Talking with my friends out in Crested Butte today and they said they have never seen the mountains so green all over…fields, slopes, hillsides…they’re all green as Colorado has received abundant rain & snows. Looking at the Drought Monitor (which will be updated on Thursday) map and one clearly sees a pattern shift during the past 3-6 months. Only California and a small part of Nevada is in extreme drought. With a strengthening El Nino, California is likely to see much more rainfall and perhaps an earlier start to their rainy season this year. Obviously Texas & Louisiana do not need more rain and fortunately Trop. Storm Bill was not one of those slow moving storms that dumps 15-25”+. Even though the predicted 12-18” didn’t happen, several cities did receive 8-10”+. Looking long range, it appears the Tropics will enter a quiet spell for the next couple of weeks, much like what happened after Cat. 4 Hurricane Audrey plowed ashore in June 1957. That year had 2 June storms (one unnamed) and the next storm didn’t show up until the 2nd week in August. Let’s hope we stay that quiet this year.
In the short term, as what’s left of Bill heads to the Ohio Valley, we will slowly transition back to basic summertime. Thursday still looks mostly dry, but Friday – Sunday should see better rain chances, nothing more than typical widely scattered daytime heating type storms.
No comments:
Post a Comment