It is amazing how quickly the snow melts in town in late April.   We can lose a foot+ a day of fresh fallen snow. This weeks Weather is highlighted by a strong upper ridge of high pressure building into the west coast today with the upper jet popping into Canada by tonight. The north-west upper jet as expected brought gusty winds over the upper elevations Sunday. That same upper jet was located near the CA/OR border and by tonight, it will bulge into southwest Canada.

For Mono and Inyo county’s, that spells a major warm up. As heights rise and compressional heating occurs, daytime highs may climb as high as the low 70s by Thursday or Friday in Mammoth. For the Owens Valley, you still have to get through a period of North Wind the next few days with warming temps, before southerly flow at the surface carry your temps up to about 90 degrees by Friday and Saturday.  90 is your record high set back in 2004 next Friday 5/2.

Longer Range:

The big Kelvin Wave has surfaced over the Central and Eastern tropical pacific. SSTA’s are running greater than 1C above normal for most of the EL Nino Basin now. The Dweebs believe that this will have a major impact upon west coast weather for the remainder of the Spring and possibly into early Summer.

What impact? Unsettled Weather and Storminess…..  In other words, we have more snow in our future. Especially in the Month of May. I would not be surprised to see the guidance, IE (Forecast Models) painting a lot of QPF from storms headed our way during the months of May and June. Not simply weak cut off lows but significant storms……

It will be interesting to see if the TNH (Tropical Northern Hemispheric Teleconnection pattern has flipped from positive to negative. So far the indices from the CPC have not been updated since February.  If anyone out there has a link to a real-time TNH teleconnection indices other than the CPC, please email the link to me.  A strong negative signature in the TNH is a sure sign that the effects of El Nino is at work on the West Coast of the CONUS.

 

More Later……….

 

Dr Howard and the Dweebs……………………………….:-)