California Weather Blog: California fire season explodes with a new lightning outbreak on the way; El Niño strengthening as expected

weather blogFrom Daniel Swain at the California Weather Blog:

Summer 2015 has thus far featured remarkably active and unusual weather conditions across most of California. Quite a few waves of monsoonal moisture have brought intense mountain and desert thunderstorm activity, some of which has locally made it into the coastal plain and Central Valley.

By far the most notable event in the past few weeks was the landfall of the remnants of former Hurricane Dolores in Southern California, which brought a 3-day period of widespread heavy precipitation and prolific thunderstorms to the southern third of the state. This event ended up being the most significant California tropical remnant event in recent memory, and brought record-shattering July rains to the San Diego area and surrounding deserts. Widespread flash flooding occurred, and significant damage occurred in a few spots, including the collapse of a bridge over heavily-traveled Interstate 10. To put the magnitude of this event in perspective: the official city of San Diego observation site recorded more rainfall in 3 days during July 2015 than during all previous months of July since at least the 1800s….combined. Another rather mind-boggling statistic: almost all of southern California experienced more rain during one weekend in July 2015 than did most of Northern California during the entire month of January 2015.

Continue reading at the California Weather Blog here: California fire season explodes with a new lightning outbreak on the way; El Niño strengthening as expected

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