yosemite to flood??

Impacts - E19 Information
6.5 Feet River is closed to rafters and floatation.
9.0 Feet Chapel Meadow (south side of river) and Cooks Meadow (north side of river) begins to experience overflow.
9.5 Feet Portion of Lower Pines Campground becomes flooded. Limited site-specific evacuations begin at Housekeeping Camp located along the south-facing bank of the Merced River. (Upstream from Sentinel Bridge and downstream from Stoneman Bridge)
10.0 Feet Western portion of North Pines Campground, located at the east end of Yosemite Valley between the confluence of the Merced River and Tenaya Creek, begins to flood. Water rises to the base of the swinging bridge downstream from Chapel Meadow.
10.5 Feet Water tops the swinging bridge downstream from Chapel Meadow. Overflow from Woski Pond floods access road (Northside Drive) leading out of the west entrance of the park.
11.5 Feet Sewage pumping relay station at North Pines Campground becomes flooded.
12.5 Feet Northside Drive and Southside Drive, which are the main roads in Yosemite Valley, become flooded and are closed to traffic.
23.45 Feet Flood of record (01/02/1997). $178 Million damage to Yosemite Valley.

The river that flows through fabled Yosemite Valley is expected to overflow its banks during this weekend’s storms, rising even higher than it did during the devastating flood of 1997.
Forecasters with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted that the Merced River would surge to a level of 23.7 feet, about a half a foot higher than it did 20 years ago when the river flooded a valley hotel and other facilities, causing an estimated $176 million damage.

So what needs trundling?

this might mean the earlier forecasts, and the models were wrong?

The ol' Polar Vortex is another concoction of the effete elitist news media selling ad time.
It hasn't been below -20F in Fairbanks yet this winter. That's like spring up there.

one is startled at the incredible stupidity of this remark, but apparently looking at the maps that healyje quoted above, and knowing where Fairbanks Alaska is on those maps, with respect to the jet stream configuration, apparently doesn't evoke any challenge to the emerging ipse dixit brigade on the STForum...

one is left to wonder just why we would expect any temperature anywhere to be different from what our notion of what that temperature should be...

the failure of logic is jaw dropping.

The ol' Polar Vortex is another concoction of the effete elitist news media selling ad time.

The term atmospheric river was coined in a seminal scientific paper published in 1998 by researchers Zhu and Newell at MIT

Latest river estimate is 17.2 feet. As of 10:15 AM Sat.

The progression.

23.4
15.2
16.1
17.6

Its all a matter of how this storm lines up.

In 97 the SF American hit 300,000 cfs.

It's dumping sh!t cakes hard right now again.

and incredibly, there is no threat listed for Monday... warmer rain... i don't get it

it was after satellites and doppler dingus...

let's just watch what happens,
and you can tell me i told you so if it gets to 23 feet on sunday,
and i will tell you the models suck if it never tops 19 feet.

personal prediction, not over 17 feet, what is your number Dingus?


and what if the real high comes on Monday, where my concern is,
and the model boys raise no concern...

with a partial dam west of El Capitan.

in 1864 Bierstadt made this painting of Yosemite Valley:

Ken,

yes i said i was concerned about Monday, and i was wrong to have a concern.
But it was a concern about a threat, i assigned no number, made no prediction for Monday.


NOAH Predicted discharge was originally about 23,000 cfs
actual peak discharge was about 10,000 cfs

Do you look at the fact that the estimate was 230% of reality?

Is there some percent error amount at which you will say they were wrong?
To me, a more than double inaccuracy, is inaccurate.


Yes, early warning was good, and we all hope for the safety and well being for all.

But will the people on the ground take the next number they are given seriously??
Probably not, I did not this time, and i was correct not to do so.

A estimate like 23.1 (several days in advance) is why they should provide a range (like a 95% confidence interval), along with the estimate.
That way we get an idea of how uncertain the estimate is.
The model may have provided such a range.
But we did not see a range on the graph we kept looking at.

but i do recognize if you remove the emotionalism

If no one admits that, there will be no learning for next time.

Dingus mistakenly said NOAH's prior 60% inaccuracy was from before satellites and radar.. not true.,
and, they were also 60% inaccurate, again, last week.

And by the way, those predictions prevented the chaos that ensued during the 97 flood by the park planing preventative measures before the SHTF this time ......

What made the storm so deadly was the timing (during work and school hours), the suddenness, and the brief spell of warmer weather that preceded it. In addition, the very strong wind fields behind the cold front and the powdery nature of the snow reduced visibilities on the open plains to zero. People ventured from the safety of their homes to do chores, go to town, attend school, or simply enjoy the relative warmth of the day. As a result, thousands of people—including many schoolchildren—got caught in the blizzard. The death toll was 235.[3] Teachers generally kept children in their schoolrooms. Exceptions nearly always resulted in disaster.[4]


wow, guys, thanks again, for sharing all this, whether they
all match up, with each other, and all that, it is:

still amazing, :O

Travel was severely impeded in the days following

One moment the air was clear, calm, with spring-like warmth. Then, in a period of just a few minutes the sky darkened and temperatures dropped 18 degrees, and vicious winds drove tiny snow flakes (described as "ice dust") which almost instantaneously created a whiteout with visibility near zero. Blizzard conditions continued until about midnight as temperatures fell precipitously to double digits below zero with a wind chill of -40. An estimated 4-5 feet of snow had fallen, although drifting undoubtedly made accurate measurements virtually impossible.

By the next morning (Jan. 13), hundreds were killed with a high proportion of children among the storm's victims as they attempted to return home from school.

Laskin is also a weather geek and explains the meteorology behind the event given the available, but relatively limited sources of weather observations and analyses. This includes describing the development and progression of lows and highs, fronts, jet streams and jet streaks, which no doubt reflect the assistance in such matters when writing his book from Dr. Louis Uccellini, Director of the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) and co-author (with Paul Kocin) of Northeast Snowstorms.

To say the least, the state of the science and art of forecasting in 1888 was in the early days of development. There were no satellite observations, limited surface data and no observations aloft, let alone computers and weather models for forecasters (like Wes Junker) to peruse and come up with the best forecasts possible days in advance of possible weather threats. There were some indications of a drop in temperature and snow from surface data available to forecasters at the time, but lack of timely and reliable communications kept word from getting out before it was far too late.

We'd like to believe that advances in atmospheric science, vast system of observations, global satellite coverage, computer models, and instant communication would preclude a storm of this magnitude striking without advance notice. But surprise snowstorms remain a possibility even at short ranges to the extent the threat is communicated as a simple deterministic yes or no. With today's tools though, outright surprises can be avoided when the forecast information also includes reasonable and reliable estimates of the degree of confidence in alternative scenarios (to yes/no).

By Steve Tracton

From that sequence, it looks like the model is fairly nonlinear, so that "small" changes in inputs can have a "big" change in outputs.