Category 4 I thought was reserved for Hurricanes with winds from 130-156. Atmospheric river???

An atmospheric river, or a weather system that moves high concentrations of water vapor outside of the tropics, could on Tuesday bring up to 1 to 3 inches of rain to the coastal areas, with higher elevations receiving upward of 3 to 5 inches, the National Weather Service told CBS San Francisco. The atmospheric river could be as strong as a Category 4, with a scale that tops out a 5.

Really?? Pure sensationalism.

LINK:https://www.cbsnews.com/news/northern-california-pacific-northwest-atmospheric-river-today-2022-12-

Weather news depends nearly solely on over-hyped sensationalism as you point out. I’ve said it for years and honestly it is disgraceful and is no different from “the boy who cried wolf”. In a truly catastrophic weather event I suspect many people could be hurt or killed because they didn’t believe the constantly lying news companies about the latest “storm of the century”.

That being said, 1” of rain IS a big rain event for my inland CA area, and Lord knows we need the water… Hopefully the multiple inches of rain in the coast and valley translates into a very large dump of snow in the Sierras that sticks around all winter without melting off early… that’s what we REALLY need more than rain.

That's a lot of fancy words and sensationalism just to say "There's going to be moderately heavy rain in parts of Northern California".

Next thing you know, they're going to be naming them. "Atmospheric River Nora expected to slam into the west coast today..."

Dam that Nora.

yea, stupid. Now naming winter storms. wtf, going to get 4" of rain in the olympic national rain forest in the next few days, go figure.

I'd never even heard the term "atmospheric river" before this week. Haven't seen much yet, just a couple showers. Still have the rest of the day to go....

quote:

Originally posted by old rugged cross:
yea, stupid. Now naming winter storms.

Yeah. Discovered that just yesterday or the day before

They do need the rain. Could be a good thing.

Maybe there will be Category 5 sunshine someday soon.....

quote:

Originally posted by Ozarkwoods:
They do need the rain. Could be a good thing.

Heavy rain on the coast doesn’t do much… just runs right out to the Pacific. Rain in the Central Valley is good… helps recharge the depleted groundwater some I guess.. The big benefit is snowpack in the Sierra’s. Like ammo, we need that packed deep over the winter and we need it to stay until spring where it can then be collected in the too few reservoirs we have in the foothill. The water levels in those lakes is generally exceedingly low and that is what provides the water for the year.

Be thankful it's not a BOMB CYCLONE!!!!!

Some amazing things have happened in the not to distant past:

Great Flood of 1862

At least it's not being labeled as THE STORM OF THE CENTURY !!!

Ya, the bomb cyclone exploded and caused the jet stream to overflow and that fed into the atmospheric river.
It all makes sense.

3-5" of rain is news? Hell, we've gotten 4 in an hour over this way.... and a couple years back we got over 20 in a couple hours... construction dumpsters were floating down the streets in Columbia.

quote:

Originally posted by WaterburyBob:
At least it's not being labeled as THE STORM OF THE CENTURY !!!

yet

Well, whatever it was, it dumped a shitload of rain all night last night. There were some gusty winds associated with it that knocked down branches all over the place.

I honestly expected this thread to turn out to be referencing Ghostbusters terminology, like a Focused, Non-Terminal, Repeating Phantasm, or a Class 5 Full-Roaming Vapor.

In about a month, we’ll be hearing how Lake Oroville is nearly overtopped. Hopefully.

Isn’t that the state in our union that is most starved for rain water? Shouldn’t have Elon invented a rain suction device to trap all the water?