Snow and avalanche warnings in Reno, Sparks and Carson City, California, and the Northern California Atmospheric River Storm
On the Sierra’s eastern slope, a winter weather advisory runs from 10 p.m. Saturday to 10 a.m. for Reno, Sparks and Carson City, with snow accumulations of 1 to 3 inches (2.5-7.5 cm) on valley floors and up to 8 inches (20 cm) above 5,000 feet (1,524 meters).
There will be wind gusts up to 40 mph Tuesday and Wednesday in parts of the central and northern Plains.
The 70 mile stretch of the interstate was closed because of a lack of visibility from California to the Nevada state line. Chains were required on much of the rest of I-80 in the mountains from Reno toward Sacramento.
The U.S. Forest Service issued an avalanche warning for the backcountry in the mountains west of Lake Tahoe where it said “several feet of new snow and strong winds will result in dangerous avalanche conditions.”
A high-wind warning is in effect for much of the Pacific Northwest, where widespread winds of 35 to 45 mph with wind gusts up to 70 mph are forecast or already occurring. In addition, wind advisories are also posted both in the Pacific Northwest as well as many other Western states.
The atmospheric river storm, a long and wide plume of moisture pulled in from the Pacific Ocean, began sweeping across the northern part of the state Friday and was expected to bring more rain through Saturday, according to the National Weather Service in Sacramento.
The weather service issued a flash flood warning on Saturday when inches of rain fell on burn scars left by wildfires south of Monterey and farther south of Big Sur.
Sacramento Power Outage During a Snowstorm, and Storm Warnings in Fargo, North Dakota, as Observed by Sacramento Municipal Utility District Twitter Message
A Sacramento Municipal Utility District online map showed more than 153,000 customers were affected by power outages on Saturday. “SMUD crews are responding to outages across the region during this powerful winter storm,” the utility said in a Twitter message, adding that it was preparing additional resources while working to restore power.
San Francisco Bay Area officials reported power outages and fallen trees, some of which damaged cars and homes. In Monte Rio, a small town in Sonoma County, firefighters responded to numerous reports of trees falling onto homes due to high wind gusts.
Monte Rio Fire Department Chief Steve Baxman told KRON-TV that no one was injured when four different down trees damaged houses.
“This is our first big storm, we’ve had several years of drought and all these trees were dry. Baxman said that they are starting to topple over as they fill up with water.
The Soda Springs in the northern part of the state received 60 inches of snow in 48 hours, after a snowstorm blanketed some mountain areas.
A tornado watch has been issued for parts of Texas and Oklahoma until 4 a.m. A couple of tornadoes are possible, as well as ping-pong-sized hail and wind gusts up to 75 mph.
There’s also a slight risk, level 2 of 5, the storm could bring tornadoes, strong winds, and large hail to Dallas, Fort Worth, and New Orleans. Isolated tornadoes, large hail, and damaging winds are possible in Houston, Memphis, and Little Rock.
The residents of Fargo, North Dakota are expected to see 6 inches of snow and will be under a winter storm watch from Monday night to Wednesday night. There is a winter storm watch in place for Duluth, Minn., where there is a possibility of 6 inches of snow.
While the storm did not break any long-standing records like last year’s snow, despite dropping several feet of snow in the highest elevations of the Sierra Nevada, Swain says mountain snowpack is now well above-average for the calendar date and that overall precipitation is relatively near average in most places.
“It looks a lot like Christmas out here,” Deutschendorf said. “It didn’t come with a lot of wind, and it stuck to everything. It’s like a picture postcard.”
Massive Snowfall and Snowfall in the Palisades Valley, North Dakota, and the Northern Plains after the Fourth Day of December 1
“If we want to completely get rid of this drought, we need basically another year’s worth of precipitation [at the lab] – we need 60 feet of snow total and 30 extra feet of snow compared to what we would get on average,” Schwartz told CNN, noting that their average snowfall is at 30 feet and that they would need to keep up the momentum all winter long, which is very unlikely.
“We’re Buried,” the Palisades Tahoe Ski Resort wrote on its website Sunday, sharing photos of thick snow covering the ski resort in Olympic Valley, California.
“This is definitely a storm to remember. We’ve now received 7.5 feet of snow since December 1st. In 24 hours from Saturday morning to Sunday morning, we received over 35 inches of snow, which was 6th largest snowfall total on record.
A huge winter storm hit the United States on Friday with high winds and snow, leaving at least nine people dead, knocking out power to more than a million customers, and ruining holiday plans from coast to coast.
The coast-to-coast storm – which walloped the West over the weekend – is expected to strengthen as it pushes eastward Tuesday, and stall across the central Plains into Thursday, snarling travel amid blowing snow and freezing rain.
