2008

Quick update today…the locally dramaitc and exciting weather of the last week is now behind us, and a rather more typical pattern of widespread sunshine (outside of coastal morning low clouds) and moderate temperatures (mid 50s to mid 70s on the coast, 75-90 inland). Mountain showers and thunderstorms will still be an isolated issue over the next few days, but will be much weaker and less widespread that in the recent past. Locally, there’s not much to discuss…not heat waves, no interesting cut-off lows, nada.

So…as part of the larger picture…

 La Nina continues to dissipate in the E. Pac., and I believe that it will probably be gone by mid-summer. The first tropical storm of the season is threating to develop in the Eastern Pacific, and this storm actually has the potential to being devastating floods to Central America as it meanders over land and drops 10-20 inches of rain or more in mountain areas. The Arctic sea ice extent…which for much of the winter had been greater than at any point in the last few years, is making a run at supassing last year’s record low. The rate of decrease is significantly greater than last year, so even though it has farther to fall I expect that last year’s all-time record low will be surpassed by the end of this summer. The ice appears to have been extremely thin in some areas–only 1-4 inches–and so it is currently retreating to the north by as much as 50 miles a day. We will see where this leaves us in a few months…