Yes, it all happened today. We woke to the news of the Chilean 8.8 magnitude quake that devastated Chile overnight. Then we spent the morning waiting for the Tsunami to hit Hawaii. It turned out to be much smaller than forecasted, but it did occur.
In Orange County a small Tsunami did actually appear...
Later on at 3:24PM my buddy Will was streaming live video and captured a waterspout off the coast of Newport Beach.
In the late afternoon as that same line of storms passed, a thunderstorm cell moved right over my house and we got hit with a sudden hail shaft. 3/8" size hail fell for almost 5 minutes while lightning struck and thunder boomed.
Finally the rain and hail stopped as the line moved east. The sky above surprised me with mammatus just before sunset.
Today started out clear enough after the brief showers over night dropped 0.05". About mid morning the heating kicked in and started to produce fracto cumulus. The surface winds were gusty out of the south but a 60kt wind aloft was really mixing things up.
At 11 or so some cumulus congestus formed and the wind really worked hard and tore up the threatening sky and returned it back to scattered fracto quickly.
The rains this winter have been great and the hills are green!
This mornings weather was as expected, overcast marine layer of stratus. Cool but not cold and a bit dry at the surface. The winds are light out of the E to SE. Typical morning weather.
At 11 AM the stratus layer in now burning off a bit. The forecast was for deepening of the layer but that has apparently not happened quick enough to prevent holes in the stratus. Nothing on the radar yet and it seems the consensus is that the low will now close and move south and then east over Baja California. SPC has a slight risk for thunderstorms (mostly offshore) and models show a cooling in the 500mb to -23. The surface winds are still offshore but lightly from the E.
Update: 2:45PM Over the last few hours the broken marine layer thickened and additional helicity transformed the moisture into cumulus and Cu congestus. The 1km visable shows that most of the clouds are forming onshore. A moderate mid and upper level movement is driving everything east while the surface winds are now trending from the south as the low approaches about 300 miles to the west. SGX AFD is now mentioning that there should be enough LI for small hail in the cells. Currently the front is approaching VBX and a line of showers associated with the front is now visable. The cold core of the low on the IR4 shows storms however they are not as cold in the upper levels as the front is and seem to be weakening.
As the weather in OC turned fair and summer like, I had the opportunity over this last weekend to attend the National Storm Chaser Convention which is held in Denver, Colorado. The trip took a toll on me though as I was getting or caught a cold. I left on Thursday evening with the entire family on this spontaneous trip at the last minute. We arrived just after noon the next day. I was very tired from the non-stop drive (I only drove a few hundred miles of it) and check-in registration was at 6PM.
The "Con" was opened up early Saturday morning by Co-Owners Roger Hill (Chaser, Press photo/videographer & tornado tour guide) and Tim Samaras (Tornado Researcher and Chaser). The first talk was by Jon Davies called "Where's The Tornado" which discussed the details of a rain wrapped tornado June 7th 2009 in NW Missouri. Next up was a con favorite, Tim Marshall with his talk cleverly titled "The May Trick of 2009" which was certainly a crowd pleaser. I had never seen him speak but let's just say he really get into character. After a short break another well known figure and leader of the largest research project on Tornadogenisis, Dr. Josh Wurman. He discussed in deatil the massive project, Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment 2 (VORTEX2) and his orgainization behind it, the CSWR. This included the highlight of the year for many in research, the Goshen Co, WY tornado of 2009. This tornado was the single most scientifically covered tornadic event in recorded history. The tornado was not only scrutinized by the Vortex team and several other research groups in the area but was televised live on The Weather Channel from start to finish. After lunch Mike Bettes was to speak but couldn't make it due to heavy snow in Atlanta so Tim Samaras filled in the time slot. Mid-Afternoon, Dr. Howie Bluestein from the University of Oklahoma discussed in a detailed overview all of the mobile Doppler's used in the VORTEX2 project. The last speaker of the day was Dr. Erik Rasmussen of Rasmussen Systems who also led the first VORTEX project in the 90's. His topic was "What's left to learn about Tornados?". A vendor fair followed, were I dropped a serious amount of cash on books, DVD's and stickers.
