out in towns like Swanton and Johnson back in January, this can quickly lead to destructive flooding.

So yeah, we'll probably have quite a bit to talk about in the weather department over the next several days.

California To Get Needed Big Dump Of Rain, But Too Much At Once?

NOAA's maps indicate the possibility of more than eight
inches of rain over the next seven days in parts of northern
California, Oregon and Washington.  

California was banking on a blockbuster stormy winter this year, and a hoped-for cooperative El Nino to dump lots of winter rain and snowstorms on the state to at least ease the crippling drought there.

Things were going OK, not supendous, but OK through January with fairly decent amounts of rain and snow.

That made the intense drought ease a little, but didn't come close to actually ending the drought. Everyone knew an incredible amount of precipitation would have to fall to do that.

Then February hit. It turned brutally dry again, enough to set off a few out of season brush fires. And it turned hot. Record hot.

So warm that some of the snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains melted. You don't want it to melt yet. It should melt later in spring and summer, when the water from that snow can feed parched brooks and rivers.

Now California is hoping for a wet March. That hope might jusy turn into reality. Signs point to a change in the weather pattern that would dump boatloads of precipitation on California over the next couple of weeks at least.

That's great news, but it comes with a price. So much rain might fall in such a short period of time that some of that needed water would run off quickly in the form of dangerous, life threatening floods.

It's too soon to get into the specifics on precisely which days the heaviest storms might hit California and how bad they might be.

But a few computer models suggest as much as 20 inches of rain during the montho of March on parts of northern California and as much as 25 feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada.

That's the upper extreme, of course. It might not be that bad. The hyped 25 feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada would be a good thing. Oh sure, it would cause temporary, immense problems with travel through the mountains. A few structures might collapse, which would be bad. And where do you put 25 feet of snow if you have to get it off your driveway.

Still, one or two dozen feet of snow in the California mountains would be immensely helpful for water supplies this summer.

The heavy rain is more complicated. On the one hand, some of the runoff from the anticipated storms would get stored behind dams in reservoirs.

But jeez, a foot or more of rain in some spots over the course of a couple weeks? Cue the floods and mudslides.

The initial waves of storms don't look too bad. Weak ones today and Friday in northern California will drop light rain and snow there, and pretty much nothing in southern California.

Stronger storms over the weekend will be heavier, but won't be extreme, especially given the dry conditions left over from February.

But we'll have to watch this pattern, as we could get a few rounds of incredibly torrential precipitation in California into the middle or even end of the month.  It's a wet pattern, but figuring out if it's going to be merely wet or inundating is premature right now.

The heavy rain pattern will extend north into Oregon and Washington as well.

On the other extreme, southern California in particular could miss out on some of the rain. Some uncertain preliminary signs hint at a rainy ten day stretch in southern California followed by drier conditions. But such long range forecasts are unreliable. I'm just putting that out there as a possibility.

If you don't live in or near California, but elsewhere in the United States, this change in the weather pattern affects you. Yes, you.

The storms in or near southern California would eventually eject out into the Plains States. If they go far enough north from there, and are strong enough, the have the potential to cause outbreaks of severe weather and tornadoes.

It's too soon to declare how widespread or how bad any bursts of severe weather would be anywhere from the Plains to the East Coast, but it is worth watching as the storms begin to parade across the nation next week.

The changing weather pattern also favors warmth in the eastern half of the nation, so if you're pining for spring, or spring weather is already embracing where you are, this is good news for you.

History Repeats Itself In Two Vermont El Nino Summers

A drowned, failed cornfield near Fairfield, Vermont
after a near record wet June. 

In the summer of 1998, one of the biggest El Nino patterns was in full force, warming up the eastern Pacific ocean waters to incredible heights and causing havoc with weather around the world.

In the summer of 2015, another big El Nino seems to be ramping up, and the weather, already off the rails over the past year, seems to be getting wilder.

I discovered some pretty amazing local coincidences and similarities in the weather in 1998 and this year in Burlington, Vermont, the closest major weather station to my home in northwestern Vermont.

I don't know if El Nino has a lot to do with this or not, but the summers of 1998 and 2015 are almost identical. At least so far.

May, 1998 went down as the fourth hottest May on record. That was until this year, when it moved down to fifth place. That's because May, 2015 was THE hottest May on record in Burlington. So two very warm, dry Mays in El Nino years.

