WATERDOG
Gemini
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Don't Bother Me, I'm in Havi
   
PERRIS,CA
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ELIMINATOR EAGLE
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Posted: June 16 2009,7:10 am |
Post # 1 |
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The monsoon is back
T-storms may not have reached Havasu, yet — but unseasonably cooler temps have crept into the area
By Diana Parker
Monday, June 15, 2009 8:11 PM MST
Monday marked the first “official” day of the monsoon, but those who watch weather in the Lake Havasu City area were more interested in a pattern of unseasonably cool weather that has kept high temperatures 10-15 degrees below normal for the past 10 days.
Clay Morgan of the National Weather Service in Las Vegas said the recent pattern is “like something we might see in April” though with warmer temperatures because of the angle of the sun.
“It’s unusual — not unprecedented but unusual,” Morgan said.
Doyle Wilson, water resources manager for the city of Lake Havasu City and local weather aficionado, described this spring’s weather as “kinda strange.”
“The (polar) jet stream normally in May starts to go north into Canada ... In May it went up then in June it slipped back down,” Wilson said.
That backtrack was reflected in daytime temperatures climbing into the 100s in early May and staying there until early June when they dropped back into the 90s and even the high 80s.
For other parts of the country the jet stream’s slippage lead to unseasonable weather events, Wilson said.
“We got lucky. We’ve been riding the sub-100s for some time,” Wilson said.
The stretch of cool temperatures in the region is notable enough that the National Weather Service was prompted to put it in historical perspective.
A June 13 press release out of the Phoenix office says that the current streak of consecutive sub-100-degree June days is approaching records set in the late 1800s and early 1900s. If this stretch ends on Thursday as forecast, it will compare to streaks seen in 1942, 1954, 1967 and 1971. The most recent long stretch of sub-100-degree June days occurred in 2005 with 10.
Experts say the June 15 start for the monsoon, which was devised for southeastern Arizona, doesn’t really apply to our area.
“For Phoenix it’s OK, but for us that’s a little early,” Wilson said. “On the average, the second week in July usually marks the initiation of (the monsoon), though last summer it did start in the first part of June and that monsoon went on a long time.”
Technically the beginning of monsoon is indicated by five days in a row in which the dew point temperature is 55 degrees or above, Wilson said.
Laypeople will have an idea that the monsoon has arrived or is on its way when their evaporative coolers stop being effective, which typically happens when the dew point temperature is in the low 40s, according to Wilson.
Morgan said there’s no longer-term way of predicting when the monsoon will be in an area. Meteorologists have some ability to predict it in the short term, such as a week out, by observing air flows.
There are no indications of monsoon for Lake Havasu City in the next week, Morgan said Monday.
Instead, after warming at the end of the week, another low-pressure system over the weekend could keep temperatures slightly below normal Saturday and Sunday, Morgan said.
“There’s some chance that low-pressure could — I’m not saying will but could — be the last one,” he said.
"Damn you sure know how to fock things up."-GFR
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I like that.