After a quick trip to freshen up at the hotel, I returned for the banquet dinner. I believe it was Mango Chicken and rice with black beans and some steamed veggies. I was surprised to meet a few storm chasers also from California. After dinner was the keynote address by Dr. Greg Forbes (Storm Master G) The Weather Channel's resident storm expert with perspectives on the decade, a look back at the last ten years significant weather events. Dr. Forbes finished with some heartfelt memories of working with the late Ted Fujita. Following the keynote was Chaser Video Night with some very interesting amateur chase videos.
Sunday morning it was snowing pretty good. The ChaserCon started back up with the most important presentation by Chris Novy (WA9V) on "Safe and Responsible Chasing". After, Jon Davies spoke again on chase targeting issues. Next was Greg Stumpf with NSSL & CIMMS at NWS/MDL on the topic "The Evolution of Hazardous Warning Services". At this point I was exhausted from the drive and the massive amount of information I was listening too. I only caught part of the final talk by Dr. Forbes entitled "Severe Weather and Flash-flood forecasting. His talk concluded at noon and by midnight I was 750 miles away in Las Vegas looking for a pillow to lay my sleepy head on.
Below is footage from TWC coverage of the Goshen CO tornado event in June, 2009.
We had another storm today and it was very cold. Snow was falling above 4,000'. Around 10:30 AM a strong cell moved through the urban area of Orange County creating heavy showers and possible funnel clouds. I personally watch a wall cloud trailing behind the showers and was expecting a funnel cloud to pop out at anytime. In the early afternoon more cells moved through with thundershowers and the steady cold rain continued until just after dusk.
I forgot to post about the Friday-Sarurday storm. It dumped over 2" of rain in most places. The front slowed to a crawl overnight Friday and let rain totals unexpectadly add up. Some training and island effect also helped. The rain was low level but pretty wet at times.
A cold upper low will drop swd along ca coast to a position vicinity lax by 12z wed. steep lapse rates and ascent s of e of low track will lead to considerable low topped convection including at least isolated thunderstorms primarily over and west of coastal range along the track of the upper low as it moves down the coast. given the cold air aloft ... small hail will be likely associated with stronger convection during the afternoon and evening. the limited instability and generally weak shear ... precludes introducing a severe threat attm.
did spread the thunderstorm threat ewd across the mohave deserts region of srn ca where models suggest stronger ascent coupled with steep lapse rates will develop during the afternoon.
In the past, every chance of rain meant that it would rain somewhere nearby. Now I know the definition of POP chances but still I was always a glass full kind of person. Eventually I came up with my own system to translate POP that seemed to work for several decades. Unfourtunatly it's not very scientific. Basically when the forecast gave a 10% or 20% chance of rain, I would equate that to a dry trough was going to move through or brush by and there would not be rain. When the forecast was 30% chance of rain, we usually got rain. When it was 40%, the average was we would get rain half of the time. 50% chance and above meant we would get rain for sure and it was just a question of how much we would receive. See! Not very scientific.
I've changed my mind. Now my thinking is that anything less than 50% means rain is unlikley. Essentially when I see we have a 20% chance of rain, means to me that we won't get any. This is a fantastic approach because if we ever do which is unlikley then I appreciate the rain just that much more!
Case in point was yesterday. We had a 20% chance at best so to me were weren't getting any and the models were leaning that way after every run as well. We did have a very nice mid-winter time tropical type day. Warm slightly humid air with stratus in the morning giving way to altocumulus and altocirrus towards the afternoon. Not very typical for February in SoCal. Still my hopes were not dashed because the rain never came and I wasn't expecting it either. On a positive note I really enjoy the altocumulus buildups and heaping cumulus. It reminds me of the monsoon season still a half a year away.
As a supplement to my general knowledge, I've decided to complete the Distance Learning Operations Course (DLOC) which provides initial training on the use of the WSR-88D Radar. Why? Because I'm a weather nut. It is also because understanding this aspect of meteorology will help me not only understand (much) more than the average layman when it comes to the WSR-88D and interpreting it's products, but it will also keep me learning about new subjects in general which is never a bad use of time. The FY09 materials are currently on the web (although hard to find) so I'm taking the initiative to learn as much as I can. Since the next round of training doesn't start until, July, I should have plenty of time to get through it. SInce it's normally a 3-4 week course for NWS forecasters, I think I should be able to get through it in a few months.