June, 1998 was the third wettest on record, with 8.66 inches of rain for the month. Until this year. June 2015 is now the third wettest on record, just besting 1998 by 0.01 inch. We had 8.67 inches of rain.

On July 1, 1998, Burlington was deluged by 2.54 inches of rain in just a few hours, causing some local flooding. On July 1, 2015, Burlington was deluged by over two inches of rain in just a few hours, causing some local street flooding.  (Note, two inches of rain in one day in Burlington is quite unusual. Happens only perhaps once every other year, on average)

July 4, 1998 started overcast and hazy, and ended with rain. July 4, 2015 started overcast and hazy, and ended with rain and thunderstorms.

We'd better hope the similarities break. July, 1998 went on to become the wettest on record, with 9.31 inches. August 1998 is among the top ten wettest. There are several chances of rain in Vermont coming up over the next week to 10 days.

There are important differences between the two years. There was widespread, damaging floods in Vermont in June, 1998. There were some damaging flash floods in parts of Vermont in 2015, but the trouble wasn't as widespread as in 1998.

Still, we're all swatting mosquitoes that have flourished in this wet regime. In both 1998 and 2015, some crops, like corn are drowning and dying in the mud.

The similarities between 1998 and 2015 will certainly fade in the coming months. But, as I noted, let's hope we don't break a July record for precipitation. We've had enough.

Explaining Why The Hell Winter Has Been So Arctic In New England

From Science 2.0. This general jet
stream pattern has kept the West Coast warm
and the eastern United States cold more
often than not for the past two years.  

You hear it all the time here in snowbound, subzero New England: Will it ever end?  

The answer of course is yes, but in the short term anyway, the cold and the snow is only grudgingly starting to relax. The long slog toward spring looks like it's going to be a slow one this year.  

You also hear people asking if this long stretch of storms and frigid air with practically no breaks is unusual and the answer is and emphatic, "Very."

Big snowstorms and temperatures way below zero are routine in a New England February, but such weather is usually interrupted by spells of relatively mild weather and sunshine.

The jet stream, that strong river of fast flowing air high above us that controls the path of storms, usually wiggles and shifts and changes frequently, so the weather changes.

A storm blows through, the jet stream changes and sends a big blast of cold air south from Canada. The jet stream changes again, and you get a thaw.

Rinse, repeat.

STUCK JET STREAM

Lately, as you might have heard, the jet stream has been "stuck." There's a big northward bulge in the jet stream that has people in western North America wondering whatever happened to winter. In Vancouver, British Columbia, cherry blossoms are now blooming, more than a month and a half early.

This same jet stream has sent one Arctic air mass from the North Pole after another into the northeastern United States. That big northward bulge in the West is counterbalanced by a big dip in the jet stream to the east, which opens the door for those cold waves to plunge southward.

The jet stream then turns north again just off the New England, allowing storms to form in part by picking up moisture from the warm Gulf Stream, letting it interact with the cold air from Canada, and you get snowstorms.

The stuck pattern lets storms form in rapid fire fashion, basically with each shot of cold air from Canada, or almost every other day.

"It's like reloading a gun. It just shoots one after another at us," Alan Dunham, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Taunton, Massachusetts told New Bedford, Massachusetts-based South Coast Today.   

Again, this configuration of the jet stream happens almost every winter. But it doesn't normally get stuck in one orientation for five weeks without a break.

In fact, this general jet stream pattern has more or less been intact since at least late 2013,  and occasionally before that. Sure, it has broken down occasionally, sometimes allowing wet and cool weather in the West and warm and dry in the East. But it seems like it quickly reverts back to this "stuck" pattern.

That's why California has had such a terrible drought for four years now. The northward bulge in the jet stream, dubbed the "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge" has steered rainstorms away from the West Coast and caused lots of heat. Last year was the warmest on record in California. Dry weather and high temperatures equals drought.

On the flip side, the big dip in the jet stream, named by some the Terribly Tenacious Trough, has more or less held in place for a year and a half now. (With those occasional, aforementioned breaks)

That's why the so-called Polar Vortex cold wave last winter was so intense. It's also why the Midwest had a rather cool summer last year. It's also why a stripe from about Illinois to Louisiana had one of its top 10 coolest years in 2014, when overall for the globe, 2014 was the warmest on record

This jet stream stickiness is why winter has been so extreme in the Northeast so far this year.

