Posted on 01/05/2005 8:29:29 AM PST by 1LongTimeLurker
WASHINGTON — Moisture-laden storms from the north, west and south are likely to converge on much of America over the next several days in what could be a once-in-a-generation onslaught, meteorologists forecast yesterday.
If the gloomy computer models at the U.S. Climate Prediction Center are right, we'll see this terrible trio:
• The "Pineapple Express," a series of warm, wet storms heading east from Hawaii, drenching Southern California and the far Southwest, already beset with heavy rain and snow. Flooding, avalanches and mudslides are possible.
• An "Arctic Express," a mass of cold air chugging south from Alaska and Canada, bringing frigid air and potentially heavy snow and ice to the usually mild-wintered Pacific Northwest.
• An unnamed warm, moist storm system from the Gulf of Mexico drenching the already-saturated Ohio, Tennessee and Mississippi valleys. Expect heavy river flooding and springlike tornadoes.
Meteorologists caution that their predictions are only as good as their computer models. And forecasts are less accurate the further into the future they attempt to predict. "The models tend to overdo the formation of these really exciting weather formations for us," said Mike Wallace, a University of Washington atmospheric scientist.
Yet the more Wallace studied the models, the more he became convinced that something wicked was coming this way.
"It all fits together nicely," he said. "There's going to be weather in the headlines this weekend, that's for sure."
The National Weather Service yesterday issued a statement warning that several inches of snow could fall by the end of the weekend in the central Puget Sound lowlands, including Seattle. The snow could begin as soon as tomorrow night, particularly in areas north of Seattle, with a growing chance of snow farther south Friday, the weather service said. Highs through this weekend are expected to be in the low- to mid-30s, with lows in the mid- to high-20s.
"Don't sound the alarm," weather service meteorologist Johnny Burg said. "But tell everybody to just pay attention to future forecasts."
The three storms are likely to meet in the nation's midsection and cause even more problems, sparing only areas east of the Appalachian Mountains. Property damage and a few deaths are likely, forecasters said.
"You're talking a two- or three-times-a-century type of thing," said prediction-center senior meteorologist James Wagner, who has been forecasting storms since 1965. "It's a pattern that has a little bit of everything."
The exact time and place of the predicted 1-2-3 punch changes slightly with every new forecast. But the National Weather Service, in its weekly "hazards assessment," alerted meteorologists and disaster specialists yesterday that flooding and frigid weather could start as early as Friday and stretch into early next week, if not longer.
"It's a situation that looks pretty potent," said Ed O'Lenic, the Climate Prediction Center's operations chief. "A large part of North America looks like it's going to be affected."
Kelly Redmond, deputy director of the Western Regional Climate Center at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nev., where an unusual 18 inches of snow is on the ground, said the expected heavy Western rains could cause avalanches. Southern California and western Arizona have had three to four times the normal precipitation for the area since Oct. 1.
"Somebody is in for something pretty darn interesting," Redmond said.
Somebody already knows.
A wintry blast yesterday closed schools and glazed roads with ice and snow in the Rockies and on the central Plains, a 40-mile stretch of Interstate 5 was closed north of Los Angeles after up to 3 feet of snow fell in the region, and new flooding hit northeast of Phoenix, killing one man and leaving another missing.
Various levels of winter-weather advisories and storm warnings were in effect into this morning from Arizona to Connecticut, the weather service said.
Up to 2 feet of snow was possible in Colorado, where one traffic fatality was blamed on the weather and an avalanche blocked U.S. 550 about 40 miles north of Durango, the weather service said.
The last time a similar situation seemed to be brewing — especially in the West — was in January 1950, O'Lenic said. Seattle received 21 inches of snow, killing 13 people in an extended freeze, and Sunnyvale, Calif., was the scene of an unusual tornado.
The same scenario played out in 1937, when there was record flooding in the Ohio River Valley, said Wagner, of the prediction center.
He was worried about the Ohio and Tennessee River valleys as the places where the three nasty storm systems could meet, probably with snow, thunderstorms, severe ice storms and flooding. Some of those areas already are flooded.
The converging storms are being steered by high-pressure ridges off Alaska and Florida and are part of a temporary change in world climate conditions, O'Lenic said.
Over equatorial Indonesia, east of where a tsunami hit Dec. 26, meteorologists have identified a weather-making phenomenon called the Madden-Julian Oscillation. It's producing extra-stormy weather to its east. Similar oscillations in the north Atlantic and north Pacific are changing global weather patterns. Add this year's mild El Niño — a warming of the equatorial Pacific — which is unusually far west, Redmond said.
Seattle Times staff reporter Warren King contributed to this report; yesterday's weather was reported by The Associated Press
I can drive just fine.......It's stopping I can't do.
I blame the HAARP transmitter
30 South of Iowa City here. There's a couple inches out there, with about 3 quarters of an inch of ice underneath it. The snow is coming from the East, so it's reasonable to assume it will turn around and come back and hit us the second time.
Even the DOT trucks are inching along this morning. It sounds like it will get worse before it gets better.
60 minutes north of Indianapolis in Marion, IN which looks like Alaska now.
Yup them hoosiers crash at the first sight of driving.
WHEW! So nothing heading to Maryland.
What? Oh yes, I care about others. Virginia and PA seem safe too. :)
The southwest has been in drought for years. Enviros were decrying the Glen Canyon dam and saying Lake Powell would take years to recover if ever.
Just proves enviro nuts don't understand the environment.
LOL
And it was VERRRRY cold here in FL last night. How cold was it? It was so cold; it was so VERRRY cold... we actually had to put our top up on the way home from the beach.
LOL!! Sublime warnings don't seem to get through like they used to! Guess it's going to take a swarm of locusts chewing out a 666 crop circle on clinton's Library grounds to make some see the connection. Count on the 'enlightened ones', wearing their pretty new plastic bracelets, to read it as 999.
It's gonna hit 74 here in NC today. Open windows in January, sheesh.
Three storms converging. Two out of the three come out of Alaska. A serious low and high we're sending on down to you folks, enjoy. I posted this on another thread yesterday, quoting from the lead article:
"The storms were sparked by an extensive low pressure system that edged down from the Gulf of Alaska."
They are even more extensive here AT the Gulf of Alaska. We get 'em fresh off the assembly line in the Aleutians. If you think the storm you are having now is bad, hang on, we've got a whopper hammering us now. We'll enjoy this one about as much as we can stand then send him on down to you folks in Washington - California.
I have a sneaking suspicion we'll be seeing a lot of 'weather disaster' scenarios as the left takes continuing advantage of all the tsunami victims. It's nasty out there yes, but it usually IS nasty in this part of PA during the winter. The truck's gassed up, we have oil lamps, food and gas to cook it with.
Here in southcentral Penna - York - it's all rain, but 35 miles to the north, they're getting hammered with ice and snow.
This is the 3rd winter storm which has just missed up.
Iowa is the biggest cornfield in the nation.
It's a State of MindsTM. (A decade or so ago, some actually tried to make that our official motto.)
"... probably with snow, thunderstorms, severe ice storms and flooding..."
A typical winter in Columbus
Not in Florida...we're having gorgeous weather!
Our four day outlook.
http://www.floridaforecast.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/FloridaForecast
Ping!
Nah, you need a fourth horseman - a Bermuda High to hit the East coast. Weather it can occur during
the winter is beyond my meteorological knowledge.
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