5 ms·

US west coast braces for ‘atmospheric river’ as storm brews

26 points by WalterGR 5y ago

redwood 5y ago
As a former Californian the storm is tiny by East Coast standards but I sure hope it delivers
- elliottkember 5y ago
  Raining hard in SF right now!
- jmspring 5y ago
  Small town north of Truckee. Predicted to get 6-7” today. We are at 2.4” according to my westher station.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  > storm is tiny by East Coast standards OK but natural water flow is adapted to local conditions, over generations.. a disaster is something that doesn't fit capacity.. I had a similar aha moment as you when casually talking to a stranger about the rain in California - she looked dismissive and said "I am from Michigan" and walked off !
xhkkffbf 5y ago
Just last week, one of my friends was wringing her hands about the punishing drought in California. Could someone in charge of the weather please make up his/her/their minds? Everyone talks about the weather-- but no one does anything about it!
- thrownblown 5y ago
  Well there have been a few wet years leading up to the recent draught. During the wet years the fuel load flourished, not the trees but the underbrush in the forests. During the dry years that added fuel load leads to the conditions we saw the last few years with the kinds of wild fires that are quite devastating to the trees.
- ratsmack 5y ago
  I know we're supposed to remain deadly serious and stoic here on HN, but this is too funny to pass up. >Everyone talks about the weather-- but no one does anything about it!
  - WalterGR 5y ago
    I can't vouch for this link, but it may be interesting: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/04/23/everybody-talks-about-the-weather/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/04/23/everybody-talks-abo...
t25gt 5y ago
[dead]
kaycebasques 5y ago
I believe I read somewhere that massive rains like this don't help with the drought situation as much as you might think because it's just too much rain in too short of a time and a lot of it runs off into unproductive places (rather than getting stored in lakes, dams, etc.). Is that idea accurate?
- refurb 5y ago
  That makes sense but I remember the drought of 2016 ended pretty quickly during one of these storms. Reservoirs went from 20% capacity to 100% in a few days and excess water had to be released downstream.
  - topkai22 5y ago
    That one put a ton of snow in the mountains as well, this one is going to be too warm to put the same amount of snow into the mountains (although there will be some). Snowpack functions as a massive reservoir, so that matters. That being said, 8 inches of liquid precipitation in 2 days isn’t as good as 8 inches if liquid precipitation over 2 weeks, but it’s still a boon to water systems.
- nostrademons 5y ago
  Sort of. It's true for the urban and coastal areas - in fact, there's a landslide & flash flood watch for the CZU burn scar and most of the North Bay right now. Large parts of the Bay Area mountains drain into captured reservoirs, though. The eastern slope of the SF peninsula all drains into Crystal Springs reservoir. Most of the inner Berkeley Hills & Briones Regional Park drains into the San Pablo reservoir. The mountains between Oakland and Danville drain into Upper San Leandro reservoir. Sunol and the lower Tri-Valley drains into San Antonio reservoir. Henry Coe State Park and the surrounding ranchlands (which is huge, bigger than all of the urbanized Bay Area put together) drains into the Calaveras and San Luis reservoirs, as well as Anderson & Coyote Lakes. Anderson Lake, last month, was at 3.5% capacity. So yes, this is a very welcome rainstorm, and much of it will be captured for municipal water. If it came on the heels of a very wet season (like the 2017 atmospheric river that flooded Coyote Creek and threatened to overtop Anderson Lake), they yeah, it'd be wasted, but that's not the situation today.
wcoenen 5y ago
From the Hacker News guidelines: "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- sushsjsuauahab 5y ago
  So when Steve Jobs died...?
  - wcoenen 5y ago
    There are exceptions, covered by the "probably". I do not believe a weather event is worthy of such an exception. The low quality of the comments here seems to confirm that.
    - sushsjsuauahab 5y ago
      Is weather not an interesting scientific phenomenon? Are businesses not affected by weather?
      - wcoenen 5y ago
        There are severe weather events around the globe every week, e.g. a typhoon just ravaged the Phillippines and Hong Kong earlier this month. Should all severe weather be discussed on hacker news?
        Karunamon 5y ago
        "What if everyone did it" is almost never a useful discussion. I found this article and the comments interesting. YMMV.
        WalterGR 5y ago
        20 typhoons hit the Philippines a year (https://www.adrc.asia/nationinformation.php?NationCode=608&Lang=en#:~:text=Located%20along%20the%20typhoon%20belt,five%20of%20which%20are%20destructive https://www.adrc.asia/nationinformation.php?NationCode=608&L....) And "The frequency of typhoons in the Philippines have made typhoons a significant part of everyday ancient and modern Filipino culture." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoons_in_the_Philippines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoons_in_the_Philippines) 5 - 6 a year hit Hong Kong according to https://www.hko.gov.hk/en/education/tropical-cyclone/classification-naming-characteristics/00161-typhoon-56-average-number-of-tropical-cyclones.html https://www.hko.gov.hk/en/education/tropical-cyclone/classif.... Re. atmospheric rivers and the US West Coast: "Typically, the Oregon coast averages one Cat 4 atmospheric river (AR) each year; Washington state averages one Cat 4 AR every two years; the Bay Area averages one Cat 4 AR every three years; and southern California, which typically experiences one Cat 2 or Cat 3 AR each year, averages one Cat 4 AR every ten years." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_river https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_river) And this is a category 5 AR: "The atmospheric river — a band carrying more water vapor than the surrounding air — has been elevated to a Category 5, the highest designation on the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Extreme Weather Lab scale." (https://cbsnews.com/live-updates/california-bomb-cyclone-atmospheric-river-2021-10-24/ https://cbsnews.com/live-updates/california-bomb-cyclone-atm...) You're comparing events that happen 5 - 20 times a year with one that happens less than every decade. In fact: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28982850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28982850 - "130,600 PG&E customers without power as storm drenches Bay Area". From the article: "The storm is tied as the third strongest since 1950 on the Bay Area Storm Index (BASI), and the strongest in 26 years..." So: a less-than-every-decade weather event for California, California's droughts, the fires over the summer, the Atmospheric River's potential to cause mudslides because of the fires, climate change, a large power outage, the Bay Area being the tech capitol of the world, and the strongest storm in the Bay Area in 26 years... Just because it's discussed on the news doesn't mean it's not news-worthy.
SubiculumCode 5y ago
What a storm for this parched land.

