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2019 Rain Thread

Biff Tannen

By Biff Tannen
in Daily Texan

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phdhorn
phdhorn

Figured I'd post this here, it's where you'd look for me. First, thanks very much for the concern (I had no idea), it's appreciated.  I mean, really?  Wow, that's been surprising. Second, I'm fi

DonnyKerabatsos
DonnyKerabatsos

is the excessive rain this year being triggered from the ash rising to the atmosphere from the concentration camps on our border?  Like volcanoes creating storms when the erupt? 

Patricio Swayze
Patricio Swayze

So after my company started sending people home, a coworker of mine who takes the metro in from cypress left to catch the bus. He got to the NW transit center at 610 and old Katy road and they decided

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Lerka Lerka

Lerka Lerka 1086

Posted
Posted
32 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Under bridges.

 

 

Update:

AUSTIN, TX — A person who was swept away in flood waters on Wednesday was found dead at Lady Bird Lake, officials said.

Austin-Travis County EMS medics were originally dispatched to the 900 block of West 9th Street at around 1 p.m. amid reports of a person who was swept up by flood waters as the city was hit hard by severe storms for the second consecutive day. Their search subsequently aided by a STAR Flight medical helicopter in trying to locate the victim.

Minutes after their initial tweet detailing their search, medics reported the grim news the victim — a man in his 50s — was found dead at the lake. What began as a hoped-for water rescue quickly became a recovery mission in retrieving the "motionless" body at Lady Bird Lake, medics suggested in a subsequent tweet.

 
 
Water Rescue at ~800 W 9th street @STAR_Flight_TC is reporting they have located a a body in the water that appears to be motionless in lady bird lake. Rescuers moving to make contact. More To Follow...
— ATCEMS (@ATCEMS) May 8, 2019
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T&T’s Dad

T&T’s Dad 32

Posted
Posted

I live out in SE College Station (Actually Cypress by 290 and Grand Parkway) and we have received right around an inch the last 24 hrs.  Amazing to see all of the high accumulation totals so close to us and we have been spared .
Not being flooded during Harvey was a fucking miracle.  Our neighborhood had 41" and we stayed dry.  These Texas weather systems sure do make for some high tension...

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crimsonlonghorn

crimsonlonghorn 2306

Posted
Posted (edited)

My house didn't flood last night but I went out to my farm about 5 miles east of Greatwood this morning and everything was underwater except for the barn itself. About two feet deep in some places and SLOOOOOOWLY receding. Lost several chickens (including a whole coop of thirty 8 week old chicks) and a lot of my loose stuff under the carport of my barn floated out into the pasture. At least the interior of the barn didn't flood. 

The last reading from my weather station out there says 4 inches at 7:00 PM last night. I guess it blew over and floated away, too, because I can't find it today. My estimate is that is we got 8-10 inches total out there. 

Has all receded by a foot or so now but I sure hope we don't get anymore rain for the rest of the week. 

Farm%20Rain%20050819.png

Edited by crimsonlonghorn
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phdhorn

phdhorn 6224

Posted
Posted

Update:
Quiet, muggy, soupy Thursday 'round here.  Shouldn't be much rain most of the day.  Picks up late overnight, actually more towards Friday a.m. rush hour, but not nearly as potent as this last round.
 

Saturday looking to suck more or less... yet another small disturbance moves in and good chance of another round of significant rain Sat. morning.  Clears up later and Mother's Day should be good.

Although I believe it'll be only a little every day, we are in a pattern where the chance of rain each day is higher than average - and this is well into the third week of May.

Rain totals "officially" in Austin-Mabry for May are just under 8" now (normal is just over 4").  Only 3.5" to do to hit the all-time Austin monthly total?  Yeah, we'll make it.

Could we go the entire first 5 months of 2019 without hitting 90°?  Last time we did that was 2007.

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jimmyjazz

jimmyjazz 45915

Posted
Posted

Without going Cloak Room, does anyone know of a resource that shows historical trends in large rain events?  I suppose it would be helpful to have them broken out by source -- hurricane & TS versus west-to-east fronts, etc.

It FEELS like this is becoming more common, but I could be wrong, or it could be within normal statistical distributions.

tl;dr holy crap we seem to be getting rain bombed a lot in the last 10 years or so

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Trey3216

Trey3216 15346

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Without going Cloak Room, does anyone know of a resource that shows historical trends in large rain events?  I suppose it would be helpful to have them broken out by source -- hurricane & TS versus west-to-east fronts, etc.

It FEELS like this is becoming more common, but I could be wrong, or it could be within normal statistical distributions.

tl;dr holy crap we seem to be getting rain bombed a lot in the last 10 years or so

You have to factor in the amount of housing that has been built over the last 20 years or so in the Burbs.  It drastically affects hydro flows.  

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jimmyjazz

jimmyjazz 45915

Posted
Posted
Just now, Trey3216 said:

You have to factor in the amount of housing that has been built over the last 20 years or so in the Burbs.  It drastically affects hydro flows.  

