Bashford's Sky

A California weather zoomie.

1999 has been a weird year in California. Christmas brought us our first snow in 23 years...and cold weather that froze enough citrus and other crops to make us a federal disaster area. By January 20, we were down to 25% precipitation. By January 25, things were about normal. That day delivered even more snow, over a wider area, shutting down Interstate 5, power, schools and bringing bulldozers and earth movers into the streets. Snow shovels could not be found, so many Central Californians attempted sweeping the snow away with brooms.
See the radar maps for January 25 below. Could this be some effects of global warming??

Dead Central California
[ Fresno map ]

In general, radar values greater than 15 are where precipitation is strong enough to reach the ground. And Fresno may go all year below 50.

	1 hour Fresno radar 3 hour radar summary 1 hour NexRad 3 hour satellite other places: 1 hour National radar Sacramento images Seattle images Austin images World satellite

Misc links & images:

global satellite

[ West + Hawaii sat ]

pac-sat . . [ Photo! West US sat ]

West

[ Sat Photo! January 25 1999 ]

Animation of the January 25 storm, ending about 04:00.
Notice the reversal of prevailing local winds: the narrow jet from the south-west blowing Valley air north out the SF Bay to form a counter-clockwise vortex. As this blast shifts slightly to the south, and misses the south valley, you can see the huge moving air mass in the valley continuing north, forced to suck clear cold air from high altitudes in behind it. This cold air triggered heavy snow in the south valley, particularly near Bakersfield.

Valley smog on radar.
The ozone hole.

general weather sports & more
weather links

Bashford's

http://www.psnw.com/~bashford/sky.html 5142 Feb 24 '98