26 points by WalterGR 5y ago

redwood 5y ago

As a former Californian the storm is tiny by East Coast standards but I sure hope it delivers

elliottkember 5y ago
Raining hard in SF right now!
jmspring 5y ago
Small town north of Truckee. Predicted to get 6-7” today. We are at 2.4” according to my westher station.
mistrial9 5y ago
> storm is tiny by East Coast standards OK but natural water flow is adapted to local conditions, over generations.. a disaster is something that doesn't fit capacity.. I had a similar aha moment as you when casually talking to a stranger about the rain in California - she looked dismissive and said "I am from Michigan" and walked off !

xhkkffbf 5y ago

Just last week, one of my friends was wringing her hands about the punishing drought in California. Could someone in charge of the weather please make up his/her/their minds? Everyone talks about the weather-- but no one does anything about it!

thrownblown 5y ago
Well there have been a few wet years leading up to the recent draught. During the wet years the fuel load flourished, not the trees but the underbrush in the forests. During the dry years that added fuel load leads to the conditions we saw the last few years with the kinds of wild fires that are quite devastating to the trees.
ratsmack 5y ago
I know we're supposed to remain deadly serious and stoic here on HN, but this is too funny to pass up. >Everyone talks about the weather-- but no one does anything about it!
- WalterGR 5y ago
  I can't vouch for this link, but it may be interesting: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/04/23/everybody-talks-about-the-weather/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/04/23/everybody-talks-abo...

t25gt 5y ago

[dead]

kaycebasques 5y ago

I believe I read somewhere that massive rains like this don't help with the drought situation as much as you might think because it's just too much rain in too short of a time and a lot of it runs off into unproductive places (rather than getting stored in lakes, dams, etc.). Is that idea accurate?

