Remember my blog explaining what it means that the rain gate has opened?
Well, an Atmospheric River (and a classic "Pineapple Express"!) is headed toward the West Coast.
First, it will hit the Pacific Northwest on Wednesday.
On Thursday, it will spread south to bring heavy rain and snow to Northern California.
By Friday, it will reach Central California.
Feel left out? Don't worry. A winter-time low pressure system will bring heavy rain and strong winds to SoCal by early next week late Sunday PST.
This will give you time over the weekend to batten down your hatches.
Want to learn more?
- NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory's (ESRL) Atmospheric River Information Page
- REMSS Atmospheric River Watch (with the satellite analysis above)
- COMET MetEd online short lesson Satellite Feature Identification: Atmospheric Rivers. Registration is required, but free.
- NOAA ESRL Automated Atmospheric River Detection detected this AR
- h/t to Cliff Mass Weather Blog
- Make your own visualizations of NOAA NCEP Global Forecast System (GFS) model data using the NCAR RAL simple web interface.
