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California Is About To Get Pummeled With Rivers Of Rain (Like, Not Since 1861)
TBI ^ | 11-30-2012 | Mark Fischetti, Scientific American

Posted on 11/30/2012 3:04:06 PM PST by blam

California Is About To Get Pummeled With Rivers Of Rain

Mark Fischetti, Scientific American
November 30, 2012

An atmospheric river (thin yellow band) feeds torrential rain into northern California on Nov. 30.

Northern California is experiencing the first days of what weather forecasters are warning will be a long series of torrential rainstorms that could cause serious flooding across the northern one-third of the state.

The relentless storms are being driven by a feature in the atmosphere you have probably never heard of: an atmospheric river.

Oh, and another atmospheric river created the worst flooding since the 1960s in western England and Wales this past week, where more than 1,000 homes had to be evacuated.

An atmospheric river is a narrow conveyor belt of vapor about a mile high that extends thousands of miles from out at sea and can carry as much water as 15 Mississippi Rivers.

It strikes as a series of storms that arrive for days or weeks on end. Each storm can dump inches of rain or feet of snow. For more details, see this feature story that Scientific American has just published, written by two experts on these storms.

Scientists discovered atmospheric rivers in 1998 and have only recently characterized them fully enough to allow forecasters to warn of their arrival.

They can strike the west coasts of most continents, but California seems to be a prime target. As many as nine small atmospheric rivers reach the state each year, each lasting two to three days, including the famous “pineapple express” storms that come straight from the Hawaii region of the Pacific Ocean.

This story was originally published by Scientific American. Reprinted with permission.

(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events; US: California
KEYWORDS: atmosphericriver; disaster; floods; rains; riversofrain; weather
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To: Lurker

It was pretty windy here earlier today, but it has died down a little. I’m worried about my brother, he has a Walnut ranch (as they call it there) in the Sacramento Valley.


41 posted on 11/30/2012 4:54:46 PM PST by Inyo-Mono (My greatest fear is that when I'm gone my wife will sell my guns for what I told her I paid for them)
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To: blam

History starts the day you were born as evidenced by the writer of the article. We still haven’t recovered from the 1,000 year flood of 1964 when entire towns were wiped out in Humboldt county...


42 posted on 11/30/2012 5:00:08 PM PST by tubebender (Evening news is where they begin with "Good Evening," and then proceed to tell you why it isn't.)
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To: spawn44
I guess CLIMATE CHANGE must have really started in 1861.

Climate change is real and it started billions of years before 1861. The lie is that humans cause it. The Left has done a propaganda job worthy of Orwell's Big Brother by morphing the brainless concept of anthropogenic global warming into the new code words Climate Change. Those two words now imply that humans -- specifically fossil fuel-using humans -- cause all climate catastrophes. Pure hogwash!

I studied college geology in the 1950s. I've read voluminously on the subject ever since and practice a profession that's an offspring of geology. I've never had the slightest doubt that the climate is in a constant state of change, sometimes catastrophic change. All you have to do is put those changes into the perspective of geological time.

I grew up hearing the phrase: "Everybody complains about the weather but nobody does anything about it." Apparently Algore and his evil brain trust decided they could politicize it and make fortunes while herding the ignorant American sheeple into the World Socialism pen at the U.N. Ranch.

43 posted on 11/30/2012 5:15:12 PM PST by Bernard Marx
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To: blam

According to the Congressional Office, the coming deluge will create jobs by tranferring Federal Emergency Funds to the State of California. /s


44 posted on 11/30/2012 5:21:52 PM PST by SC_Pete
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To: blam
I had family in Kali and Nevada in the 1850’s and 1860’s and none of the family lore mentions the weather.
45 posted on 11/30/2012 5:27:57 PM PST by Little Bill (A)
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To: blam

“Someday a real rain will come....”


46 posted on 11/30/2012 5:30:09 PM PST by dfwgator
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To: Excellence
Just lovely.

That song from the 60s told me it never rained in California. :~))

Just kidding, but please stay safe. Mother Nature is a b***h.

47 posted on 11/30/2012 5:31:24 PM PST by Ditto
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To: dfwgator

Travis Bickel.


48 posted on 11/30/2012 5:32:28 PM PST by Lurker (Violence is rarely the answer. But when it is it is the only answer.)
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To: blam
Well, checking AccuWeather, it looks like the worst of it here in the Central Valley will run from Saturday noon, or so, until Sunday evening -- for an expected rainfall total of approximately 2.3 inches.

Not too bad unless maybe you live in a semi-arid region where creek and river beds don't cut deeply because they don't have to handle lots of runoff every year -- as in the Central Valley. :-(

But we've seen worse and probably won't sweat it too much (unless that precip forecast increases by a factor of four or five).