In terms of flood damage, sure.  In terms of rain hitting the ground?  Seems unlikely.  I suppose there could be urban "heat island" arguments but beyond that, I don't see how at grade construction would affect rainfall.

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Trey3216

Trey3216 15346

Posted
Posted
Just now, jimmyjazz said:

In terms of flood damage, sure.  In terms of rain hitting the ground?  Seems unlikely.  I suppose there could be urban "heat island" arguments but beyond that, I don't see how at grade construction would affect rainfall.

I was referring to the resultant flooding that has gotten worse moreso than rainfall amounts.  El Nino patterns will drop water on coastal TX every time.  A lot of water.  The flooding has gotten worse because we keep building out

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phdhorn

phdhorn 6224

Posted
Posted

From what I've studied, it's much more cyclical than linear.  I.e. about every 4-5 years there are wetter vs. drier spells.  Even in drought spans, there are 1-2 years within a decade that have wetter periods.

This century bears out (and before that, but this is a good starting point)... 2000-2005 or so were drier than avg. on normal, 2007-09 were wet, we all know about 2010-2014 or so, then 2015-now are definitely wetter (2015 and 2018 were among our Top 20 wettest years on record).

It makes sense, mostly due to the ENSO (El Niño/La Niña) fluctuations.  At least short term, they have been by far the greatest influence on our rain more than anything else.

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Telegraph_it

Telegraph_it 3357

Posted
Posted

I'm not sure how many rain gauges we had 100 years ago. Unless there was a gauge south of Sugarland, there would be no record that a localized area received 12 plus inches of rain. Rain accumulation from radar has provided a lot of insight into how much rain actually falls over a large area. Not sure when we started using that technology.  

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jimmyjazz

jimmyjazz 45915

Posted
Posted
8 minutes ago, Telegraph_it said:

I'm not sure how many rain gauges we had 100 years ago. Unless there was a gauge south of Sugarland, there would be no record that a localized area received 12 plus inches of rain. Rain accumulation from radar has provided a lot of insight into how much rain actually falls over a large area. Not sure when we started using that technology.  

Farmers, dude.  Buckets.  It was a thing.

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phdhorn

phdhorn 6224

Posted
Posted (edited)
33 minutes ago, Telegraph_it said:

I'm not sure how many rain gauges we had 100 years ago. Unless there was a gauge south of Sugarland, there would be no record that a localized area received 12 plus inches of rain. Rain accumulation from radar has provided a lot of insight into how much rain actually falls over a large area. Not sure when we started using that technology.  

There have been pretty accurate rain gauges for thousands of years.  What we didn't have as many of 100 years ago is reporting stations.  But believe it or not, the Smithsonian began to supply a lot of people with basic stuff (barometers, wind meters, rain gauges, etc.) to help facilitate the new and growing railway system as far back as the 1840's.  Probably the first large-scale national reporting to one source.  Like everything else almost, war greatly speeds up technology, and the Civil War greatly expanded the accuracy and number of these reporting stations and their data (haveta know what the weather's like to blow stuff/peoplez up!).  From there the first real systematic forecasting was done (invention of the telegraph made this grow quickly).  Pre-Civil War there were about 100 national stations; after the Civil War there were over 500.  There were thousands of other reportings to local governments/churches/schools. 

The accuracy of a rain gauge hasn't had to improve much in thousands of years, so chances are the reporting is pretty accurate from at least colonial times onward.

The use of local radar as reliable dates from the mid-1960's, and even back then the radars weren't so good.  Probably the biggest leap occurred in the early 1990's.  Actually, if you see what the Doppler really reports to an observer, you would say, "WTF?".  The radar you see has been filtered greatly with "smoothers", it's kind of a user interface on top of raw Doppler data.  It comes out looking something like this: 
c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800.png


There are actually meteo-snobs who think anyone who looks at the "smoothed" image is a hack, that you need to know how to interpret pixilated imagery exactly.  Yeah, whateverz...

In any event, new-fangled Doppler (say from the last 10 years) is pretty nice. 

But regarding rainfall, people have been reporting amounts to government since the Egyptians at least.

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UnivTex34

UnivTex34 1763

Posted
Posted
4 minutes ago, phdhorn said:

There have been pretty accurate rain gauges for thousands of years.  What we didn't have as many of 100 years ago is reporting stations.  But believe it or not, the Smithsonian began to supply a lot of people with basic stuff (barometers, wind meters, rain gauges, etc.) to help facilitate the new and growing railway system as far back as the 1840's.  Probably the first large-scale national reporting to one source.  Like everything else almost, war greatly speeds up technology, and the Civil War greatly expanded the accuracy and number of these reporting stations and their data (haveta know what the weather's like to blow stuff/peoplez up!).  From there the first real systematic forecasting was done (invention of the telegraph made this grow quickly).  Pre-Civil War there were about 100 national stations; after the Civil War there were over 500.  There were thousands of other reportings to local governments/churches/schools. 

