Life in California: not fun at the moment

This has been one of the roughest years I can remember living here. We’ve had two massive wind storms (one of which damaged my Stevenson Screens used for the paint test), and lightning induced fires on a massive scale.

Life has become miserable here, the smoke is oppressive, it’s been this way for two weeks now. Here is the view outside my home just a few minutes ago, about 6:30PM PST

Compare that to this view on a clear day:

And this view out my front door, we don’t need a solar filter anymore to look at the sun:

Here is the view from space, via NOAA 1KM resolution visible light satellite imagery. Note that the entire Sacramento Valley is choked with smoke as is much of the Sierra Nevada and Western Nevada:

Smoke is everywhere, and to escape it, I either have to go to Oregon or to Southern California. Los Angeles has better air quality right now. I’m considering leaving town and taking my familiy there to stay with relatives for awhile. This smoke has been giving all of us headaches and breathing issues.

I was heartened today to find that firefighters from Canada, Australia and New Zealand are on their way to California.

My sincere thank you to all of them and to their families. We really need help here. La Nina has kicked us hard and we are losing the battle.

Today’s storm is a 9.0

A meteorologist friend of mine, Jan Null, has been keeping tabs on Winter Storms for some time. He’s developed something called the Bay Area Storm Index (BASI) which he uses to calculate the intensity of the storm by combining susatined wind, peak gusts, and rain totals. By his reckoning, this storm today rates a 9.0 on a scale of 1-10.

This is based on:

SF Downtown Rainfall = 2.01 as of 2 PM   (see http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/mesowest/getobext.php?wfo=&sid=SFOC1&num=48 )

SFO Max Sustained Wind = 46kts at 1559Z = 53 mph at 7:59 AM  (see http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/mesowest/getobext.php?wfo=mtr&sid=KSFO&num=48&raw=1&dbn=m)

Max Gust Below 1500’= Angel Island  76 kts at 2009Z = 87 mph at 12:09 PM (see http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/mtr/versprod.php?pil=OMR&sid=DAR)

That makes this the strongest storm since a 9.0 December 16, 2002 and only the 12th storm of 9.0 or greater since 1950.  See the BASI archive  http://ggweather.com/basi_archive.htm

Locally in Chico as of 3PM we have 1.74 inches of rain from this storm, sustained winds of 41mph, and a peak wind of 66mph.

In Redding, Shasta Dam had 4.92″ of rain, with Redding Fire Station at 1.56 inches. Peak wind gust was 82 mph!

Above Paradise, Stirling City got 6.82 inches of rain in the last 24 hours and its still coming down. They’ll likely see it go beyond 7 inches in 24 hours with a storm total about 10 inches.
 

Mother Nature Whacks West Coast

Click image for latest animation

UPDATE: For a high resolution still image of this “beautiful” storm click this link: pacific_nhemi_01-04-08_1430utc.jpg

The Friday storm moving into California is one of the strongest I’ve seen in about five years. The record rainfall for today in Chico, CA was 2.66 inches in 2002. The important thing to remember is this: Weather events like this are not individually attributable to climate change. We’ve had stronger storms before, and this one is about an 9.0 on a winter storm scale of 1-10. That makes this the strongest storm since a 9.0 December 16, 2002 and only the 12^th storm of 9.0 or greater since 1950.  See the BASI archive  http://ggweather.com/basi_archive.htm  (h/t Jan Null)

Wind gusts so far have hit 66 mph according to Chico Airport, and 82 mph at Redding. Stronger wind gusts were in mountain passes. Note that hurricane force winds are categorized as being in sustained winds in excess of 74 mph.

To track this storm in real time, see my website at www.KPAY.com and click on the weather link for live doppler radar.

If you want a desktop doppler weather radar application, see my www.stormpredator.com website and download a copy.

This storm will be abating by about 5PM today.

