Here’s a fresh video from Daniel Swain with his perspective of the seasonal outlook. He’s a little more pessimistic than Predictive Services. He’s always interesting to listen to and learn from.
7 day fire potential: Westerly winds will increase today through Fri & continue into Sat ahead of fairly strong trough. These winds combined w/low RH will lead to an enhanced fire spread risk Fri into Sat in areas w/cured vegetation.
SF ABC 7 image:
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Low pressure trough aloft influence will move into N Ops today & deepen w/a secondary low pressure trough Sun-Mon leading to enhanced & gusty westerly & northerly winds & low RH. This will lead to an enhanced fire spread risk in areas w/cured vegetation.
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Expect Min RHs 10-30% w/gusts 25-45mph, strongest this evening to overnight w/continued low RHs.
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Winds become northerly Sat night-Sun w/low RH continuing across many inland valley areas before turning more westerly again due deepening trough moving through N Ops. Expect near critical conditions to continue thru Mon due to NW winds & low RH Mid Coast Mendo, Diablo Santa Cruz, & Sac Valley/Foothills PSAs.
Things are not going well for the state of CA this summer and now that the excess moisture from back to back rainy seasons has cooked off I would expect to see a runaway heatwave that threatens the power grid in late August into September.
Assume the rest of us aren’t as smart as you and explain that last post. Does it mean that because the ground will be dry the atmosphere will be and that’ll add to the likelihood of heat?
Reduced cooling via melting and evaporation, and reduction of reflectivity with dirt taking the sunshine, instead of snow cover.
I echo Twigpig’s question, is that referring to the lack of water in the ground and air no longer moderating the daily temperature?
Reading this and the pending heat wave makes me think some long duration winds will be blowing.
Yes, the lack of snow cover and moisture in the higher terrain leads to less low level moisture potential for the monsoon. So the boundary layer can warm up a little faster now due to the lack of moisture. This is bad because of all of the subsidence we are experiencing due to the dynamic La Nina/enhanced North Pacific jet stream due to the pool of warm water over the North Pacific.
My concern for the state of CA transcends purely just one fire season though, and watching a sequence of meteorological events take place lends credence to that threat. So it becomes logical and easier for me to understand what may occur next. It’s basically alchemy but in a way that is bad. For all of the people who say worst fire season ever, every single year… well this is probably the year.
Since we’re talking about un-nice fire season’s. Seems like a brief tactical time-out for this may be in order… fires give the lesson.pdf (50.9 KB)
The Blue Card guy adapted for Red Card folks.
Note the humidity values in geographic areas West of I5. Today’s T storms were all South and East of these RAWS stations which are located in the updated forecast area for the greater Bay Area.
Great…just what I want to hear.