Saturday, July 23, 2016

Wetter than 2014 in the Hills

I don't want to belabor the "wet" theme too much, but the amount of rain that has fallen in the Fairbanks area in recent weeks is quite remarkable.  I noticed this morning that most of the SNOTEL sites in the hills above Fairbanks have observed more rainfall so far this summer than in the same period of 2014, which was of course the wettest summer on record at Fairbanks airport.

Here's a chart showing that most of the SNOTEL sites had fallen well behind 2014 by the end of June - despite a wet June this year - but this year's cumulative precipitation has surged ahead in the past week.


At the Munson Ridge site, elevation 3100', the total rainfall since June 1 is now the highest on record (1982-present); a remarkable 15.6" has fallen so far this summer (see data here).  Of this, 6.5" fell in the past week, which makes this the wettest week in the history of the observing site.


Nowhere else in Alaska has reported over 15" of rain so far this summer, and relatively few places in the lower 48 have been wetter - see the map below, based on NWS (combined gauge and radar) data.  The national "winner" (airport and COOP stations only) is Fort Myers, FL, with 21.9" of rain since June 1 - and that's a good deal wetter than normal even for a southwest Florida summer (I used to live there - it's wet).

The maps below show the mean 500mb height anomaly (top) and westerly wind anomaly (bottom) since June 1.  The very unusual pressure gradient near the date line has produced a zone of strongly enhanced westerly flow centered near Wrangel Island and extending eastward over northern Alaska and the Beaufort Sea; this area normally only sees weak westerly winds at this season (around 4-6 m s-1 on average)
The strong westerly flow across northern Alaska no doubt goes some way to explaining the wet weather in Alaska's interior, although as we noted earlier 2014 was different; the map below shows the height anomaly for the same period in 2014.
[Update Sunday morning] Here are river gauges from the Chena River near Two Rivers, and the Tanana River at Fairbanks and Nenana.




The Chena River flood control system was activated on Wednesday to prevent water rising too high in Fairbanks.  Here are webcam views from downtown Fairbanks (Friday evening) and from Nenana (yesterday evening):



8 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. HI: Had a problem last night with this comment so just deleted it, since it won't let you edit once it's posted. Anyway, what was meant there was that the USGS stream gage sites also have precip. and temp. recorders. So if you go their site instead NWS, you get all the data they collect there:
      http://waterdata.usgs.gov/ak/nwis/rt
      But maybe you know that already. Enjoy your articles, Thanks. Jon

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    2. Thanks Jon, I was not aware of the meteorological data on the stream gages - or perhaps I had forgotten! It looks like there may be no historical data, however, which limits the usefulness somewhat. But I'll keep an eye on this in future.

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    3. Hi again, just got off the phone with Matt at USGS/WRD. He said that they do have historical met. data, but it's not readily available to the public. The temp. data is not well defined (corrected), he said, but they do calibrate the tipping bucket rain gages annually. So I suspect the precip. data might be OK to use. You can contact him at:
      "Schellekens, Mathew" if you want to request historical met. data. Also, my wife has been running a weather station for about 10 years for some project at her former job, if you're interested. Jon

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    4. Thanks for this Jon. I'm planning to look a bit more at spatial correlation of summer precip, so I'll likely contact Matt and see what's available.

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  2. We had one gusher last eve that left 1/2" in my gauge in downtown Fairbanks...plus several lightning booms. I had just emptied 1 1/2" out of the can from a few prior days.

    Lots of instability and quick local buildups preceded Saturday's showers.

    Gary

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  3. http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=CRH&product=PMD&issuedby=AK

    Outlook for the week ahead looks wet again by the coming weekend. Oh and the following week the Tanana Valley Fair starts which seems to generate precipitation.

    Gary

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    1. Thanks for the link Gary. It certainly looks like the reprieve of the next few days will not last, and the forecast also has a chilly look for the start of August. The season is advancing... 33F this morning at Eagle airport.

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