The accuracy of a rain gauge hasn't had to improve much in thousands of years, so chances are the reporting is pretty accurate from at least colonial times onward.

The use of local radar as reliable dates from the mid-1960's, and even back then the radars weren't so good.  Probably the biggest leap occurred in the early 1990's.  Actually, if you see what the Doppler really reports to an observer, you would say, "WTF?".  The radar you see has been filtered greatly with "smoothers", it's kind of a user interface on top of raw Doppler data.  It comes out looking something like this: 
c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800.png


There are actually meteo-snobs who think anyone who looks at the "smoothed" image is a hack, that you need to know how to interpret pixilated imagery exactly.  Yeah, whateverz...

In any event, new-fangled Doppler (say from the last 10 years) is pretty nice. 

But regarding rainfall, people have been reporting amounts to government since the Egyptians at least.

The newer WSR-88D stations that allow for Super Resolution are just awesome.The pixels are actually small enough where you don't have to have smoothing turned on anymore (I still like the smoothing). I mostly look at level 2 data, since they don't require pricey subscriptions like the level 3 stuff does, but it seems like more and more the tech is getting better and better (its not like 5-6 years ago where I would pay for the subscriptions during storm season). I'm hoping that the price of the equipment drops significantly soon, as there are still some dead spots that do not have good coverage (or in some places, no coverage).

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Orange&White

Orange&White 5526

Posted
Posted
20 hours ago, Bevo Num1 said:

On tapa, but maybe someone can properly post the link of this video from the Oasis today. Looks like the Battle of Winterfell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That is really cool.

 

I worked at the Oasis waaay back when and I saw that in person once. 

We saw it coming from across the lake and went down into one of the lower decks (Middle Earth) and waited.

Definitely something I'll always remember.

Thanks for posting.

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UTCzech III

UTCzech III 2907

Posted
Posted

So maybe phd/Frankie or some other expert can enlighten me.  Back in the early 90's, it seemed like all the cold fronts used to pretty much come straight down I-35 south, you'd get a lot of bowing, think the 97 storm that created the Jarrell/Cedar Park tornadoes.  Now it seems like all these fronts come in from the Northwest, and the storms move East or Northeast.  What changed?  Or am I just imagining it?

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HouTex

HouTex 1867

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

Without going Cloak Room, does anyone know of a resource that shows historical trends in large rain events?  I suppose it would be helpful to have them broken out by source -- hurricane & TS versus west-to-east fronts, etc.

It FEELS like this is becoming more common, but I could be wrong, or it could be within normal statistical distributions.

tl;dr holy crap we seem to be getting rain bombed a lot in the last 10 years or so

https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0307.1

Here is one study done in 2016 on whether climate change is having an impact on extreme precipitation: "Finally, the observed record and historical model experiments were used to investigate changes in the recent past. In part because of large intrinsic variability, no evidence was found for changes in extreme precipitation attributable to climate change in the available observed record."

Some of the data goes back to 1948.

Here are the authors.  They would seem reputable.   Karin van der Wiela,b, Sarah B. Kapnickb, Gabriel A. Vecchib, William F Cookeb,c, Thomas L. Delworthb, Liwei Jiaa,b, Hiroyuki Murakamia,b, Seth Underwoodb, and Fanrong Zengb
a Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
b NOAA/Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, New Jersey
c University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado

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jimmyjazz

jimmyjazz 45915

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, HouTex said:

Here is one study done in 2016 on whether climate change is having an impact on extreme precipitation: "Finally, the observed record and historical model experiments were used to investigate changes in the recent past. In part because of large intrinsic variability, no evidence was found for changes in extreme precipitation attributable to climate change in the available observed record."

Thanks, I appreciate the link.  I'll read up.

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Grade of D as in David

Grade of D as in David 13253

Posted
Posted
54 minutes ago, UTCzech III said:

So maybe phd/Frankie or some other expert can enlighten me.  Back in the early 90's, it seemed like all the cold fronts used to pretty much come straight down I-35 south, you'd get a lot of bowing, think the 97 storm that created the Jarrell/Cedar Park tornadoes.  Now it seems like all these fronts come in from the Northwest, and the storms move East or Northeast.  What changed?  Or am I just imagining it?

Construction on 35 has finally made traffic so bad that even storms avoid it?

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jimmyjazz

jimmyjazz 45915

Posted
Posted
58 minutes ago, UTCzech III said:

So maybe phd/Frankie or some other expert can enlighten me.  Back in the early 90's, it seemed like all the cold fronts used to pretty much come straight down I-35 south, you'd get a lot of bowing, think the 97 storm that created the Jarrell/Cedar Park tornadoes.  Now it seems like all these fronts come in from the Northwest, and the storms move East or Northeast.  What changed?  Or am I just imagining it?

I absolutely recall the most severe spring weather coming in west-to-east in the 1980's.  In fact, I recall the Jarrell tornado being quite odd because it traveled almost due south.

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