Heads Up! Big storm coming to Cali and SW

Everything's stopped and just cloudy now her win Nor Cal. The first wave is over.

Got a bump in inflow.

Nice half day of showers - jut like you'd like to happen with regularity when you live here.

It helps keep the fire danger down, but the weeds are going to love it.
 

Attachments

  • Screenshot 2023-08-21 at 12.00.54 PM.jpg
    Screenshot 2023-08-21 at 12.00.54 PM.jpg
    119.8 KB · Views: 16
Last edited:
This article mentions that the rain was dumped in a counterclockwise direction, where there were localized spots that soaked much of the rain.

The San Bernardino Mountains saw some of the highest rainfall totals, upwards of nine inches — especially the east-facing slopes. That’s because Hilary’s winds were rotating counterclockwise as the tropical cyclone came up the coast, Cordeira explained, which put those mountainous regions directly in the path of incoming danger.​
“The east side of the mountains would squeeze out more of that moisture,” Cordeira said, resulting in more rainfall.​
Areas just north of Los Angeles were also hit hard, seeing two to six inches of rain, producing localized flash flooding, Cordeira said.​
 
Yeah not much made it this far north and over the East side of the mountains to the Sierra system.

Im curious what the Colorado system saw, I'll look at that tonight.

Screenshot 2023-08-21 at 5.19.06 PM.png
 
In 2 miles I saw 1 parkway tree down, 1 with large branch splintered, and 1 with two large branches splintered. Winds skipped most everything else; only dead debris on the ground.
The main thing was the almost 100% humidity at 80 degrees. Yuck.
 
Yes I have seen it only a couple of times here in the Milwaukee area. When it happens it's a bit startling since the lightning flash is obscured by the snow yet lights up the whole sky. At first I didn't know what it was.


True… Rare to have thundersnow…

However, near the Great Lakes it is surprisingly common. The instability in the atmosphere brought about extreme cold air at 850 MB to 700 mB in the atmosphere sometimes down to -30 degrees Celsius and water temp that is 10-15 degrees C makes for a very favorable environment for thundersnow.

In very rapidly strengthening coastal low pressure systems it can and does happen at times. I believe it may have happened in the blizzard of 1996. I know it happened a couple of times along the northeast US coastline a couple of times in the 2010s. I remember hearing about a possibility of that happening in my area in February 1989 with a coastal storm. It didn’t happen but I was shocked at the time learning it could happen.

I remembered this happening in my area in December 2004. A very, very strong cold front passing through the area with temps at near -30 degrees Celsius at 850 mB or 5,000 feet high. It was raining cats and dogs as my girlfriend and I were driving west on interstate 64 to Richmond. The sky lit up on the way there as we headed towards the interchange with interstate 295 east of Richmond … Then between the exit for Rte 156 Sandston exit snow flakes started mixing in. Well a mile and a half later as we approached the Laburnum st exit it was snowing extremely hard. And as we got near that exit… the road was turning white as the snow was accumulating on the road. A FLASH freeze…. Very rare event too. And yes there was a few more lightning cloud to cloud and even cloud to ground strikes for the next 30 minutes. We got an inch and half of snow in less than a hour. To go from pouring rain to all snow and then white covered road conditions within 2 miles and the lightning was an extremely rare event in both aspects.
 
Last edited:
Just a light sprinkle here north of Sac.

Deserts sucked all the moisture out of this.
Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage and surrounding areas experienced a lot of flooding and mud. But this was more the result of their poor drainage system of roads in those areas. They have flooded areas every time they get a big rainstorm.

I am west of the desert and in the high elevations and the county road crews swept the State Highway early yesterday morning of what little debris was on the roadway. But northwest of me the mountain communities of Oak Glen and Forest Falls had huge mudslide problems. And this was the second time. But I believe their problem stemmed from previous forest fires in those areas burning off the vegetation.
 
Concern is growing that Hurricane Hilary will unleash a prolific amount of flooding rainfall on the southwestern US and parts of California as it makes a rare move over the region Sunday and into early next week, triggering the first ever tropical storm watch for California.
Floriduh residents dont even pay attention to what Hillary has to offer.
 
Nope, but Lake Mead over by Arizona/Nevada is at its highest levels

I'm not seeing it. It looks like they're steadily rising, but nothing that looks like a storm spike. Most of the water hit west of the Colorado River. Death Valley took it hard. They had a record daily rainfall of 2.2 inches. This is California State Route 190 that goes through Death Valley NP. People were stranded in the park with only emergency vehicles let in/out. But they have services (privately run and not subject to National Park Service regulations) inside and it's relatively cool with highs just making 100ºF. That's pretty mild for August there.

18132886_web1_2023-08-20-CA-190-Pearl-s-Dip-photo-by-CHP.jpg



But a lot of Lake Mead's water level has to do with how much water is released from Lake Powell. Their level has been going down while Lake Mead's has been going up.

 
We got rain late afternoon/early evening yesterday. I would guess a half an inch or so. It flooded the back yard and the street out front was running strong. I put a french drain into the back yard over the winter so that was dumping a lot of water into the street. It is clouding up again, so maybe today too. They say it is the remnants of Hilary.

We are at the very lowest foothills of the Hualapai Mountains, really the alluvial fan rather than foothills. Downtown Kingman only got a few drops of rain. Desert rain can be very localized.

I guess we might get something in a week from the storm shaping up in the Caribbean, if Texas decides to share. In the meantime, we get 102 degrees on Monday and Tuesday.
 
Strangely enough, there was a unrelated thunderstorm that hit Vegas and flooded the strip. I heard there were reports of people getting swept away by the water.

The had to fix the interior of Harrah's.

18136726_web1_CASINO-STORM-DAMAGE-AUG25-23-001.jpg


 
Back
Top