El Nino Begins To Influence Our Weather

Our weather will begin to come in from the west and south and with it will come tropical moisture as El Nino begins to dominate the pattern. In fact, starting late Monday and lasting into the foreseeable future, it is going to rain in the lower elevations and snow in the upper elevations. Here is a look at the Pacific:

If you look at my previous post, this is a complete turnaround. In fact, our persistent ridge of high pressure is not even in the picture. We have not seen a pattern like this in many years and it is a very welcome pattern for Southern California as the westerlies will bring much needed rain.

This El Nino is setting up to be historic insofar as moisture. Already areas around the Indian Ocean and western Pacific have seen historic rainfall (and flooding) and at least one of my researchers believes this is coming to California.

Before I show you the 10 day precip forecast from the GFS weather model, let me say this; almost all of the forecasters and forecast models have under predicted precipitation totals this year. I believe there is a moisture element that is not being factored into the weather models. Since forecasters make their predictions based on the models, it goes to follow that we have all been wrong ... but a good wrong if I may say. Here is the GFS 10-day precip chart:

Anywhere from 4-10 inches of liquid precip. I believe this will be much more by the time our 10 days is up.

Here is a look at the ECMFW (EC) weather model for Tuesday @ around noon:

A beautiful picture for all of California.

Another thing we are noticing is that this El Nino will almost certainly have a significant impact on our weather up here in Tahoe. All of the Sierra is going to begin to catch up to their averages. Not to get too far ahead, but we are thinking that next winter could be epic for the northern Sierra as well.

Finally, this latest cold snap has allowed God, the Creator, Mother Nature or whatever you wish to call it, the ability to paint some stunning pictures, check this out on January 1 at about 8:45am from the top of Slide Mountain:

BTW: if you take offense to the above paragraph, please no need to send me hate mail. Rather, concentrate on getting a life!

Stay Tuned ...