WIND GUSTS REPORTED OVER INTERIOR NORTHERN CALIFORNIA THROUGH 10
AM…

SITE                           WIND GUST             TIME    
SUGARLOAF RAWS………………78 MPH…………..651 AM
PIKE COUNTY LOOKOUT RAWS……..67 MPH…………..710 AM
SACRAMENTO INT`L AIRPORT……..66 MPH…………..753 AM
MARYSVILLE………………….61 MPH…………..802 AM
SACRAMENTO EXEC AIRPORT………69 MPH…………..825 AM
BLUE CANYON…………………65 MPH…………..828 AM
BEALE AFB…………………..69 MPH…………..828 AM
ELK GROVE…………………..71 MPH…………..838 AM
SUISUN CITY…………………60 MPH…………..838 AM
STOCKTON……………………60 MPH…………..838 AM
REDDING…………………….82 MPH…………..849 AM
CHICO………………………66 MPH…………..855 AM
EAGLE PEAK RAWS……………..65 MPH…………..915 AM
LYONS VALLEY RAWS……………73 MPH…………..917 AM

The Best Christmas Present Anybody Could Ever Have

My coffee buddy, Butte County Sheriff Perry Reniff helps Alexis Dominguez exit the helicopter (Photo: Bill Husa, Chico Enterprise Record)

 Today was a good day. No, strike that, today was a GREAT day!

The saga of the Dominguez family lost in the snow looking for a Christmas tree hit home with me in a big way, because I had people from all over asking me what the weather was going to do to the search and rescue effort. I was the bearer of bad news, which I hated, because the winter storm bearing down made survival even less likely.

(Note: for national/international readers of this blog, this story unfolded in my home city and county)

Mountain weather is unforgiving. Fortunately, they knew what to do. They improvised a snow cave, wrote “HELP” in the snow, and stayed put until rescuers could find them. When they did, the relief was nation-wide.

Yes, its the best Christmas present anybody could ever have.

Local newspaper editor replaced with impostor!

 

Real                        Impostor

This must be some evil plot by media giant “Media News Group” out of Denver. I opened up the print edition of the ER this morning and found that my local amiable moustached editor David Little had been replaced with some straight laced corporate weasel type.

Don’t let the toothy Polident smile fool you.

The ER will never be the same. Who IS this guy anyway?

The “Sustainable” Enterprise Record

This morning while I was poking around on the ER website, I finally found something publisher Wolf Rosenburg had told me was coming a few weeks ago ( I have coffee with him about once a week ).

The ER “E-Edition” is online! Yay!

This is the newspaper in familiar form, looking just like it does when you unwrap it in the morning, except that it is not printed on “dead tree” format. Now don’t get me wrong, I like the traditional newspaper, but I also cringe sometimes when I have to recycle as much as 50-60 pounds of newsprint a month.

The new E-Edition solves this dilemma in a well formatted online version that’s more comfortable to browse than the chicoer.com website.

I had suggested something similar about a year ago to Wolf and to editor David Little, even offering to work up a demonstration, but I suspect they knew that the technology was already being put into place to make this possible. It’s being done by a company called Technavia which operates Newsmemory.com out of Burnsville, Minnesota. The ER subscribes to the service, and uploads hi-res Adobe PDF files of each typeset page of the newspaper, direct from their computer typesetting system.

It’s very cool, and free for now, but is expected to have a nominal subscription fee in the future. I’d subscribe, because I find I get much of my news online, except KPAY Newstalk1290 of course. Radio is still the best free news out there. If I felt like having the old familiar paper copy in my hands (like the Sunday edition) I’ll go buy one at the vending machine. There’s an easy to navigate archive, and you can click on any story or photo on the “printed” page to get the details.

Less trees used, less paper processing and waste-water, less energy used in transport, less energy used in printing, less energy used in printing, less energy used in transport of printed papers, less paper waste, less recycling issues.

In the new world of sustainability, the ER “E-Edition” is a win-win-win. I can get behind this idea because it just makes so much sense and is very easy to use. Try it out. Just go to www.chicoer.com and click on “E-Edition” right under the American Flag logo under “Enterprise Record” to sign up.

Or here is a direct link.  They also have a mobile edition for PDA’s and IPhones.

License Bidwell Ranch

I’m going to make a departure from my usual climate and science fare to make a comment on the local front.

In today’s Chico Enterprise Record, there was an editorial lamenting the huge budget crisis facing the city of Chico, thanks to uncontrolled spending beyond income. The editorial said: “…leaving jobs vacant and negotiating a cheaper benefits package for new employees are two obvious solutions at both the city and state level. That won’t solve the entire problem, but it’s a start — and certainly a vast improvement over the current strategy, which is to do nothing.”
 
There are two solutions to city budget problems; cut expenses and/or raise revenue. Raising revenue (taxes) when you’ve been a careless spender isn’t going to fly with the public, and cutting jobs is equally unpalatable. So what to do?

Raise revenue another way. For example, we have Bidwell Ranch, which is forever locked in an environmental land use limbo thanks to Fairy Shrimp and Meadowfoam. Of course selling it is tantamount to sacrilege, but what about licensing the name?

