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2020 - 2021 California and Southwest Weather Discussion Thread


Thunder98

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Very dense fog here inland early this morning, although gone shortly after sunrise. Still present in parts of San Diego County south of here where I worked today, it was cloudy everywhere from roughly Rancho Bernardo southwards.

Heat is nothing today, only 89F right now here in Murrieta - compared to 95F at this time yesterday and 100F at this time the day before.

 

 

 

 

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Old Weather Channel site looked pretty similar. I miss the classic Local on the 8s with the elevator music. 
 

Isn’t it funny how when inland areas cool down, the coast seems to get warmer and vice versa? 3-4 degrees warmer here than the same time yesterday. On days like this with a south wind, PV and Catalina sometimes shelter us and sometimes channel the clouds right into our area. It’s a toss up.

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It's actually remarkably clear here inland for the first time in days. Early this morning, however, I did once again encounter extremely dense fog in the northern San Diego County foothills (on I-15). I had to drive very slowly for a while because I literally could not see the road at all.

High today in Murrieta is a nice breezy 93F, coolest its been here in over a week.

 

 

 

 

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The cold summer temperatures and fog of San Francisco is infamous. All along the California coast, trees like the coastal redwood use fog drip as an auxiliary source of water. The long narrow leaves of the conifers cool quickly to the dew point as each drop of condensed water cascades down to the ground below. A fresh layer of condensation resumes building after each drop of water falls. If the dense fog lasts all night, the tree finds a refreshing .02 inch or so of water in soil under leaf litter of the forest floor that the shallow roots can take up.

 

Something similar could be developed that mimics the tree leaf action to produce immediately potable water-no treatment required- for residential use. The fog most frequently occurs at night when electrical power is lower cost. The air blower and refrigerant power required would approximately equal the heat of condensation of the volume of water produced=-2257 kj/kg. There is no change in the water temperature as it changes from gas phase -fog-to liquid phase-water droplet-, but the other components of air and the tree mimic require cooling to take up that released heat. As in the natural tree case, the tree mimic is dependent on the wind moving a fresh parcel of cool air laden with fog over or through the tree mimic; so such tree mimic machines without air blowers would necessarily be located where the wind moved the cool air and fog at a brisk pace. On the commuter train leaving San Francisco for the peninsular cities and San Jose, one looks up to see the billowing fog cascade over the Skyline.

 

Solar energy can now be used to cool the air to the dew point. The batteries of the solar collector are charged during the day and the energy used at night to produce the potable water-no further treatment required. This water production method can be small scale as well as large. Individual homes may be equipped with solar/water generators. With the planet warming and as the interior of the continent dries, coastal properties beset by fog become ever more valuable.

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Look at it this way—a bit of eddy now means less Fogust later as the south winds they generate help warm up the ocean. 
 

AquariusRadar, your idea has been tried in some form in several places around the world that get coastal fog. Chile has done it successfully to supply water to a village in the desert. 
 

Locally, the fog is most reliable on the Palos Verdes coastal bluffs, where ocean air is forced to rise. Winds tend to be amplified on the edge of this headland anyway, so it would be a good place for a moisture farm to get a continuous supply of wet air. The biggest practical challenges have been getting the water off the collectors and contamination from bacteria and fungi. 
 

Finally one of the biggest unanswered questions in climate change is the fate of the coastal fog itself. Will it be more, less, or equally prevalent? Experts, including Daniel Swain and Bill Patzert, have said it is too soon to know. It depends on how the California Current and North Pacific High react, which computer models disagree on.
 

Marine layer coverage has been observed to drop significantly around CA’s major coastal cities in the past decades, but it’s not known how much of this effect is due to development alone. SSTs have been trending higher, which would mean less fog. However, inland temps in the warm season have been warming faster than the eastern Pacific waters have, which suggests we may see more pronounced microclimates than ever where beaches are fogged in stubbornly under a razor thin marine layer and the temps jump 30 degrees in 3-5 miles on a typical summer day. This is a pattern we already see often during heatwaves.

