Mountain West Discussion

[Chinook]

This was an LP supercell on Monday over Fort Collins and the Fort Collins foothills (7000-8000 ft). I was coming back into town on highway 14, when I couldn't help but to take a picture of this.

[finnster]

Nice pic - thanks for posting it!

After an impressive May, it seems like overall the first half of June has been pretty anemic for thunderstorms.  I hope we don't see a repeat of last year when starting in June the northern front range was nearly devoid of thunderstorms the entire summer.  Unfortunately starting to look that again but will hope for a positive change   

[Chinook]

The GEFS ensemble means have 117 for Phoenix next week, as well as (on various days next week,) 106 for Las Vegas, 112 for Needles, CA, 110 Wichita Falls TX, 112 Childress TX, 107 Amarillo. That's pretty bad when the ensembles agree you will be that hot.

[Chinook]

My (first ever) wall cloud video from Monday. You may want to watch the lowering clouds and possible funnel cloud at 5:15 to 6:00

 

[bdgwx]

1 hour ago, Chinook said:

The GEFS ensemble means have 117 for Phoenix next week, as well as (on various days next week,) 106 for Las Vegas, 112 for Needles, CA, 110 Wichita Falls TX, 112 Childress TX, 107 Amarillo. That's pretty bad when the ensembles agree you will be that hot.

That's hot! NWS is going with 120 at Phoenix and 126 at Death Valley on Tuesday.

[raindancewx]

After looking at the SSTA maps and observed temperature departures for June, I'm left with the conclusion that for our region at least, the cold waters off the coasts of Mexico are driving the pattern. The warm AMO essentially doesn't matter, given how much colder the Gulf of Mexico is against the rest of the Atlantic right now. If you do what Levi has on Tropical Tidbits and center the SSTA on the current global SST anomaly v 1981-2010 (+0.3C) or so, the Gulf of Mexico and West Coast Mexico Pacific waters are both frigid. The years that have both cold pools, similar June weather, low solar, and a developing (weak?) El Nino are 1976 & 1994. The ONI in MJJ was ~+0.2C or +0.3C for those years, also a decent match to this year. 

Would definitely be a hotter/drier Summer out here (although still cooler/wetter than last year) if the 1994 / 1976 blend holds up. My mean high for June is trending for 91.5-93.5F or so, which is consistent with the blend of 1976 & 1994.

[Chinook]

Today, there was a temperature of 99 at Denver (DIA), which broke a daily record, and 119 at Phoenix. That broke a daily record at Phoenix and it is only 3 degrees from Phoenix's all time record of 122.

[BuffaloWeather]

125.6 Degrees in Needle California...52 Degrees Celsius

[Chinook]

23z observations. KBKF is several degrees lower than KDEN.  Longmont (LMO) is always too high., it's probably 98 there at this time frame. My house got a rain shower, but it was 94 around here. Berthoud Pass looking pleasant at 54 degrees.

[lookingnorth]

Las Vegas tied their June record high of 117F.

[Chinook]

We had 99.2 here, with a dew point around 40 today. It tied the record high of 99 from 2016 (yikes!), that is, unless the official CSU analog thermometer hit 100. --

NWS North Platte @NWSNorthPlatte 6h6 hours ago

Make it 107º at North Platte - breaking the daily record high and tying the monthly record (last set June 2012) #NEwx

[raindancewx]

This month still looks like a blend of June 1976/1994 to me for the US Tmax anomalies. It's not super far off June 2012 either. 2002 and 1996 share some weak similarities too I guess but 1994 really is close to a perfect match so far. The late 50s are close in a PDO/AMO sense but the sun is different, so 1956/1959 have similarities too.

Against 86 choices from 1931-2016, these are the closest Tmax matches for the US:

1994

2012

1959

1976

1996

2002

1956

[Chinook]

This GOES-16 1-minute mesoscale sector data is very interesting, even if it isn't over some sort of super thunderstorm. This web site is CIRA (Colorado State), i.e. some of my old friends set up this satellite processing. If you haven't discovered College of Dupage GOES-16 web page, that is also a very good web page that I highly recommend.

http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ramsdis/online/goes-16.asp

http://weather.cod.edu/satrad/exper/

[finnster]

What has happened to June precipitation on the northern Front Range?

