Cry Me A River

Here in Arcata we seem to be in the still point of a raining world.  The "atmospheric river" (that's its profile picture above) is dumping rain all around us, causing sporadic flooding, downed trees and power lines, power outages, and some landslides.  Though we've had wind and fairly steady rain, it's had less impact locally.

There's been much more rain to our north (as far as Washington and Oregon) and south (as far as the Bay Area), but so far the coastal whatevers are shielding us from the several inches a day that others are getting.  We even had some sun breaks today.

The latest pulse of rain has just started. The river will deliver more waves of moisture through Monday, though the various weather models differ from one another, and seem to change a lot.  What is indisputably true is that it's stayed warm--8 to 10F above normal--although falling temps and accompanying thunderstorms are expected.  They just keep changing their minds on when.  We may see some heavier stuff yet, whatever the hourly forecasts say now.

Meanwhile the Midwest and East are getting hit with another named storm--Marcus.  It's expected to dump steady snow for several days, though not a lot until it reaches New England.  Boston may get another foot, on top of the two or so on the ground.

So what's with the names?  Easier twitter hashtag?  And if snowstorms get names, why doesn't our river?  Is this prejudice against atmospheric rivers?  A river has to be liquid water in order to have a name?  Is that fair?  Why, you tweet "atmospheric" and you've used up most of your letters.

Update: The river continued to flow right over us.  We got lots and lots of wind but very little of the rain as the Humboldt Bay area remained the still dry point as the rain turned around us in the rainy region.  Looking at the maps of where precip was happening confirmed this impression--at several times there was rain literally all around us, including out at sea.  We got enough rain however to cause a significant mudslide near an HSU dorm.  Still, the several inches first predicted turned out to be less than one inch total, I'm guessing. Now on Monday night there's the supposed chance of a few passing showers before dry sets in officially on Tuesday.