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California update - watching and waiting, including eyes in the skies [1]
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Date: 2023-01-16
Several days ago I posted a diary about the humongous impact weeks of rain, wind, flooding, and mudslides are having on California. It was a followup to to a diary posted a week earlier.
The NY Times has a story updating the situation.
With Another Storm Arriving, Five Areas of California to Watch Already soaked, the state is girding for yet another round of rain and snow.
SAN MATEO, Calif. — More than two weeks of storms have already hammered California, and one more arrived over the holiday weekend. The relentless downpours and their impact — flooded homes, flattened cars, downed power lines and more — have killed at least 19 people and disrupted the lives of millions more since late December. Experts have said that almost none of the storms, on its own, would have been considered catastrophic, but the continual pounding has taken a toll on California’s landscape. Soil now struggling to hold water is more vulnerable to mudslides. Days of strong winds have sent trees tumbling. And the relentless precipitation has turned trickling creeks into raging waterways.
The link to the Times report should allow passage through the paywall. Several people took issue with the diary I posted earlier that suggested Monterey could become an island — which is the way a news report had framed it. Others pointed out in comments that, while it is a peninsula, it can effectively become cut off like an island when key roadways are blocked by flooding and mudslides. There’s this from the current NY Times report:
Monterey Peninsula The signature coastal perch of Monterey County, the peninsula about 100 miles south of San Francisco that is home to 50,000 residents, is a world-renowned tourist destination that includes the towns of Carmel, Monterey, Pacific Grove and the golfing destination Pebble Beach. With storms pounding the Central Coast, the peninsula and the roads that give access to it have been under close watch. Rain will continue on Monday after a stormy Sunday… ...There were no evacuation orders on the Monterey Peninsula on Sunday, but officials remained on alert across the county for more flooding along the major rivers. The concerns brought back memories of 1995, when roads into the peninsula were flooded, cutting the region off completely from the rest of the county. The main routes into the region are Highways 1 and 68, which are at risk of flooding if the Salinas River overflows.
The whole report, which includes contributions from Carly Olson, Ava Sasani, Luke Vander Ploeg and Julie Brown, has a number of striking photos that give some idea of the conditions people are facing.
Other regions getting attention: Santa Cruz Mountains, Lake Tahoe Region/Sierra Nevada, Los Angeles County, and Merced County.
For some perspective on how big this situation is, just Los Angeles County alone with a population near 10 million, has a larger population than 40 U.S states. The county is divided among 18 House districts, but has no dedicated Senators — just 2 for the entire state. This suggests that there are going to be structural difficulties when it comes to using the federal government to deal with the ongoing disasters and the larger issue of climate change.
Eyes in the Sky — Gulfstream IV “Gonzo” and the Herks
One of the aspects of the situation on the West Coast is that it’s a consequence of global weather patterns. A January 14, 2023 Times article looked at one of the efforts getting data on the incoming weather:
A Times reporter and photographer rode along with a team gathering data on the colossal atmospheric rivers that have drenched the state.
ABOARD A GULFSTREAM IV, over the Pacific — The winter storms pounding California this month have often come into being thousands of miles to the west, in the moist air above the Pacific. That has given a group of scientists and technicians a few days before one blows ashore to examine satellite readings, run computer models and plan crews and equipment, all of which culminates in a uniquely full-contact effort to understand these storms’ inner workings: By dropping sensors [sondes] into them from the sky... ...Atmospheric rivers have caused weeks of flooding, power outages and evacuations up and down California and killed at least 19 people. But the devastation would almost certainly be even greater were it not for the weather forecasts that roll in before each storm. Emergency responders, dam operators and farmers now have piles of rapidly updated information at their fingertips about where these storms are headed, how soon they might arrive, and how much rain and snow they could bring when they get there. Assembling those predictions still begins, however, by getting close to the action. The West Coast’s atmospheric rivers spend their early days over huge, empty expanses of the Pacific. No network of weather stations is collecting detailed information about their approach, as is possible for storms traveling over land. Clouds can obstruct satellite measurements, and drifting buoys mostly gauge conditions near the ocean’s surface. A program called Atmospheric River Reconnaissance, or AR Recon, is trying to plug this data void. It is led by scientists at the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes, part of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.
The 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron Hurricane Hunters are also part of this effort, flying the WC-130 Hercules.
..“Coordination for all winter season weather reconnaissance flights include several organizations including NCEP and the National Weather Service,” said Maj. Chris Dyke, 53rd WRS ARWO. “The ARs are a specific type of weather system in which we partner with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography to assist in identifying when and where weather data collection will contribute the most to improving forecast accuracy.” The weather data collected during the AR missions helps build a vertical profile of the water vapor in the low-level jet stream. “This data that we collect benefits in making the forecast models more accurate,” said Rickert. “The dropsondes we release collect temperature, dewpoint, pressure, wind speed and direction in the Atmospheric Rivers.” Atmospheric rivers are rivers of moisture or water vapor that carry 25 times the water equivalent of the Mississippi River. Flowing at an altitude of about 10,000 feet, atmospheric rivers average between 100 and 500 miles wide and 2,000 miles long. When and where these ARs make landfall can be the determining factor of heavy rain, snow or it can lead to extensive flooding.
Combined with the data from the high-flying Gulfstream IV missions and the down-low data from the Herks, the forecasts are becoming increasingly accurate. From the Times article:
..The data these planes gather is part of a series of advancements in weather forecasting and the computer models behind it. Richard Henning, a NOAA flight meteorologist who serves as a flight director with AR Recon, has flown research missions with the agency and Air Force for nearly 30 years. He used an analogy to describe how well weather models predicted the future back then: If you asked them what an acorn would look like someday, their answer would essentially be “a much bigger acorn,” he said. Today, they would show you an oak tree. “That’s literally the difference in the sophistication of the models.”... ...Information from the sondes has begun to prove its value for making atmospheric river forecasts more accurate. Scientists have used the same computer model to generate one forecast that incorporates the data and another that does not, then compared both of them with a storm’s real-world effects. In some cases, they have found improvements in forecasts of up to 25 percent. “That is unheard-of,” said Vijay S. Tallapragada, a senior scientist with NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center who helps lead AR Recon. “If you look at the history of forecast improvements for precipitation, they were stagnant for the last 20 years.”
It’s a question of resources, which is a problem as climate change ramps up. Also from the Times:
..F. Martin Ralph, a Scripps scientist who helps lead AR Recon, acknowledged that although the program got an early start this winter, it didn’t have the staff, funding and aircraft availability to collect data during the holiday period. “Now we’re learning the lesson, sadly, that we really should aim to have full coverage” of the rainy season, he said… ...With only three aircraft at their disposal — the NOAA Gulfstream and two Air Force C-130s — the mission planners have to be strategic. They conduct analyses to determine where extra data from inside an atmospheric river might be most useful for improving forecasts, then they chart flight paths to hit those spots economically. With the forecasts before any storm, “very small errors have the potential to grow to make a precipitation forecast really off,” said Anna M. Wilson, a scientist at Scripps and AR Recon’s mission director for the past week.
Good luck California. You’re going to need it. Let’s give thanks to all the people trying to stay on top of the situation.
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