Winter storm warnings stretched from the Canadian border to the Mexican border after the storm hit the Western US with snow and rain.
Some areas inside the blizzard warnings could receive as much as 20 inches of snow, with winds strong enough to knock down tree limbs and cause power outages.
Blizzard conditions will “ramp up” overnight in the upper Midwest, and central Plains as residents brace for “a long drawn out period of snowfall,” according to Brandon Wills, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Wills said in the Monday evening update that they weren’t expecting a quick burst of snowfall. Snow is “going to accumulate the highest in the northern Nebraska panhandle – and it’s going to be blowing around like crazy because of the strong winds that we’re going to have as well,” he said.
The National Weather Service office in Rapid City, South Dakota, said travel through the area will be nearly impossible Tuesday and Wednesday, and possibly into Thursday.
In the event of a disaster due to the weather conditions, the South Dakota Department of Transportation warned Monday.
There are winter weather alert in Minnesota, such as a winter storm warning and ice storm warning. Travel could be impacted statewide all week due to challenging winter weather, said the Minnesota Department of Transportation.
The University of Alaska Anchorage and Alaska Pacific University were shut down on Monday because of an “unprecedented” amount of snow.
The First Storm in California’s Central Sierra Snow Laboratory Describes Water Needs and Predictions for the Fourth-Dimensional Dry Season
The Weather Prediction Center says there is a risk of flash flooding on Tuesday from far east Texas into the lower Mississippi Valley. The rain could accumulate up to 4 inches.
The areas that need the water have been given a huge amount of it in the past week. Tennessee, for example, went from 96% of the state under drought to being at 46% this week.
Winter in drought-stricken California is off to a fast start with a series of storms bringing a generous amount of rain and snow across Western states.
The lead scientist and station manager of the University of California, Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow laboratory, Andrew Schwartz, states that they will need more snow at the lab. It’s where he and other researchers measure snowpack totals and how much water equivalent would be available for the state’s residents.
High-elevation snowpack serves as a natural reservoir that eases drought, storing water through the winter months and slowly releasing it through the spring melting season. Snowpack in the Sierra Nevada accounts for 30% of California’s fresh water supply in an average year, according to the California Department of Water Resources.
With the multiyear megadrought, the snowpack in the Sierras had been at alarmingly low levels, while reservoirs, which are replenished by spring snow melt, are still below the historical average.
The first storms were expected to hit California in the next week. The current system is expected to be warmer and wetter, while next week’s storms will be colder, said Hannah Chandler-Cooley, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Sacramento.
“It was definitely a good-news storm on balance, since despite the short-term disruption, it dropped quite a bit of water in places that really need it due to long-term drought and climate change-driven aridification,” Swain told CNN. “And, importantly, it dropped that water as snow, which is accumulating over weeks and months as snowpack, rather than warm rains that immediately turn into runoff.”
California has a long- term water crisis despite being mired in a yearslong dry spell. More than 97% of the state remains in some level of drought. And on Wednesday, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California declared a regional drought emergency for Southern California to prepare for the fourth consecutive dry year.
“It’s like a football game – we’ve scored a touchdown in the first quarter, but there’s three quarters left before we can really determine what the game outcome is going to be,” Schwartz said. “So if we get to March or April, and we’re sitting at above-average precipitation, then we can start to relax. We could begin to celebrate a bit.
In addition, Swain says there has been a tilt in the seasonal outlook toward drier-than-average conditions across much of California and the lower Colorado River Basin, which will see additional unprecedented water cuts in effect in the new year, for January through spring.
It’s not going to bode well for long term relief to the Colorado River water crisis if there is no rain in the next few months.
If anything, Schwartz said, this is the time “we need to be conserving our water more and maybe even bumping conservation efforts because this isn’t a guarantee of a full deep winter.”
The National Weather Service (NWS) says that a strong low pressure system swept down from Canada on Tuesday and is heading towards the Southeast on Wednesday and Thursday.
The Cascades mountains in Washington state are likely to see the heaviest snowfall on Tuesday, but nearby lowlands in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming could see a foot of snow, according to the NWS. The region may see another blast of winter weather on Thursday.
• Dangerous wind chills: High winds will cause wind chills that can be deadly across the central and eastern parts of the US.
All the way to the Gulf Coast and the Mexican border, there’s life threatening cold, with wind chills as far south as Austin and Atlanta. Many locations in the eastern US are in for their coldest Christmas Eve in decades as the Arctic blast reaches its peak.
As of Tuesday morning, air travel appeared largely undisturbed by the approaching polar front, with more than 575 delays and 285 cancellations at airports across the U.S., according to the tracking site Flight Aware.
