Much of Contra Costa County is doing better than Concord!

Stark rain shadows in the Bay Area today. Berkeley (1.24”) and Concord (0.03”) are only separated by 20 miles, yet massive differences in precip. Santa Cruz Mountains 2” while San Jose just 10% of that.

Hills squeeze out moisture on the windward side and cause a drying effect on the leeward side.

NEW VIDEO: How did sports debate shows turn into the way we talk about everything?

I went inside the rise of hot take culture, talked to the people who built it and traced how hot takes took over media.

In collaboration with Vice Sports:
youtu.be/ndGUBh3EjJw?...

north dome rises above the Royal Aches as short cirrus clouds move from S to N.

It is an 11/10 day here in Yosemite Valley, unbelievably. Here, north dome rises above the Royal Aches as short cirrus-like clouds whisp from S to N. The crowds are LIGHT. Mondays are RAD.

Rain showers will continue on Monday evening, with a potentially heavy burst of rain moving in after midnight. Good for the plants!

Certainly! There's a decent plume of moisture overhead in the middle and upper levels of the atmosphere but the forcing mechanisms needed to convert the water vapor to liquid aren't very impressive. Terrain is doing a lot of the work.

ICYMI: Weekend story about the strong to severe marine heat wave extending across much of the northern east Pacific.

No doubt!

ha, I like that!

THE WEEK OF APRIL 20, 2026 - Science agency heads face appropriators - CDC director nominee announced - Dems accuse NASA of unauthorized cuts

Budget hearings will continue this week for the Trump administration's proposal to cut NOAA funding by 28%.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick will testify before the Senate and House appropriations committees Wednesday and Thursday, respectively.

More:
www.aip.org/fyi/the-week...

Winter storm warning for Sierra as another multi-foot dump expected The National Weather Service warns of “significant reductions in visibility at times” and “major travel delays” from heavy snow, gusty winds and potential lightning.

A looming storm is forecast to drop more than 2 feet of snow in parts of the Sierra, prompting the weather service to issue winter storm warnings. It’s the second round of winter storm warnings this month in the Sierra, a rarity for April.

Snow drought won't be wiped out, but this will help some.

Column moistening in SF enough for what I’d describe has very heavy mist.

Virga (precipitation that doesn't reach the ground) over much of the Bay Area this morning.

That's because of a large dew point depression (difference between the air temperature and the dew point). San Jose 71/30 right now. Dew point there dropped to 7 degrees last night, the lowest in five years.

UW prof in political storm as Trump targets national weather lab

A UW meteorologist known as a "fighter" is leading opposition to Trump administration efforts to dismantle a longstanding research hub based in Colorado.

A Pacific storm system will bring low elevation rain and heavy high elevation mountain snow to California through early week.

The highest rain totals are expected to focus along the coastal ranges of northern/central California and upslope regions of the Sierra, where isolated flooding is possible.

Bay Area rain Monday: Timing, totals and wind gust forecast Rain and 30 to 40 mph coastal wind gusts arrive Monday as a slow-moving spring storm kicks off a wet, stormy week across Northern California.

A spring storm is bringing rain to the San Francisco Bay Area
www.sfchronicle.com/weather-fore...

Incredible lenticular show downwind of Mount Shasta as a storm moves in

Thanks Chris! Agreed

Seattle 🙌

From the final paragraph of the article. In short: bad.

The monsoon is tricky to forecast. In Arizona, correlation between El Niño and summer precip is negligible. Weather/climate patterns like the Central American Gyre and oceanic kelvin waves play a bigger role. But if +SST anomalies remain in the Gulf of California, that could amp things up midsummer

The San Andreas Fault produced major earthquakes long before 1906. Here’s what we know about them Scientists say the northern San Andreas Fault produced 19 strong earthquakes over the past 3,000 years.

Wow. It’s the 120th anniversary of the Great San Francisco Earthquake and the Chronicle has a pretty good write-up on Northern San Andreas earthquake mean recurrence intervals.

www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/e...

The oceans are boiling. The NE Pacific stands out from an anomaly standpoint, with a marine heat wave extending from CA past the international dateline. Global sea surface temperatures are flirting with all-time records and warmer-than-normal water has emerged where El Niño is observed.

NOAA's July-September outlook favors above-normal precipitation in the Four Corners region

@noaa.gov predicts a "robust monsoon"

Warm water in the Gulf of California may prime an active monsoon. However, monsoon onset also depends on ocean currents and atmospheric wind patterns that cannot be predicted this far in advance, said David Mitchell of @driscience.bsky.social

1997 east Pacific Hurricane season features two tropical systems that made it into the Southwest U.S.

During the strongest El Niño on record in August 1997, Tropical Storm Ignacio brought precipitation as far north as Oregon, said @drkimwood.bsky.social of the University of Arizona. The storm underwent extratropical transition as it moved toward California.

Eastern north Pacific sea surface temperatures are breaking records in mid April. Plot from Kim Wood

Typical influence of El Niño on Pacific and Atlantic seasonal hurricane activity (less wind shear in the NE Pacific favors more hurricanes) Map by NOAA Climate.gov, based on originals by Gerry Bell.

A record warm NE Pacific & El Niño influences may make for an intense hurricane season.

In Aug 2023, unseasonably warm water & emerging El Niño fueled T.S. Hilary, which dropped torrential rains in SoCal. The strongest landfalling NE Pacific hurricane on record, Otis, hit Mexico two months later.

Copernicus C3S forecast for +SSTs in the NE Pacific in June-September 1-2 degrees Celsius above normal.

The California Current behaves differently than elsewhere in the Pacific, so ocean temperatures are harder to predict. But El Niño tends to reduce upwelling.

Seasonal models predict near-shore water to be 1-2°C above normal this summer, which would make for a milder summer in SF, LA and San Diego.

Schematic showing the effect of the nearshore surface fluxes (wavy arrows) on the low-level stability (CAPE) and frontal updrafts as the front-parallel, low-level jet flow (flat ribbon) is lifted by the front as it approaches the coast. The toothed heavy lines depict the cold-frontal surface, and the dashed lines show the SST anomaly (°C). A small drainage basin is shown on the sloping terrain (gray shaded) Study from https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/mwre/133/5/mwr2910.1.xml

Cool water near SF usually stabilizes the atmosphere & limits thunderstorms, but “extremely warm ocean temperatures of this kind of magnitude can certainly ‘juice up’ existing storms,” said @weatherwest.bsky.social.

Similarly warm seas in '98 increased potential energy for thunderstorms by 26%

A historic marine heat wave is battering California’s coast and impacting the weather Spring downpours, a muggier summer, stronger Pacific hurricanes and more mountain thunderstorms are among the impacts of the highly anomalous warm water off California’s coast.

There is so much heat stored in the Pacific right now, it's bound to impact atmospheric dynamics.

We've already seen more intense spring thunderstorms because of warm water near the California coast. But there are other ways it will affect Southwest U.S. weather.

Incredible satellite imagery of the tornado outbreak underway across the central United States.