June is about to close and thunderstorms and precip in Fort Collins have nearly been a no-show again.  In fact, you have to go back to 2011 for an above average June precip-wise.  Unless some miracle occurs, June 2017 will be way below average and the sixth consecutive dry June. And this follows June 2016's meager .05" which was the third driest June in recorded history.  And that set the tone for extreme warmth and dryness for the rest of last year.

There seems to be a longer-term trend now where the moisture supply for summer thunderstorms on the northern front range gets cut off before June and then is weak to non-existent for the entire summer.  Of course with things drying out comes persistent hot temperatures as well (the last few days have been a welcome reprieve).  It is strange that this trend does not seem evident in other parts of Colorado, but it certainly is prevalent in the northern front range/Fort Collins area. 

I guess growing up in this area I came to take for granted the fairly-frequent afternoon/evening thunderstorms through a good part of the summer, and over the last 6 years they've become more of a rarity.  Hope the summer thunderstorms make a return - but not looking like it will be this summer

[Chinook]

Rainfall has been sparse in the Midwest and Southwest. I don't really know why. There has been an upper level ridge over the Southwest this month, but not really the Midwest.

Total precipitation was about 4.74" in Fort Collins in May and has been about 0.05" this month, except for the area of town that got significant rain with the supercell on June 12th.

[raindancewx]

The long-term trend (86 years) for May & June precipitation is down in my area, with all other months up or flat over the past century. We're one of the source regions for the Front Range, so suspect as we dry, you do too. It's bizarre because other than January & August, ever other month is up, and way up at that.

The airport here just got 0.48" of rain today, most rain for the second half of June since 2010.

In my area, May & June are fairly predictable by blending solar and ONI status. May has literally never been wetter than the long term average in a high solar La Nina going back at least 100 years. High solar El Ninos are usually pretty wet though in May-June. La Nina/Neutral are wetter when solar activity is low, but still fairly dry, but El Ninos are drier. So overall, suspect the weakening solar activity has some impact. 

May does seem to be driven somewhat strongly by the NAO, which also corresponds well to the sun. The cold phase of the AMO tends to correspond to wetter Springs too, and we're not in it using the traditional scale. The PDO, when positive is also a very strong wet signal for the Southwest, and it's been weakening since the 2014-15 winter/spring.

 

[mayjawintastawm]

May was great here due to lots of fronts and lack of a strong westerly jet, but I don't think there has been a mean southerly jet west of about 95 W in about a million years. Gulf moisture has been basically cut off from the western Plains this month. It's kind of weird, the hailstorms have been coming to some extent anyway the past 3 years on the Front Range but most have been earlier or later than usual (May, September). The usual rule "put the car in the garage if it's June" isn't really holding.

[Chinook]

This is a very interesting climatology plot from NWS Boulder today. It is the probability of precipitation vs. day of the year at Denver. This type of plot represents northern CO, but I think Colorado Springs would have a higher probability of precipitation in mid-summer, and also gets less snow overall in winter. This almost exactly confirms my claim that July 15 - August 15 is northern CO's monsoon season.

[raindancewx]

This winter is going to be very interesting if the oceans don't completely flip around.

El Nino winters are coldest here when they follow a negative ONI DJF, have low solar, and ONI is strong. The 2014-15 El Nino was after a negative ONI winter, but had strong solar, and was a very weak El Nino. 2015-16 was strong, but still had fairly strong solar, and followed a positive ONI winter. 

An El Nino in 2017-18 would probably be stronger than 2014-15, with lower solar than 2015-16, and after a borderline La Nina winter. It'd probably be more like 2006-07, which was a weak El Nino, with low solar, following a weak La Nina in 2005-06.