An outage that left 180,000 without power across New England over the weekend was resolved by Monday, but the Associated Press reported that attempts to bring extra utility workers into the state ahead of this week’s storm were stymied by slick roads.
The New York City, Kentucky, and Kansas City tornadoes generated by a snow storm are predicted to last through the next few days, according to the NWS
The NWS says that frostbite is a risk for those trying to brave the cold. This week could bring sub-zero temperatures and a chance of frost on exposed skin in just a few minutes.
Those venturing outside should dress in layers, cover their skin and change into dry clothing as soon as possible. Staying inside is the best prevention by far, experts say.
All modes of travel – planes, trains and automobiles – were being disrupted: There were hundreds of miles of road closures and flight cancellations were growing rapidly. In New York, flooding along the Long Island Rail Road forced part of the Long Beach branch to temporarily shut down.
Mick said that Christmas is canceled because of the weather conditions that are expected to last through Sunday morning. It was agreed by all family and friends that it was safer this way.
In Kentucky, three people died due to the storm, including two in vehicle crashes and the other a “housing insecure” person in Louisville, Gov. Andy Beshear said. The man’s body was found outside without obvious evidence of trauma and an autopsy will determine the cause of death, police said.
In Kansas City, one person died after losing control of their Dodge Caravan on icy roads Thursday afternoon, according to the Kansas City Police Department. Police said that the car went down an embankment, over a wall and ended up in a creek.
Power Outages During the Break-up of the Great Lakes on Sunday, Dec. 1. Source: Daniel Trzeciak, P.A., 4887
The agency said the graphic depicts one of the greatest extents of winter weather warnings.
The kitchen sink storm was called by Hochul at a press conference on Friday. “We’ve had ice, flooding, snow, freezing temperatures, and everything that mother nature could wallop at us this weekend.”
Trzeciak was at his home in New York when the storm came. Buffalo’s airport, just to the north, reported zero visibility shortly after noon on Friday.
He said his mother, sister, and family live in the other direction. “We always get together for Christmas Eve and Christmas, but we’re all hunkering down in our houses until it all stops on Monday.”
As it treks east across the country, the storm is expected to become a “bomb cyclone,” a rapidly strengthening storm which drops 24 millibars of pressure within 24 hours. The storm was forecast to have a similar pressure to a Category 2 Hurricane as it moved into the Great Lakes.
Emergency measures have been put in place by governors in several states, including Georgia and North Carolina. Declarations of a state of emergency in several states have included the activation of National Guard units.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/23/weather/christmas-arctic-winter-storm-poweroutages-friday/index.html
The Central Coast Will Be Very Cold in the Wet, Low-Clean Sky and Northeastern United States through the weekend of Friday, April 17
Nearly 5,300 Friday flights have already been canceled as of 7:30 p.m. ET, after nearly 2,700 cancellations on Thursday, according to flight tracking site FlightAware.
• It will remain very cold: Friday will bring record-low temperatures in large swaths of the US, including from the Lower Mississippi Valley, northeastward into the Tennessee and Ohio Valleys and stretching across large sections of the east from the Southeast, through the Southern to Central Appalachians and into the mid-Atlantic, according to the National Weather Service.
Whiteout conditions can persist even if snow stops because high winds can cause low visibility and pick up snow already on the ground.
Nearly half of flights going into and out of the airport were canceled, after the runways were closed due to the ice. All express services for Sound Transit, the regional transportation network in Seattle, were stopped Friday due to the icy conditions.
A winter storm warning is also in effect for northeastern Oregon, including Portland, from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. PST. There is a chance of sleet and snow along with winds gusting to 55 mph. Wind chills as low as zero are possible, and frostbite is possible on exposed skin in as little as 30 minutes.
The western United States is bracing for more wet, windy weather in the days ahead after a strong storm system knocked out power to more than 115,000 customers.
In the atmosphere, a river is a narrow region which carries moist air thousands of miles like a fire hose. This heavy rainfall will slide southward to Southern California on Saturday and Sunday, accompanied by gusty winds of 30 to 50 mph.
More than 15 million people in the West are under wind alerts from the National Weather Service through at least Tuesday evening as the storm system pushes inland.
Strong winds in Portland could knock down trees that have been weakened by weather extremes in recent years, arborist Colin Bourgeois told CNN affiliate KATU.
“The consecutive dry summers that we’ve had, especially the heat events like the heat dome, that really damages trees and it takes up so much of their energy to fuel their immune systems to fight off pathogens,” Bourgeois said.
Los Angeles High-Energy Flash Floods and Wet Weather Forecasts Through the Longest Day in California (and Beyond) on December 26, 1996
The previous record for Portland was 1.08 inches set on December 26, 1996. The rainiest December day in Portland is Monday.