After Sunday, AccuWeather is predicting a day or two of light rain, interspersed with two or three days of no rain all the way up until Christmas. Not that AccuWeather doesn't make mistakes. They make a lot of them, but not invariably. OTOH, all these end-of-the-world-storm-of-the-millenium tall tales the scaremongers regularly fling at the public, like so many big smelly cow pies, to frighten and panic it, are always, Always, ALWAYS TOTALLY WRONG!!! Invariably!

49 posted on 11/30/2012 5:40:58 PM PST by LibWhacker
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To: Cementjungle

Telling us the big one hits tomorrow night here in the Bay Area...We also have a light drizzle this evening..


50 posted on 11/30/2012 6:39:30 PM PST by GSP.FAN (Some days, it's not even worth chewing through the restraints.)
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To: blam

BUMP


51 posted on 11/30/2012 6:42:27 PM PST by Thank You Rush
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To: BMCinSC
Oh, cry me a river. Its winter in No Cal. It rains.

Such erudition! Such a deep local knowledge!! Wow, aren't you informed, not.

I suggest you take a gander at William Brewer's account of the 1862 deluge (the article is wrong about the date). During those storms, the entire Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys formed the equivalent of an inland sea; they were entirely under water. The highest point in Sacramento was under two feet of water. Steamers could run 14 miles beyond the river banks. Ain't facts a pain?

52 posted on 11/30/2012 7:00:35 PM PST by Carry_Okie (The Slave Party: advancing indenture since 1787.)
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To: BMCinSC

Be advised the the magazine Scientific American may still be printed here in America, but its “scientific” part is questionable. Case in point: The flood was in 1862, not 1861.

While it would be nice of San Fransicko and Latin America were washed away, it won’t happen. Something about EPA not being happy with that level of river and ocean pollution.

But, if the Muslims force another Arab-Israel war, just imagine the EPA vexation over the released pollutants such as ground up Muslim which will result from the Aswan High Dam being nuked.


53 posted on 11/30/2012 7:27:05 PM PST by GladesGuru (In a society predicated upon freedom, it is necessary to examine principles."...the public interest)
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To: GladesGuru
" Be advised the the magazine Scientific American may still be printed here in America, but its “scientific” part is questionable. "

I cancelled my subscription 6-7 years ago. I told them when they stopped doing politics and got back to science, I'd reconsider another subscription.

54 posted on 11/30/2012 7:45:19 PM PST by blam
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To: forgotten man

There are tons of Pelican, Cormorant, and seal crap piled on the rocks. You can smell it a mile away.

Wow, now that should draw the tourists into town.


55 posted on 11/30/2012 8:09:13 PM PST by RetiredTexasVet (The law of unintended consequences is an unforgiving and vindictive b!tch!)
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To: blam
The great deluge was not in 1861, but in January of 1862 when there was over 24" of rain in Sacramento, compared to the usual 2-4". When the rain is warm, it melts the accumulated snow and the mess is horrific. Yet the mining of the Gold Rush had raised the river bottoms as well. So the 24" floods in the highest points of the Sacramento Valley in 1862 were due to a combination of factors less likely today because of dams and admittedly aging and inadequate flood control projects. See the link in post 52.

Rains like this at this time of the year are far less of a threat because the snowpack has not yet accumulated.

56 posted on 11/30/2012 8:59:08 PM PST by Carry_Okie (The Slave Party: advancing indenture since 1787.)
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To: blam

Basic BS.

I’ve lived in Northern CA since about 1982. There were significant storms that year. Lots of flooding - lots of houses slipping off their foundations to visit their neighbors. All of this due to El Nino.

Guess what - 1984 was worse!

The storms were not THAT intense!

We’ve had Februarys where it rained all but one day of the month. Sometimes we DO get rain.

It’s called WEATHER.


57 posted on 11/30/2012 10:02:33 PM PST by fremont_steve
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To: Carry_Okie; blam
Plus, the American River watershed is very wide spread with three forks all three of which are very steep and short compared to typical rivers around the world. The surge, even with multiple hydro-electric dams come up really fast and that is why it's still such a threat to Sacramento's and the Bay Delta's levees.

In the control room at Folsom Dam you can see the schematic for the whole watershed and notice the Auburn Dam above Folsom that was stopped by liberals when it was 2/3rds completed in 1977. It's now just a monument to stupidity of militant activist EnvironMentalists!!!

Carry_Okie's comment on the timing is precisely correct because it really isn't a true "Pineapple Express" until there's a massive snow pack being drenched with a warm river of rain falling on that Sierra Cement, making it race to the bottom...

58 posted on 11/30/2012 10:04:08 PM PST by SierraWasp (Blessed are they who prospect, dig & drill, for they are the primary producers of new, real wealth!!)
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To: SierraWasp
I wonder what Donnor Pass looks like...Hang On.
59 posted on 11/30/2012 10:10:35 PM PST by BooBoo1000 ( Your life is like a coin, you can spend it on what ever you want, but you can only spend it once.)
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To: skeeter

LOL great job!


60 posted on 11/30/2012 10:25:45 PM PST by thecodont
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