Super Soaker: Record Rain Recap

This morning's showers, while generally minimal across the metro area (a couple hundredths of an inch), helped add to a nice surplus for February built up from Friday's record-setting rainfall. The regional 24-hour precipitation map (popup image) ending 7 a.m. Saturday from the National Weather Service (NWS) Precipitation Analysis shows that National Airport and a good chunk of the eastern half of the District were in the sweet spot, with the heavier amounts (shaded in yellow) blossoming out even wider through the entire Baltimore Beltway vicinity and northeastward toward Pennsylvania. Some amounts as high as 3" were reported just over the Mason-Dixon line. Even in the less-rainy parts of the immediate metro region, amounts up to 1.5" (dark green) were widespread.

The virtual rain gauge for the three major local reporting stations (click image to enlarge) shows the rainfall accumulation in three-hour intervals from 4 a.m. through 7 p.m. Although precipitation started earlier at Dulles (0.01" actually fell before 4 a.m.), the three totals were coincidentally precisely equal at 0.81" by 10 a.m. Notice that, after diminishing somewhat in the morning, the rainfall rate picked up dramatically at both National and BWI in the afternoon. Nearly half of the final total at National fell from 1 to 4 p.m. This is a typical pattern in large storms; the precipitation begins slowly as warm air overrides colder air near the surface, then increases in intensity toward the end as deeper, more convective-type showers take over. There were a few unofficial reports of thunder with this storm.

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International House of Snowflakes

Wild Winter Weather Hits China, Israel

Some statistics this morning from site visitor Augusta Jim would indicate that the very long-term snow trend is not negative, but as Matt pointed out, La Niña may be limiting our flaky fortunes through February. If we don't get the snow, who does?

Manufacturing jobs and cash may not be the only things Washington is exporting. China is having its worst winter weather in about 50 years. CNN quoted the Xinhua news agency:

"The heavy snow and sleet has paralyzed transport and coal shipments, and led to travelers cramming railways stations and airports and power supply reductions in almost half of the 31 provinces and regions on the Chinese mainland."

CNBC reported on air this morning that coal exports had been halted and that coal inventories were down to an eight-day supply. And China isn't the only international location making local snow lovers jealous.

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Area's Drought Continues

Moderate precipitation deficit persists into 2008

Chart by Capital Weather Gang. Click on image to enlarge.





While enough to get you wet without rain gear, today's semi-springlike showers have done little to dampen the impact of a prolonged dry spell in the Washington metro area. Rainfall amounts of around a tenth of an inch or less have barely equalled the long-term daily average, although more rain is possible tonight. With only two days left in the month, there have been only six days, counting today, with measurable precipitation (0.01" or more). That is less than two-thirds the average of 9.8 rainy/snowy days in the average January in the base period of 1971-2000. Total precipitation for the month is less than 50 percent of the "normal" (long-term average).

The regional 30-day precipitation percentage of average from the National Weather Service (NWS) Precipitation Analysis shows a lot of sub-average yellows and oranges, with the near to above-average grays and greens mostly limited to parts of the Northern Neck of Virginia and southern Maryland. The intensity of the dryness increases generally northward and westward of the Beltway, with Montgomery, Fairfax, and Loudoun Counties faring the worst within the near 'burbosphere.

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Free/Low-Cost Classes

Skywarn; climate course; astronomy for non-scientists

If you're interested in learning something about meteorology and also performing a public service, the National Weather Service (NWS) has several Skywarn classes scheduled in the metro region. Skywarn is a program through which trained members of the public can become spotters for weather events such as severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, hail and flooding, and report their observations to the local NWS. The classes, which are free, consist of one three-hour introductory session. Several optional advanced sessions are also offered separately.

The next scheduled Basics I class (prerequisite for all other classes) inside the Beltway is Feb. 9 at the University of Maryland in College Park, sponsored by the meteorology graduate student organization. You can register for the class online and also view the slides and videos from a previous presentation. Other upcoming classes in the Washington/Baltimore region are scheduled for Leesburg and Towson. For graduates of Basic I training, Basics II, Flooding, and Tropical classes are also available.

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NOAA's NWS Near Naming New NHC Noggin?

The Orlando Sentinel reported today: "National Weather Service veteran Bill Read likely to be next hurricane chief." This promises to be the final chapter in one of the more unusual bureaucratic dramas in recent history. If named as the permanent director of the National Hurricane Center near Miami, Read would replace Bill Proenza, who took over the position at the beginning of last year, replacing the retiring Max Mayfield, but was ousted when havoc broke out at the center during the 2007 hurricane season.

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551.5: Book Nook

551.5 is the Dewey Decimal System classification for meteorology.

In his post last weekend, Ground Truth, Andrew points out that seeing is believing: Because climate change "exists beyond our field of vision it's hard to be completely convinced of its existence, and therefore of the necessity of addressing it." Andrew Revkin expressed similar thoughts in his Dot Earth blog last month.

A new climate change book, published last year in the U.K., was released in the U.S. yesterday by National Geographic. It aims to address precisely that problem. Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, by Mark Lynas, takes the dry data and analyses of climate science and puts them into human terms by describing the specific effects of each degree of warming predicted in the current range of scenarios documented in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, from 1°C to 6°C:

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Climate Corner: Myth-tery Science Theater 2008

One of the major myths of the climate change saga comes in for some major debunking at a session Wednesday of the 20th Conference on Climate Variability and Change, which is meeting in conjunction with the 88th Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) this week in New Orleans. It didn't make the top-10 list of a major global warming skeptic, but a favorite theme of climate science fiction, both literary and political, is that the same people who predicted an ice age in the 1970s are now the ones promoting the global warming story. This argument is even favored by some meteorologists.

The cooling myth turns out to be wrong on multiple levels. First of all, even if the premise were true, it would be perfectly consistent with the scientific method:

• Make an hypothesis: The earth is cooling.
• Collect and analyze data: It's not.
• Refine the hypothesis: The earth is warming.
• Repeat until done.

Stephen H. Schneider, a veteran climate scientist (also the apparent coiner of the term "mediarology"), was interviewed last year on this subject on The Weather Channel's Forecast Earth series. I'm quoting from memory, so this hasn't been subjected to the usual rigorous fact-checking of the Googling monkeys here in the Climate Corner, but the gist of what he said was, "We were wrong. We thought there could be a cooling, but we did some more analysis and found out that was not the case. That's how science works."

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