The greatest flash-flooding concerns are for the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, as well as the coastal portions of southern Oregon down through the Bay Area and to Los Angeles County.
“Say goodbye to the warmth,” the National Weather Service in Los Angeles tweeted Monday. There is a big drop in temperatures on the way between today and Tuesday. There will be 15-20 degrees of cooling due to the storm system.
There’s another storm system coming in on Friday that will bring heavy rain, mountain snow and strong winds to the West Coast and a wet end to the year in the Northeast and Southwest.
The first wave is impacting parts of Southern California and the Four Corners region that includes parts of Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. Low elevation rainfall and high elevation snowfall will move out of California by late Wednesday morning and remain in the Four Corners area until Thursday.
New year’s Eve celebrations will likely be limited in Washington, DC and New York City. Los Angeles, too, is expected to ring in a soggy new year.
A flood watch for more than 16 million in effect including entire Bay Area and Central Valley though Saturday night. Saturday could see some rain, before the calendar turns to23 in a few years.
There are flood concerns in Buffalo, New York, on Saturday because the city is still recovering from its deadly blizzard. Additional rain is expected early next week.
An East-West Side of the Sacramento Interstate Reopened after a High-Frequency Earthquake on April 14, 2003, When Santa Barbara Beamed
“The slight risk area mostly highlights places that are already high in soil moisture, burn scars and urban areas,” the Weather Prediction Center said.
The east part of the interstate reopened Thursday morning after a nine-hour shut down left drivers stranded in heavy mountain snow and widespread rain.
The four year-old girl was one of five people who were killed in Oregon when trees fell on vehicles.
Landslides already had closed routes in the San Francisco Bay Area, between Fremont and Sunol, as well as in Mendocino County near the unincorporated community of Piercy and in the Mendocino National Forest, where crews cleared debris into Friday night.
The earthquake that hit the county caused the roads to start to flood, according to the National Weather Service. A bridge that was temporarily closed last week because of earthquake damage may be shut down again if the Eel River gets too high.
Weather service meteorologist Courtney Carpenter said the storm could drop over an inch of rain in the Sacramento area before moving south. One ski resort south of Lake Tahoe closed its chair Lifts because of flooding and operational issues and posted a picture on social media showing one of the lifts surrounded by water.
Sacramento’s fire officials planned to broadcast evacuation announcements from a helicopter and a boat along the American River — a spot where many unhoused people live in encampments — to warn of flooding.
“Strong winds could cause tree damage and lead to power outages and high waves on Lake Tahoe may capsize small vessels,” the weather service in Reno said.
The Sierra’s eastern front is expected to have moderate to minor flooding in the north and south of Reno, Nevada, over the weekend.
At Susanville, California about 85 miles (137 kilometers) north of Reno, the Susan River was forecast to rise from about 5 feet (1.5 meters) Friday to a foot (30 centimeters) above the flood stage of 12 feet (3.6 meters) by Saturday morning, causing moderate flooding that could affect some homes, roads and bridges, the National Weather Service said.
California Highway 101 is closed “indefinitely” due to rain, high tides and high temperatures: Environment and Weather Service notified evacuations on Saturday
US Highway 101, one of California’s most famous routes, is closed “indefinitely” as heavy precipitation and snow melt flooded roads, especially in the northern half of the state, officials said.
The California Highway Patrol had said earlier that the road was closed in both directions. In an evening update, CHP added there was no estimated time of reopening as “water is not receding due to non-stop rainfall & high tides preventing the water to displace.”
A strong storm that brought widespread heavy rain Friday through Saturday, creating a flood threat for much of Northern and Central California, is nearing unprecedented levels.
“Downtown San Francisco is now at 5.45 inches, just 9 hundredths of an inch away from the daily (midnight to midnight) record of 5.54 inches,” the National Weather Service said in a 5 p.m. update on Twitter.
There were some small communities in northern California which had to be evacuated due to flooding. The communities of Paradise Park and Felton were ordered to evacuate by Santa Cruz County officials due to the rising levels of the San Lorenzo River.
The SantaRita Creek, located in Monterey County, was put under a warning on Saturday due to fears it would spill over its banks.
The state of emergency was issued for the area on Saturday because the atmospheric river has caused significant transportation impacts, rising creek and river levels and flooding.
Use caution if you have to travel. City crews are working through a backlog of reports of flooding and other weather impacts,” the city posted on Twitter.
The weather agency said there were too many road closings to count. Residents in the unincorporated community of Wilton were urged to flee by the county because of flooding.
Search for Debris in Stockton’s Subterranean Railroad Trajectories and a Car That Appear Trapped in Water
The Stockton Police Department posted photos of a flooded railroad underpass and a car that appeared stalled in more than a foot (30 centimeters) of water.