2010: An ‘unusual’ year
Posted on | December 20, 2010 | No Comments
Weather watchers have been waiting for climatologists, particularly Bill Patzert of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to eat crow. Since late summer, equatorial Pacific currents have led climatologists to believe that a record La Niña weather pattern will aggravate drought in the American Southwest. Patzert led the pack with warnings. Then rain across Southern California was early and steadily mounted, with December preliminary totals so heavy that Patzert is quoted in the Los Angeles Times tonight saying, “I think we’re going to crush the record for December.”
Whether one receives this as good news, or merely weird news, depends on how one takes a year that, as the Times report sketches, has bucked every notionally normal trend in Southern California. Traditionally hot summer months have been cool, a normally cooling autumnal stretch produced record heat, treacherous Santa Ana winds have been decorous and now what experts agreed would be a dry winter is poised to break rainfall records. To watch those records falling, go to Jessica Hall’s post on LA Creek Freak for the rain geek’s best links to rainfall gages.
For those battling the rain, take heart. We could all be trying to get in or out of northern Europe, which is blanketed with snow.
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