WHY IS THE JET STREAM SO STUCK?

The snows of New England had in some sense their origins way out in the Pacific Ocean

As always with weather and climate, the answer is complicated. Nobody is really 100 percent sure. It probably has to do with a mix of things, ranging from natural cycles in the Pacific, air pollution in Asia, and of course, the biggest villain of all,  human-induced climate change.

If there's a lot of storminess in the eastern and central Pacific, that tends to help build up the western ridge and eastern United States trough.

According to Mashable, something called the Madden-Julian Oscillation heated the atmosphere and changed upper altitude winds in the the northern Pacific Ocean, said Michael Ventrice of WSI Corporation in Andover, Massachusetts. 

A typhone named Higos also formed in early February in the eastern Pacific, and it might have been the strongest one on record for so early in the season.

That helped really bolster the jet stream pattern that has brought so much winter misery to New England, says Mashable:

"The ripple effects were like setting a Slinky on a march down a staircase - downstream waves formed troughs and ridges that contorted the jet stream that encouraged air to venture south from the Arctic."

OK, but why all the storminess in the Pacific to set this jet stream weirdness in motion?

POLLUTION PROBLEMS?

Let's blame China!

Actually, there's potentially some science to back up my wild accusation against China.

A recent article by James West in Mother Jones says heavy pollution coming from the factories of China, that soot that keeps causing dangerous air pollution in Beijing, might be contributing to the rough weather we've had this winter.

Says Mother Jones:

"Over the past few years, a team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology has found that aerosols - or airborne particles - emitted from the cities fueling Asia's booming economies are making storm activity stronger in the Northwest Pacific Ocean. These storms wreak havoc on the polar jet stream, a major driver of North America's weather. The result: U.S. winters with heavier snowfall and more intense cold periods.

Pollution billowing from Asia's big cities, they found, is essentially 'seeding' the clouds with sulfur, carbon grit and metals. This leads to thicker, taller and more energetic clouds, with heavier precipitation. These so called 'extratropical' cyclones in the Northwest Pacific have become 10 percent stronger over the past 30 years, the scientists say."

We know the pollution in China is killing people there. Maybe the fatalities in this winter's disasters in the United States could indirectly lead back to China, too.

OF COURSE, GLOBAL WARMING IS SUSPECTED, TOO

It turns out global warming might cause at temporary areas of cooling in some regions, too.

Writing in Science 2.0, Jennifer Francis, a Research Professor in the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University, said there is evidence that global warming is messing around with the jet stream, which in turn might help explain the kind of stuck weather patterns that victimized New England this winter.

She writes:

"Our own new work, published last month in Environmental Research Letters, uses a variety of metrics to show that the jet stream is becoming wavier and that rapid Arctic warming is playing a role. If these results are confirmed, then we'll see our weather patterns become more persistent."

In other words, stuck weather patterns might become the new normal.

Of course that's bad, because if the same weather keeps hitting the same area for weeks, you get disasters like the New England snows, the California drought, or other huge droughts, floods, heat waves or cold waves.

Despite the eastern United States cold, waters in the Atlantic Ocean a few hundred miles off the New England coast were unusually warm this winter. Storms gain energy, and tend to produce more precipitation when they feed off warmer waters.

Some of the nor'easters this winter did just that. When all that moisture lifted off the warm Atlantic Ocean was flung into the cold air over New England, that wetness fell as snow. Lots of it.

Writing in the Boston Herald, Weather Channel Meteorologist and Storm Chaser Jim Cantore said that warm water way off the coast should take at least some of the blame for the unprecedented New England snow blitz this winter.

This next bit will be cold comfort (ha!) to people in New England, but despite what happened this winter, the amount of cold air circulating around the North Pole has shrunk to record and near record lows in recent years.

According to the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang:

"In what may see like a paradox, the amount of wintertime cold air circulating around the Northern Hemisphere is shrinking to record low levels. This winter (2014-2015, is on track to see the most depleted cold air supply ever measured."

Yeah, and too bad it seems like most of that depleted cold air supply has been sitting right over my house in Vermont for the past month.