If we don't have an El Nino, Neutrals are ~3F colder here when the AMO is warm. Low solar helps a bit here too. Last warm AMO neutral was 2012-13, which was actually a fairly cool winter here (-1.1F against 1931-32 to 2015-16). The low solar, high AMO Neutrals are 1931, 1932, 1943, 1944, 1952, 1962 - been ages since we've had that combination. 1943 is actually very similar to 2006 across the board, just lacking the El Nino. 1931-32 and 1943-44 were both unbelievably cold for almost the entire West, and don't seem too far off from what I'd expect for the sun, AMO, PDO, and ONI in a cold-neutral.

In Albuquerque the mean high for DJF is 49.5F from 1931-32 to 2015-16.

Neutral Year	N-A PDO	N-A AMO	Sun Jul-Jun	ONI DJF	Tmx DJF
1944	-0.10	0.329	33.8	-0.5	50.2
1943	0.34	0.294	14.2	-0.1	44.7
1952	-0.41	0.260	36.4	0.5	49.9
1937	0.23	0.239	180.8	-0.4	51.4
2003	0.49	0.207	82.0	0.3	48.1
1931	0.38	0.186	25.1	-0.3	47.5
2001	-0.55	0.165	176.0	-0.2	48.9
1960	0.33	0.161	116.6	0.0	47.5
2012	-0.40	0.161	87.4	-0.6	48.4
1961	-1.53	0.150	67.1	-0.2	47.6
1962	-0.46	0.144	42.2	-0.4	48.0
1935	1.36	0.137	97.0	0.1	49.5
1932	-0.08	0.134	14.5	-0.2	45.0
1959	0.31	0.134	184.2	-0.1	46.4
1948	-1.62	0.117	194.4	-0.4	45.4
1936	0.67	0.067	172.8	-0.3	47.4
1966	-0.66	0.045	104.2	-0.3	49.9
1947	-0.11	0.009	205.9	-0.2	49.1
2013	0.38	0.001	108.7	-0.6	52.3
1934	1.02	-0.025	27.6	-0.1	50.7
1979	0.64	-0.045	233.4	0.5	54.0
1996	0.38	-0.058	14.5	-0.5	48.4
1981	0.34	-0.073	195.5	-0.1	52.0
1990	-1.48	-0.082	200.8	0.3	49.5
1946	-0.27	-0.089	197.9	0.1	51.5
1980	0.79	-0.131	199.1	-0.4	55.8
1989	-0.34	-0.158	200.7	0.1	48.6
1978	-0.20	-0.170	169.9	-0.1	48.1
1967	-0.52	-0.189	145.0	-0.6	48.6
1992	0.61	-0.227	103.3	0.2	48.7
1993	0.99	-0.266	53.8	0.1	52.0
1985	1.02	-0.290	16.1	-0.5	53.3

[mayjawintastawm]

On 6/26/2017 at 9:05 PM, Chinook said:

This is a very interesting climatology plot from NWS Boulder today. It is the probability of precipitation vs. day of the year at Denver. This type of plot represents northern CO, but I think Colorado Springs would have a higher probability of precipitation in mid-summer, and also gets less snow overall in winter. This almost exactly confirms my claim that July 15 - August 15 is northern CO's monsoon season.

That's the most interesting graph I've seen in a long time. Have to bookmark that one. Had no idea there was a climatologic lull that dramatic in June.

[ValpoVike]

I'm not sure about air quality conditions down in the urban corridor a couple of days ago, but up here it got very smoky on Tuesday.  It moved in fast, visibility was greatly reduced, and folks were getting a bit nervous that there was a wildfire nearby.  It turns out that it was from the Utah and Airizona fires and here is a cool resource I found to track smoke plumes:

https://airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=topics.smoke_wildfires

 

[raindancewx]

Looking at Tropical Tidbits, seems like the ONI value for AMJ is likely: +0.4C, +0.5C, or +0.6C. It was +0.4C in MAM.

NOAA speaks of the Spring Predictability barrier, and I can see what they mean, the ONI in AMJ correlates to the following DJF at about three times the level of MAM. I think the models are going to warm back up toward El Nino once the new information is assimilated into the seasonal models.

