Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Roll On, O Atmospheric River


Atmospheric River by the old jet stream
Atmospheric river of the rain supreme
Linger in the shade of your umbrella tree
Soak in all your sorrows, float out to sea...

Atmospheric river up above will loom
Atmospheric river in the noon day gloom
Gray skies are all set
Everyone gets wet
Atmospheric river how drowned we all will be
Atmospheric river, you’ll see!

(by BK with apologies to Louis Armstrong)

Okay I shouldn't make fun of it.  It can cause some nasty floods, mud slides and so on, so it has to be respected.  And next to the Big One (earthquake), the Big One (atmospheric river) could be a sudden catastrophe hereabouts.  And like those other newly named weather phenomena, the climate crisis can make them way worse.

And anyway it's got an acronym--it's AR to you, bub.

So there's another one forming, likely to dump rain on us midweek forward.  The last one hurt places to the south of us, flooded some of Ferndale and pushed various rivers and streams to flood stage on the North Coast.  So they can be formidable.

On the bright side, the last one also pulled the rest of northern California officially out of drought.

As for the general rain sit, after a so-so December in terms of rain, January so far has been really rainy here.  About halfway through the month, we're 2 inches above normal for January, and have already beat last January's totals.

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