THE NEXT FEW DAYS, WEEKS

The stuck weather pattern continues, but it is finally shifting around a little bit. It's not going away just yet, but New England might not be quite so extreme in the next few weeks.

The whole Ridiculously Resilient Ridge and Terribly Tenacious Trough arrangement is all shifting a little to the west this week.

That means the core of the cold waves is now plunging into the middle of the country, going all the way to near the Gulf Coast. That's what's setting off a series of snowstorms across the South in the past ten days or so.

The slight westward shift in the pattern means the Northeast will stay cold and stormy, but not as cold. And the storms might include rain, not just snow.

On top of that, there are some uncertain signs that heading into mid-March, the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge and the Terribly Tenacious Trough might weaken somewhat, at least temporarily.

If that happens, temperatures across the country might not end up as extremely cold in the East or extremely hot in the West.

But to all those people in New England stuck with the winter weather, keep those snow shovels and warm winter coats handy for the next few weeks at least. You're going to need them.

El Nino Sputters; Bad News For California Drought?

Rain storms hit California in December, denting
the drought, but now storms, and an El Nino
weather pattern the was supposed to bring more
rain, is faltering. Image from KTLA.  

A pretty substantial El Nino pattern in the Pacific Ocean was supposed to be getting under way right now.

An El Nino is a ocean temperature pattern in the Pacific Ocean that brings warmer water to near the west coast of South America, and includes other changes in the ocean temperature.

El Ninos also affect worldwide weather patterns. One of the things El Ninos often do is bring lots of rainy storms to California in the winter.

Despite the risk of flooding from the heaviest storms, California, at least lately, has been looking forward to the El Nino to diminish a punishing drought in the state.

Things were looking up. A weak El Nino seemed to be developing. A couple large storms slammed into California. Those caused some damaging floods and mudslide, yes, because the rain came down too hard, too fast in some areas.

But at least the storms dented the drought. And if the rains continued all winter, by spring, there wouldn't be such a drought emergency in California. So everyone hoped, anyway.

Now, it seems, El Nino is sputtering, as Dr. Jeff Masters notes in his Weather Underground blog.

El Nino conditions are weak, and the people who predict such things are now no longer as bullish as they were that El Nino would continue for awhile.

I'll let Masters explain it, in this excerpt from his blog post:

"Although the tropical Pacific waters behaved as if a major El Nino was on tap, it seems the atmosphere didn't get the message. Throughout 2014, the atmospheric component of El Nino failed to emerge consistently even as oceanic conditions appeared favorable. 

For example, a developing El Nino typically sees trade winds weakening across the eastern Pacific, which facilitates the eastward spread of warm surface water. Although several bursts of westerly wind did appear in 2014, these have not translated into widespread, long-lived weakening of the easterly trade winds. Without the linkage that emerges from this kind of ocean-atmosphere interaction, it is difficult for El Nino conditions to take hold in a big way."

Why the atmosphere doesn't seem to be getting its act together for an El Nino is unclear, says Masters.

Other Pacific temperature patterns might have gotten in the way. Or abnormally warm water in the western Pacific Ocean might have disrupted things. Climatologists and other scientists will be studying this, for sure.

Although I can't exactly prove the link between an El Nino that's turning out to be more lame than expected and current California weather, it is interesting that the storminess has shut off in that region in the past couple of weeks.

The amount of snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains is more, and has more water in it, than this time last year, but that's not saying much. Snow levels are still well below normal. 

That's bad news, because California depends a lot on water from Sierra Nevada snowmelt during the spring and summer to supply drinking water to big cities, and to keep agriculture going.

The immediate forecast is mixed at best.  Over the next week or so, only very light rain is expected in parts of California. Above normal temperatures will increase evaporation, and melt some of the scant snow in the Sierras, so that's not good.

Some rain looks like it wants to come into California after mid-month, but those storms certainly don't look like blockbusters.

California's rainy season pretty much ends in April, so time is already starting to run out. January doesn't look like it will turn out to be a big precipitation month in the Golden State.

California has been in a huge drought for three years now. Unless they get epic rains and snows in February and March, the punishing drought will drag on.

By the way, you should care even if you don't live in California. This will have an effect on food prices, and the overall economy if things get too bad.

Do us all a favor and perform a California rain dance, will ya?