Don't really buy us going into a La Nina as some models were showing. If you try to predict DJF ONI with the prior DJF ONI, MAM ONI, and AMJ ONI, and assume we're in the +0.4C to +0.6C range for AMJ, the outcomes are +0.7C to +1.2C for the coming winter. Never really got the comparison to 2012, in 2012 you had the warm up come much later and then fade away slowly in winter. The DJF, MAM, AMJ numbers for 2012 implied a cold neutral, which happened. 

The relationship between DJF, MAM, AMJ to the next DJF ONI seems to be something like:

(DJF prior * -0.375) - (0.995 * MAM prior) + (2.51 * AMJ Prior) - (0.068)

That relationship will project the coming DJF ONI +/-1.2C, at 95% confidence. So...

(-0.4C * -0.375) - (0.995 * 0.40) + (2.51 * AMJ) - (0.068)

 

So if AMJ is +0.4C --> +0.7C

     if AMJ is +0.5C -->  +0.9C

     if AMJ is +0.6C --> +1.2C

The 95% confidence level isn't narrow here, so we're talking Cold Neutral to Strong El Nino. But the chance of anything below a borderline La Nina is just about gone to me. I lean towards a moderate El Nino (+0.9 to +1.3 seems right) with a cold neutral (-0.1 to -0.3C) as next most likely. The most similar years (w/in 0.2C anomaly for DJF, MAM, and AMJ) are going to be some combination of 1932, 1957, 1963, 1972, and 2002. Not exactly a narrow range, but centered on 1.1C, with 1957/1972 (+1.8C) and 1932 (-0.2C) as the extremes.

 

 

[raindancewx]

Canadian Model updated - shows a pretty warm Summer for the West. Also seems to have bumped up its El Nino strength for the winter. Still a Modoki El Nino with a AMO+, and a PDO+ according to the Canadian. The JAMSTEC most recently had a not-quite-modoki El Nino with more of a cold or neutral PDO look and the AMO+

[Chinook]

Terrific climate plots like this might disappear if the Regional Climate Centers don't get the funding they need from the Federal Government. See Regional Climate Center web sites to find out how you can sign a petition to get the funding back

[raindancewx]

The ONI value for AMJ came in: +0.5C.  We have possibly entered an El Nino. Does have to continue though. Seems like MJJ is pretty likely to be +0.5C or higher though at the least.

If you look at years that were most similar by ONI in DJF, MAM, AMJ, using absolute value, it's an interesting list. This chart is what I got. I like 1932, 1944, 1963, 1965, 1994 from that list. All of those are warm AMO years with low solar with very close transitions to what we've seen so far. The mean ONI value for DJF is +0.6C, but it varies from -0.5C to +1.4C.

The eight best matches in absolute sense (total error from 2017<=0.5C) are 1932, 1944, 1957, 1963, 1972, 1982, 1997, 2002, which have a +1.1C ONI in DJF.

[Chinook]

There is a minor fire at Breckenridge ski area. I believe the new smoke plume is the reason that the sun turned red, (from my perspective,) at about 7:30 tonight, that is, before sunset. It's a strange thing. I think I may have smelled the forest fire smoke.

[Mercurial]

Had a M5.8 earthquake last night near Lincoln.  Easily felt it up here; nice big rolling sensation in the house.

[Chinook]

I got 3/4" hail and a downpour. First downpour in a long time worth mentioning

[raindancewx]

There is a fire on top of the 10,000 foot mountain east of Albuquerque today. Bit weird, since the city has been getting sprinkles/light rain almost every day this month.

NOAA's sea surface temperature constructed analog page has updated partially. They still have an El Nino for the winter. Sort of east-central based rather than a true Modoki or traditional El Nino.

Their skill scores imply that the Nino 3.4 anomaly, and Western Atlantic forecasts should be pretty accurate, but the rest of the oceans..not so much.

[CaWx]

On 7/3/2017 at 7:36 PM, Chinook said:

Terrific climate plots like this might disappear if the Regional Climate Centers don't get the funding they need from the Federal Government. See Regional Climate Center web sites to find out how you can sign a petition to get the funding back

It is a down right shame, I really hope some funding can be reached. These graphics are some of my favorite around, it would suck to have the RCC's lose funding.