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2019 Rain Thread


Biff Tannen

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What time does this shit end, like late morning Thursday? 

So many people traveling back home from the holidays.  Hoops team coming back from Manhattan in the early morning hours.  Half drunk students still driving back from New Orleans.  

And of course, I'm back at work trying to start 2019 with good decisions.  Fuck that, anybody for an early happy hour?  

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  • 1 month later...

Bringing this in from the 2018 thread...

They really don't make predictions too specifically for tornadoes.  Way too hard to know the ingredients on any type of predictable basis.  There have been numerous studies on the relationship between ENSO (i.e. Niñas and Niños) and spring severe weather.  Basically, if anything, it's the opposite - it's actually a La Niña year that appears (though again it's really, really sketchy) to favor more severe spring weather, and El Niño years that actually appear vaguely to decrease the likelihood.  However, this stuff is still in its infancy, mostly due to lack of technology/ability to identify reliable factors for tornado predictions.

Here is an excellent but slightly tl;dr: paper on the correlation, from 2017:
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/enso-and-tornadoes

I'll just quote one lil' paragraph here:
 

Quote

These shifts would also be expected to impact thunderstorm activity: El Niño tends to shift the jet stream farther south over the U.S., which blocks moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, reducing the fuel for thunderstorms. On the other hand, La Niña is associated with a more wavy and northward shifted jet stream, which might be expected to enhance severe weather activity in the south and southeast. Indeed, historic tornado outbreaks in 1974, 2008 and 2011 started during La Niña conditions.


and the tl;dr: of the paper is 1) seems like more in La Niña years, but 2) data is sketchy, and 3) there are more factors that we're looking at (i.e. Gulf of Mexico spring/summer data) that we ain't quite figgered it out yet, but we're trying.

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1 hour ago, Biff Tannen said:

Hey phd/frankie, are they predicting el nino for 2020 or is it too early to tell?

They usually can't predict for sure until about 6 months before that coming fall... so about next year at this time.

The one this year wasn't really nailed until only about two months ago... even after we started into it!

Of course if you just had one (2018-19), chances are lower that the next year is going to be the same... but it's happened before.

My guess is normal to La Niña conditions for next winter/spring.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Reckless driving disaster tourist got video of that tornado.  Of course he didn't bother to stop and see if he could assist once he came upon houses reduced to rubble.  Gotta turn around and upload to Youtube, get that check and fame from The Weather Channel.

Getting deservedly roasted in the comments section right now.

Edited by clapclapclap
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  • 2 weeks later...
11 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

It’s Cub Scouts.  They ain’t canceling shit, unless there is enough rain to require somebody to start gathering animals and building an ark.  

This is Texas, asshole.  You can't throw that around lightly because it will, in fact, happen now

Edited by Trey3216
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13 hours ago, NorthLoop said:

Fuck I hate the wind. Wind is only acceptable during a thunderstorm, which I love, but we don't seem to get anymore around here. Fuck this wind. 

Cold and 25-30mph gusts turned a Cub Scout campout this weekend into a “let’s see if our tens really hold up to their wind-ratings!”

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Euro model showing a pretty good line of storms coming thru Sat. afternoon, and about 2 1/2 " of rain widespread.  American model, not so much.  However we know that the Euro model usually kicks the American model's ass up, down, and sideways.  It's kind of like  Incarnate Word vs. Texas in baseball.  I mean it's just so one-sided it's not funny!  Anyway, I do think we'll finally see some good rain after a little over a month.

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14 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

I'm heading out to Colorado Bend on Saturday to backpack.  Am I going to die?

No, but the waterfall there should be moving pretty well.  That's a very underrated park, IMO.  Decent fishing, too.  

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For those of us in SE Texas, here is the latest update from Jeff Lindner:

 

Active weather pattern through the weekend with multiple chances for thunderstorms.

Overnight shortwave responsible for the scattered strong to at times severe thunderstorms is moving east into LA this morning, while a secondary shortwave is approaching central TX and heading toward SE TX. Lift overnight helped to force surface parcels through the capping inversion where they were able to tap into a pool of elevated instability with the end result being the scattered storms some of which produced severe hail. Approaching shortwave over central TX will once again impart lift across the area starting late this morning into the early afternoon hours. Expect to see an increase in shower and thunderstorm activity as this feature moves across the area. Any storm that is able to break through the capping inversion may become severe with the main threat being large hail. Storms were also able to generate about an inch of rainfall in a few narrow corridors…mainly from central Harris into Liberty County.

Friday will feature small ridge of high pressure over the area ahead of a much more significant upper level storm system which will impact the state over much of the weekend. An upper level trough will begin to dig into TX late Friday with increasing large scale lift. Moisture will continue to increase and pool over the area with PWS increasing to around 1.5 inches by late Saturday. Fairly impressive low level inflow of 35-45kts from the S/SSW will help to feed moisture into developing storms. Increasing speed and directional wind shear will be in place by Saturday along with decent instability suggesting severe thunderstorms with hail and damaging winds will be possible.

Think the main threat over the weekend may end up on the heavy rainfall side of the spectrum. Overall pattern favors some amounts of heavy rainfall somewhere in SE TX. A few red flags include the good low level inflow off the Gulf and potential for cell training into WSW/SW to ENE/NE bands which would be nearly perpendicular to the low level flow and parallel to the steering flow aloft. Additionally, large scale lift will be maintained over the area for a decent period Saturday afternoon into much of Sunday. 1.5 inch PWS is nothing extraordinary by SE TX standards, but that amount of moisture will be capable for some decent 1-2 inch per hour rainfall rates and maybe could push up to 3 inches per hour. Main lacking feature at this point is any sort of focus on a low level boundary, but that may eventually come from thunderstorm outflow boundaries at some point over the weekend.

For now will go with widespread 1-3 inches over much of the region this weekend with higher isolated totals. Will favor areas along and NE of a line from Wharton to Richmond to Galveston, but really without any good surface focus it is nearly impossible at this point to try and determine any favored areas. Should a surface focus start to become more defined then totals near that boundary would likely need to be raised some. This may not become clear until the event is underway.

Area soil moisture is fairly dry after a dry March so at least the first couple of inches will go toward saturating the soil. Rainfall rates and cell training will likely become the key factors on if and where any sort of flood threat may develop.

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