Storm of the Century aiming for U.S.?
 

From the Seattle Times...

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Three storms threaten to strike U.S. at once

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.


http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...2_storm05.html

I say bring it on!

We've had nothing but rain here in SoCal for the past two weeks.. its been great! Hopefully Colorado will get a ton of snow to help the snowpack

no doubt.....this lame ass dusting of snow we got today was a real let down.

What if the east coast gets west coast weather, and the west gets east coast weather.

I'm with you. A good dumping of backbreaking shovel-hungry snow would be great! I want to water my lawn any damn time I please next summer!

Welcome to my world.

I wonder where the Jet stream will be sitting by then. Hopefully it floats just far enough south that we can get drilled here in Oklahoma. Normally in the winter it sits on us keeping all the good **** in Kansas, Missouri, and pushing off to the east quick. But with an artic blast coming, it might be enough to sink it. That and some Warm gulf moisture equals fun fun fun.

I was just going to post this...

bring it ...... I am tried of living in a drought ..........

Good thing the Seattle Times isn't alarmist or anything...

I'm surprised nobody yet has figured out away to blame this on the Bush Administration or the Kyoto Treaty.

Gee, catastrophic weather throughout the U.S.! Maybe Hollywood should make a movie about it...

actually...

the science behind the coming global superstorm is pretty much right on.

I think most of it is natural, and we aren't doing ourselves any favors...

either that or god is angry.

I really love big storms as long as everyone is safe and without need.

I can remember those Pineapple Express storms in LA. That's when the Sulpulveda Flood Basin would get to function as intended. Of course that was inconvenient to everyone who built in the Basin.

How come there is no cute name for the stuff coming up from the Gulf of Mexico? Someone here should have a bright idea or two.

I thought of a couple but would probably get me into trouble. I'll just keep them to myself and let you all insert joke here ______________.

I'll take this one, " The Wet Back Express"

finally.

post long enough we were bound to agree on something.

Well considering you have more posts than i.............

I so wish I would have seen the original post first. This was my EXACT first thought.

My old boss was married to a chicana. He called her a scratch back though, because she was afraid of water. :)

racist!

Yes but most of mine are FOOTBALL posts.

hehe you make it almost to easy

the weather guys here call that the "Monsoon flow or moisture"

You can...at night....when you should water you lawn anyway.

not if you live in a place that has mandatory water rationing