It’s said that the extremes of today are the normals of tomorrow.

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Pn1ct03n wrote: "AquariusRadar, your idea has been tried in some form in several places around the world that get coastal fog. Chile has done it successfully to supply water to a village in the desert…….It’s said that the extremes of today are the normals of tomorrow."

You are right that these small scale, people oriented ideas will not resolve California’s lack of water. California is more than people; it’s trout and salmon and almond groves and ski resorts and giant redwoods and much much more. All needing tons of water that only Mother Nature can provide. The reasons Mother Nature turns the spigot to dry must be throughly studied to see if there is a way to prevent long term drought. Not geo-engineering or cloud seeding. But rather how can some of that intense rain that only bothers flying fish in the open ocean somehow be moved ashore without creating a problem. My aquariusradar idea may be considered quackery by many, but it is the only idea that I know of that proposes a method to move ocean rain ashore without radically changing the normal and natural process. 

 These fog condensation ideas are parallel with ideas like reducing water consumption - the governors 15% reduction idea; remember putting a brick in the toilet holding tank? Solar energy/fog condensation/desalination is going to be a minor source of California’s water needs. As resources dry up, at some point in the future, the cost of water will make it profitable to put solar energy to work just to create water. 

 

If nothing is done of a much larger scale, the future question must be answered: Will global warming and deforestation turn coastal California into something akin to the Atacama desert and Namib desert? 

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Good point. We are already getting there; it’s only because we’re north enough to have sufficient influence from the westerlies in the cold season (which dump seasonal rain on us) that we’re not a true coastal desert. Yet. Right now this influence starts to fade at around 30°N, looking at Baja California and where the Vizcaíno Desert begins. If rain belts shift, we could be in big trouble. 

The Humboldt and Benguela currents have even stronger upwelling than the California, which is why the deserts adjacent to them are so hyperarid. Even in the worst case we shouldn’t become as dry as that as the CC upwells strongest in the mid-latitudes where winter rains are more consistent.

Our other possible lifeline (this could just be wishful thinking) is if the monsoon, which has been more vigorous in recent years as it has warmer water to tap into, shifts westward. If the Pacific warms a bit more (and the Pacific High retrogrades or weakens), perhaps we could see less stability in the coastal air and summer thunderstorms become a regular thing…

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The recent UN/IPCC report says the earth is in big trouble. None of worlds' political leaders have the necessary science background to correct the warming disaster that looms ever closer. No big changes foreseen in the scenario laid out in that report. Maybe the next generation should learn all they can about water; how to make it and use it without waste. 

Note: I must add that I think the worlds' deforestation has greater impact on California drought than does global warming.

Edited by AquariusRadar
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7 hours ago, AquariusRadar said:

The recent UN/IPCC report says the earth is in big trouble. None of worlds' political leaders have the necessary science background to correct the warming disaster that looms ever closer. No big changes foreseen in the scenario laid out in that report. Maybe the next generation should learn all they can about water; how to make it and use it without waste. 

Note: I must add that I think the worlds' deforestation has greater impact on California drought than does global warming.

So this is not another false alarm?

50 years of failed doomsday, eco-pocalyptic predictions; the so-called ‘experts’ are 0-50 | American Enterprise Institute - AEI

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This quote from the AEI article:

"Modern doomsayers have been predicting climate and environmental disaster since the 1960s. They continue to do so today. None of the apocalyptic predictions with due dates as of today have come true."

The folks at the AEI don't consider the Paradise fire, the ongoing California drought, or this years largest fires ever to be environmental disaster. With regard to global warming, the organization is gaslighting their readers. 

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Eddy’s gone. back to NW flow we go. 
Clearing is good in LA, OC, and SD counties but poor in SB and VC, right in sync with the sharp drop in SST west of Oxnard or so. Central Coast is pretty socked in except for the stretch between Santa Cruz and the SF peninsula.

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