refurb 5y ago
That makes sense but I remember the drought of 2016 ended pretty quickly during one of these storms. Reservoirs went from 20% capacity to 100% in a few days and excess water had to be released downstream.
- topkai22 5y ago
  That one put a ton of snow in the mountains as well, this one is going to be too warm to put the same amount of snow into the mountains (although there will be some). Snowpack functions as a massive reservoir, so that matters. That being said, 8 inches of liquid precipitation in 2 days isn’t as good as 8 inches if liquid precipitation over 2 weeks, but it’s still a boon to water systems.
nostrademons 5y ago
Sort of. It's true for the urban and coastal areas - in fact, there's a landslide & flash flood watch for the CZU burn scar and most of the North Bay right now. Large parts of the Bay Area mountains drain into captured reservoirs, though. The eastern slope of the SF peninsula all drains into Crystal Springs reservoir. Most of the inner Berkeley Hills & Briones Regional Park drains into the San Pablo reservoir. The mountains between Oakland and Danville drain into Upper San Leandro reservoir. Sunol and the lower Tri-Valley drains into San Antonio reservoir. Henry Coe State Park and the surrounding ranchlands (which is huge, bigger than all of the urbanized Bay Area put together) drains into the Calaveras and San Luis reservoirs, as well as Anderson & Coyote Lakes. Anderson Lake, last month, was at 3.5% capacity. So yes, this is a very welcome rainstorm, and much of it will be captured for municipal water. If it came on the heels of a very wet season (like the 2017 atmospheric river that flooded Coyote Creek and threatened to overtop Anderson Lake), they yeah, it'd be wasted, but that's not the situation today.

wcoenen 5y ago

From the Hacker News guidelines: "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

sushsjsuauahab 5y ago
So when Steve Jobs died...?
- wcoenen 5y ago
  There are exceptions, covered by the "probably". I do not believe a weather event is worthy of such an exception. The low quality of the comments here seems to confirm that.
  - sushsjsuauahab 5y ago
    Is weather not an interesting scientific phenomenon? Are businesses not affected by weather?
    - wcoenen 5y ago
      There are severe weather events around the globe every week, e.g. a typhoon just ravaged the Phillippines and Hong Kong earlier this month. Should all severe weather be discussed on hacker news?
      - Karunamon 5y ago
        "What if everyone did it" is almost never a useful discussion. I found this article and the comments interesting. YMMV.
      - WalterGR 5y ago
        20 typhoons hit the Philippines a year (https://www.adrc.asia/nationinformation.php?NationCode=608&Lang=en#:~:text=Located%20along%20the%20typhoon%20belt,five%20of%20which%20are%20destructive https://www.adrc.asia/nationinformation.php?NationCode=608&L....) And "The frequency of typhoons in the Philippines have made typhoons a significant part of everyday ancient and modern Filipino culture." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoons_in_the_Philippines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoons_in_the_Philippines) 5 - 6 a year hit Hong Kong according to https://www.hko.gov.hk/en/education/tropical-cyclone/classification-naming-characteristics/00161-typhoon-56-average-number-of-tropical-cyclones.html https://www.hko.gov.hk/en/education/tropical-cyclone/classif.... Re. atmospheric rivers and the US West Coast: "Typically, the Oregon coast averages one Cat 4 atmospheric river (AR) each year; Washington state averages one Cat 4 AR every two years; the Bay Area averages one Cat 4 AR every three years; and southern California, which typically experiences one Cat 2 or Cat 3 AR each year, averages one Cat 4 AR every ten years." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_river https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_river) And this is a category 5 AR: "The atmospheric river — a band carrying more water vapor than the surrounding air — has been elevated to a Category 5, the highest designation on the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Extreme Weather Lab scale." (https://cbsnews.com/live-updates/california-bomb-cyclone-atmospheric-river-2021-10-24/ https://cbsnews.com/live-updates/california-bomb-cyclone-atm...) You're comparing events that happen 5 - 20 times a year with one that happens less than every decade. In fact: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28982850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28982850 - "130,600 PG&E customers without power as storm drenches Bay Area". From the article: "The storm is tied as the third strongest since 1950 on the Bay Area Storm Index (BASI), and the strongest in 26 years..." So: a less-than-every-decade weather event for California, California's droughts, the fires over the summer, the Atmospheric River's potential to cause mudslides because of the fires, climate change, a large power outage, the Bay Area being the tech capitol of the world, and the strongest storm in the Bay Area in 26 years... Just because it's discussed on the news doesn't mean it's not news-worthy.

SubiculumCode 5y ago

What a storm for this parched land.