Monday, March 21, 2016

More Outlooks From NWS CPC And The Drought Monitor

Jack Diebolt forwarded these graphics along the other day.


The current NWS CPC outlook for precipitation for July through September is shown above - this will undoubtedly be of "great" value to planners of all sorts. The CPC outlooks extend out through Summer 2017, if one wants to check the very long term.


The current drought monitor analysis is shown above and indicates that extreme to exceptional drought is mostly gone except for a considerable portion of California and a bit of Nevada. The current drought tendency for mid-march through June is shown below - it seems to indicate that drought returns to much of Arizona. However, much of the area covered by the brown and yellow shading is about to experience their driest season of the year - one where average rainfall totals less than an inch for that quarter of the year. Hard to accept that the "trend" during the hottest and driest three months of the year means much wrt the long-term. In fact, the products shown in this post should probably have a mask applied to the very dry deserts of the Southwest, where the products have little physical relevance.

Finally, I recommend Jim Steenburgh's current post - "Still Waiting for El Nino in the Southwest," link is to the right. He concludes:

Finally, if you are skiing in northern Utah, you should just stop looking at seasonal forecasts altogether.  SEASONAL OUTLOOKS ARE UTTERLY AND TOTALLY VALUELESS FOR ANTICIPATING WHAT KIND OF SKI SEASON WE ARE GOING TO HAVE IN NORTHERN UTAH.  Next October, don't waste your time on this stuff.  Wax your skis and be happy.


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