Rain

December 13, 2015

1371724873_Rain_brad-sharpHeavy, relentless rain this early Sunday on California’s north coast — strong downpours all morning especially right before first light, in less than an hour we reportedly collected nearly three-quarters-of-an-inch of rain, a shitload in a hurry.

According to the NWS/FAA weather-thingy, we experienced a power-in, power-out for about 90 minutes, and seemingly with normal wind noise — just hard rain, nearly straight down.
Rainfall for the Eureka area this point in the season is already about one-half inch above normal.

Which in the process of drought correction, the water is way-needed, and it’s been awhile since we’ve been this wet.
Hence, good news from NWS meteorologist Jeff Tonkin (Times-Standard): ‘“Which is great because we haven’t been above normal for a long time,” he said. “The reservoirs are slowly starting to fill.”

(Illustration: ‘Rain,’ by Brad Sharp, found here).

This season seems early, and wetter. This afternoon and tomorrow another bigger whopper of a storm is slated from the north, driving as far south as California’s Central Valley, but apparently saving the best for us here in the northern part of the state.
According to AccuWeather, a slow-down will supposedly occur the middle of the week:

“Storms will continue to move in from the Pacific Ocean through the new week,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Brett Anderson said.
“However, the storms will not bring as much precipitation and should have greater separation from one another, when compared to the past couple of weeks.”
“While there will still be the potential for incidents of flooding and mudslides, the number of incidents should decrease in the Northwest during the third week of December,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said.

Rain continues…in poetic-precipitation, science observation: ‘The description of rain by means of sequential raindrop-size distributions,’ published by the Royal Meteorological Society in July 1962, and from the abstract:

Qualitatively it is indicated that the outstanding observed characteristics of the drop-size distributions for moderate-to high-intensity rains are primarily attributable to wind-shear and gravity sorting at the onset of rain and to aerodynamic break-up and impact splashing of drops, and that predominance of the coalescence or of the Bergeron-Findeisen process of raindrop formation may be indicated by features of the ground-level drop-size distributions.

Couldn’t have said it better, or maybe worse….

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