Nobody can predict, days ahead, the future of a swirling, boiling Pacific air mass that may or may not decide to dump rain. The really big storms, thousands of miles of violent, broad front, are more predictable, but predictable like an avalanche: you can see them coming and they are unlikely to miss. Around here, seasonal predictions of precipitation are pretty much useless.
"Pacific" is a misnomer for this particular ocean.
John
It's much easier when there's a big land mass upwind.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal ElectroOptical Innovations 55 Orchard Rd Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 845-480-2058 email: hobbs (atsign) electrooptical (period) net http://electrooptical.net
I'm from Vancouver, where it sort of spits constantly, with occasional downpours that can last for hours. One of the things that surprised me when I moved to California back in 1983 was that when it started to rain, people took shelter. If you try that in Vancouver, you'll starve to death.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal ElectroOptical Innovations 55 Orchard Rd Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 845-480-2058 email: hobbs (atsign) electrooptical (period) net http://electrooptical.net
The thing that surprised me, moving to San Francisco from New Orleans, is how many people here are unprepared for rain. About a third of the people on the streets, in a downpour, seem to have no gear, not even hats, and just accept getting wet.
John
The dumbass doesn't know that a lot of US TV stations have Doppler Weather RADAR, in addtion tho the NOAA systems. The Doppler Weather RADAR lets you select the area where you live, and you can zoom in to see the area you libve in detail.
-- You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a band-aid on it, because it's Teflon coated.
Nope. Bill should leave his head up his ass... the attenuation is blissful ;-) ...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
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Remember: Once you go over the hill, you pick up speed
He would pass out from the higher oxygen levels. He's used to breathing Methane.
-- You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a band-aid on it, because it's Teflon coated.
up
gSwirling, boiling? Where does the air mass get all this extra energy from?
The Dutch forecasters do admit when they don't know which way an air- mass is going to split. Apparently they haven't got a camera on that famous butterfly in Brazil.
Your farmer don't know how much rain is going to fall in the growing season from one year to the next? Granting the California enthusiasm for irrigation with water imported across the state borders, "not enough" may be all they need to know.
Or any other.
-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
I know that we've got this in the Netherlands because the forecasters refer to the images from time to time. If the Californian TV station that John Larkin patronises has invested in this technology, he doesn't seem to be aware of it.
dMichael Terrell should take a course on joined-up logic. John Larkin posted an implausible claim, I drew attention to it, and Mike thinks that this is evidence that *my* head is up *my* ass?
As Mike says "You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a band-aid on it, because it's Teflon coated."
-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
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Nice to see Jim Thompson and Mike Terrell engaged in mutual admiration. Mike Terrell makes an idiot of himself and Jim Thompson congratulates him on his wit, demonstrating that he too can't manage joined-up logic.
-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
Most of the storms look like hurricanes on satellite pics, ccw rotation, spiral-galaxy-like arms, generally coming down from the NNW. I'd guess they use some of the hurrican energy mechanism, cold air over relatively warm water.
The spinning arms can hit or miss, and too often a high pressure ridge forms against the mountains, at almost the last minute, and the storms get deflected north. We get maybe 20 inches of rain a year, and Eureka might get 100.
Of course they don't. How could they? The forecasts suck. Of course, it doesn't rain in the Central Valley all summer. They depend on irrigation, which depends on the previous winter's snow pack in the Sierras, as does my ability to take long hot showers. So they do have a pretty good idea, by early March or so, about how much water they will be allocated. Snowpack is so far well above normal this winter, contrary to climate models, but anything could happen in the next few months, and nobody knows what.
Granting the California enthusiasm
Up here, the water isn't imported. Look at a map. I still greatly resent the fact that the Truckee River flows into Nevada. What a waste of perfectly good water.
There are more Pacific Oceans?
The collision of swirling Pacific air masses, into jagged mountains, makes for erratic weather and strange clouds.
ftp://jjlarkin.lmi.net/c1.jpg
ftp://jjlarkin.lmi.net/c5.jpg
ftp://jjlarkin.lmi.net/c6.jpg
ftp://jjlarkin.lmi.net/c7.jpg
John
We have multiple weather radars and lots of satellite images (none, as far as I know, from Dutch or New Zealand satellites.) And the 5-day forecasts still change every day. The radars are useless further out than a few hours. That's the way air behaves here.
And I never watch TV news or weather. The only TV I've watched in the last few months was "Downton Abbey" (ripping good soap) and a couple of old BBC Sherlock Holmes episodes.
We did go to two movies this year: a sing-along "Sound of Music" at the Castro Theater (because it was so camp) and "The King's Speech," because Mo is a speech therapist.
John
e.
Neither the Netherlands nor New Zealand has a company in the satellite launching business that I'm aware of. The Dutch do pay to have satellites launched from time to time, mostly by the European - originally French - company Arianespace.
The radar records air speed and direction at a partiuclar time. Forecasting involves constructing computer models of the atmosphere from this and other data and working out where the air is going to go next. If your weather forcasters have got radar data and can't do as well as everybody else, they are either short of other data, or simply incompetent.
The BBC did a modern Sherlock Holmes series recently. In the episode I saw - quite by chance - Holmes claimed that he was a sociopath but not a psychopath, which was interesting.
I get my annual dose of films flying to and from Australia - usually more than I need.
-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
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That pretty much describes the storms that come in here from off the the Atlantic, and those that roll across the south of Australia. That what the global air-circulation looks like.
Weather is unpredictable, but climate - as we keep on trying to tell you - is a lot more predictable. You have farmers in California long before large-scale irrigation was practical, and they clearly could predict roughly how much rain they were going to get in the growing season.
There are other oceans.
Every other air-mass on the planet swirls. Quite a few of them run into mountains and dump quite a bit of moisture.
In Tasmania there's a rainfall gradient across the island from west to east. The west gets about 140 inches of rain a year, and is very heavily forested. The east gets maybe twenty inches a year and you can grow wheat. I grew up in the north-west, about a hundred miles in from the west coast, and we got about forty iches of rain per year, good enough for growing potatoes, dairy farming and fattening lambs, but much too wet for wheat.
The wind system involved is called the roaring forties, and blows acrsoso the Indian Ocean from South Arica. Apparently the wind speeds pick up as you go further south - sailors talked about the furious fifties and the screaming sixties.
-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
up
If you mean that the long-term-average annual rainfall has a long-term average, I can hardly argue with reasoning like that. If you mean that anyone can predict the variation from year to year, how come you aren't rich?
John
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Farmers predict the rainfall from year to year accurately enough that they don't usually go broke. They've been doing it since the beginning of agriculture, so it isn't exactly rocket science.
-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
May you all have a foot of snow.
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And it works. End of story.
-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
In Florida? That would be one way to get rid of the snowbirds. ;-)
-- You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a band-aid on it, because it's Teflon coated.
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