I submit to you, Bidwell Ranch Dressing:

Now that’s a use for Bidwell Ranch

There’s lot’s of other things the City could license. Use your imagination folks.

A Cool and Wet October for California

The month of October has been significantly cooler than normal.  This was seen with average daily maximum and average daily mean temperatures that were below normal for all 9 key cities (see tables below).  The largest temperature anomalies were in the Sacramento Valley where temperature maxima averaged 5.8 and 4.6 degrees below normal at Redding and Sacramento respectively.  Close behind were San Francisco and San Jose with -3.5 and -3.6 degrees below normal.  Despite a period of warm dry Santa Ana winds in Southern California that led to fires, both San Diego and Los Angeles had average monthly maximum temperatures of about a half degree below normal.

Note that the Santa Ana winds are seasonally normal; they happen about this time every year, and some years are stronger than others. This talk in news stories of attributing the Southern California fires to global warming is just pure nonsense made up by some news organizations that don’t understand California’s seasonal weather patterns.

It was also generally wetter than normal with a couple of mid-month Pacific troughs that brought rain.  This is shown by more than twice the normal October rainfall at Eureka and Los Angeles.  Only Fresno (31%) and San Diego (84%) were below normal in precipitation. Note that San Diego was where we had a large fire concentration this year, like happened in 2002, but the remainder of the state had normal or above normal rain.

Helio, La Niña, and bad winters, awww nuts!!

While doom and gloom predictions continue about CO2 induced global warming, saying that it now is the largest driver of climate, overwhelming any influences of the suns variation, there appear to be other things happening. There are forecasts emerging for a wet and cold winter.

Lets review. We have a longer than normal solar minimum occurring, and we have a strong La Niña developing too. We have colder water in the Pacific.

Here is a animated view of the growing La Niña. Watch the animation, note the exapnding La Niña off the west coast of South America, note also the expanding pool of cooler water developing the Gulf of Alaska. This will be a key formation point for cold wet storms.

And there are other signs too. Acorns. Have you noticed this year we have an overabundance of acorns? I was walking in Bidwell Park a couple of weeks ago and the ground was covered with them, and they were still raining down like hailstones. I’ve never seen anything like it. This has been what biologists call a “mast year” for valley oaks.

While this may sound a bit like an “Old Farmers Almanac” moment, but I have a theory for it.

Trees are directly in touch with the sun, more so than other living things in the biosphere. Our “valiant” dendroclimatologists, like Michael Mann, point to tree rings as a proxy for earths climate. That may be true, but I think in addition to “treemometers” they also act as helioproxies too.

In a nutshell (ahem); I think it’s highly likely that trees have evolved survival strategies that are based on detecting changes in the sun’s output. It stands to reason that over the billion plus of years that plant life has been on earth and the millions of solar cycles they’ve been through, that they can detect changes in their primary energy source, the sun, and adapt accordingly. Producing abundant acorns could well be such a survival strategy.

We have strong signs of a solar cycle that is late and well below average, a near record low hurricane season, and a strong La Niña emerging.  Now we have valley oaks producing acorns like there is no tomorrow. Maybe we should heed the trees.

h/t Russ Steele at NCwatch for the animation for forecast links

My 20th Anniversary in Chico

Today, October 5th marks my 20th year here in Chico California.

What I’ve learned so far:

1- It’s a better place to live than many parts of California
2- People here can be very nice
3- Politics here can be very mean
4- Success is in the eye of the beholder

I came here with a u-hail trailer, a cat, and a job. Have I been successful here? I think so. I’ve had some failures too. But I am very thankful that I have a loving wife, two wonderful children, a new cat, a paid for roof over my head, a stable business, and some community respect. I’m appreciative to many whom have offered support and encouragement in my 20 years here.

As for my detractors, well there this quote from Bill Cosby: “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” Marshall, this blog’s for you.

This is my last entry on the old www.norcalblogs.com/watts  blog, see my new one at wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com

All new entries will appear there though this will remain as reference until such time the ER upgrades to a new blogging platform.

UPDATE: 10/08/07
A couple of people at coffee this morning inquired as to whether “Marshall” above referred to somebody locally. That’s not the case. It refers to a person involved in science that I’ve been corresponding with related to my www.surfacestations.org project who has been giving me advice and encouragement in the face of some of the criticism I received about the project on the blogosphere. Any implied or imagined reference to anyone locally is simply a case of a shared first name.