Friday, July 20, 2012

Day of Silence

As a tribute to those who became victims at the Aurora, CO movie theatre shooting last night, the rest of the day will be silent at The Weather Centre. No further blog posts or Facebook page posts will be issued for the rest of the day today.
Regular posting will resume tomorrow.

Andrew

MJO Too Weak to Impact Weather

The Madden-Julian Oscillation has moved itself into a position where it is too weak to significantly impact the weather patterns over the US.

Statistical models show the MJO to stay in this very weak stage for a while, which could help enable the massive heat wave to re-surge back north. This re-surge is actually being shown by the CPC as being possible.

The ECMWF and ECMWF Ensembles are actually pointing back to the MJO moving into Phase 3, which signifies a wet US. However, this will still have to be closely watched to see if it pans out.

Andrew

Over a Foot of Rain Needed to End Midwest, Plains Drought

Over a foot of rain is needed to end the growing Midwest and Plains drought as of July 14, and these estimates will likely only continue to grow as we move into an El Nino winter.

As shown in the picture above, the entire Midwest and Plains regions are in big trouble as far as precipitation needed to end the drought. However, to make matters worse, this rain will have to fall over several days. If a foot of rain falls in a day, as was seen in Florida a while back, it will only create massive flash flooding, because the ground needs a couple days to sense that water is around and be able to soak it in. If there happened to be a foot of rain, there would be significant help and damage to low-lying areas, but locations on hills or the like will only get a fraction of that water to soak into the ground.

Because we are going into an El Nino, I am expecting the drought to intensify and make a movement east into the Ohio Valley, as is typical of El Nino conditions. This does not mean the Midwest and Plains will get better. If anything, the Midwest will get worse thanks to the oncoming El Nino.
One must remember that not every El Nino is the same and I am basing this off of an average of El Nino years, and this average shows dr conditions in the Midwest and Ohio Valley.

Andrew