Search the RAMMB website
00:00:00:00 – 00:00:19:00
Speaker 1
Say, welcome to today’s visit Satellite Chat. And we’re pleased to have, Alex tardy from the UFO in San Diego. To join us and talk about their recent, big event that they had out there. So at this point, I’ll go ahead and turn it over to Alex.
00:00:19:03 – 00:00:45:20
Speaker 2
Thanks, Stan. Good morning everyone. So, over the past weekend, we had a pretty significant event. And, not just rain. And I’ll show you several things that, really started on Friday the 17th. That was first surge. So the synoptic scenario was we had a typical monsoon flow, large upper level high pressure was centered over Texas region.
00:00:45:20 – 00:01:12:25
Speaker 2
So a little bit further east than normal. And that allowed for really a direct southerly flow from the tropics to be pointed at southern California. And at the same time, what was major hurricane? Dolores was spinning well, south of the Mexico Baja tip. And, basically there was a little weakness between that and, the high pressure to our north.
00:01:12:25 – 00:01:38:11
Speaker 2
We had, a weak trough. Not unusual this time of the year. Weak trough in the California coast. Very weak, and otherwise, we were dominated by southerly flow. So when the moisture came in, this was the three day rainfall that we saw over our region. It wasn’t, it wasn’t, non convective by any means. So we’ll go over some of the details of it.
00:01:38:13 – 00:02:08:13
Speaker 2
But we also had quite a bit of strata form moderate to locally heavy rain as well. And it really came at two chunks, one on the 18th during the morning and early afternoon, and then one again on the 19th, which would be Sunday during the afternoon. You can see San Diego’s labeled here for reference. Arizona did quite well to further east, there’s an area where Interstate ten was washed out where, southeast California there.
00:02:08:15 – 00:02:32:26
Speaker 2
That was about six eight inches of rain estimated on the radar that caused that washout. For climate purposes, downtown San Diego received 1.7in of rain. And we’ll talk a little bit more about that. When we zoom up a little bit, we can see the distribution of rain. A lot of places seeing anywhere between 2 to 3in of rain.
00:02:32:29 – 00:03:00:25
Speaker 2
Now that we don’t have time to go into the topography, but it is quite complex. You go from sea level, basically along the coast and beaches to, mountains that are 6000ft in San Diego County, mountains in Riverside County, just north of San Diego County, get up to, 10,000ft. And then you even have 11,000 peaks in San Bernardino County, which, some of you might be familiar with, like the Big Bear region.
00:03:01:04 – 00:03:18:13
Speaker 2
We also cover Orange County, and they were kind of on the edge. They did get quite a bit of rain, but not as much as San Diego County. So very widespread distribution of rain. My house, I was on the lower end. I live on the north part of San Diego County. I had about three quarters of an inch.
00:03:18:16 – 00:03:28:05
Speaker 2
But again, downtown San Diego did really well, if you like, looking at the actual raw gauges, here are some of the numbers. It kind of gets rid of some of the noise.
00:03:29:04 – 00:03:32:17
Speaker 1
Let’s say still see your first slide. It hasn’t changed for me.
00:03:32:20 – 00:03:34:22
Speaker 2
Okay, I’m on slide number three.
00:03:35:03 – 00:03:37:03
Speaker 1
Scott, do you see it?
00:03:37:06 – 00:03:51:02
Speaker 2
No, I’m seeing slide one also. So it’s still a presentation, but you’re not in slideshow mode, for example. But yeah, it’s in slideshow mode of mine.
00:03:51:04 – 00:03:55:03
Speaker 2
Specific catches up.
00:03:55:06 – 00:04:01:23
Speaker 2
As anyone else seeing something besides slide one.
00:04:01:25 – 00:04:09:03
Speaker 2
Okay. I’ve seen slide 12Z like one also.
00:04:09:03 – 00:04:10:15
Speaker 1
There we go. Okay. It just came in.
00:04:10:19 – 00:04:18:02
Speaker 2
Boom. Okay. So do you see what this storm totals? Yeah. Actual point values.
00:04:18:04 – 00:04:18:22
Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:04:19:05 – 00:04:40:00
Speaker 2
I think it’s probably a hiccup. I’m on a Wi-Fi network, which is typically better than our regular land network, but, you know. Okay. Yeah. Just interrupt me if it’s if it hiccups again like that. So here are some of the point values. One of the ones to draw your eyes to on the right hand side is the Ramona area.
00:04:40:02 – 00:05:01:01
Speaker 2
It’s about 40 minutes east of San Diego, only about 1500 feet. It’s kind of a bottom mountain valley location. There was, up to four inches of rain observed there. There were a couple locations in the mountains as well, very remote areas that also saw 3 to 3 to 3.5in of rain. San Bernardino Mountains, the Riverside Mountains.
00:05:01:01 – 00:05:26:24
Speaker 2
If you’re familiar with the Palm Springs tram, that’s that other bright red area you see kind of showing up, just south of the tram there. But in San Diego County, where most people live, in fact, 3.5 million people that, for sure, they’re east of our office was was a big deal. But not to downplay downtown San Diego, where there was widespread inch and a half to two inches.
00:05:26:27 – 00:05:49:12
Speaker 2
So here’s some of the numbers of what happened. We set a record at San Diego Lindbergh field record for the month. The old record went back way back to 1860 or so. If you look at what we saw January through April, to put it in perspective, we actually exceeded that value. So our wettest month here are January, February.
00:05:49:19 – 00:05:58:24
Speaker 1
Alex I’m still stuck on that previous slide. Maybe still catching up. How about you, Scott?
00:05:58:26 – 00:06:03:21
Speaker 2
Same. I’m just I’m seeing I’m still seeing the storm. Total salt storm. Total slide.
00:06:03:26 – 00:06:04:16
Speaker 1
Okay.
00:06:04:18 – 00:06:08:22
Speaker 2
Okay. The only thing I think I can do is, is restart it and then.
00:06:08:24 – 00:06:09:24
Speaker 1
I see it.
00:06:09:24 – 00:06:38:03
Speaker 2
Now it’s interesting. So every time I exit the PowerPoint it it comes back okay. Kind of clunky. So you can see all the lists now. Yeah okay. So like I was saying 1.7in of rain record for the month, over the previous record of 1.29, late 1800s, about 18, six years old. That record was more rain than what we saw from January to April.
00:06:38:03 – 00:07:07:06
Speaker 2
The put in perspective, wettest month usually is January. February. There were 2000 CGS clouds, a ground lightning strike starting the 18th and then ending, starting around 5 a.m. 18th and then, ending on the 19th. So pretty impressive amount of cloud to ground lightning strikes. We already talked about the rainfall. There was a debris flow in a in a fire scar in the area of Silverado Canyon.
00:07:07:06 – 00:07:36:09
Speaker 2
That’s in Orange County. Then there were, low lying areas like Moreno Valley, Paris, Ramona, places that saw 2 to 4in of rain. Quite a bit of flash flooding. In fact, in Ramona, I did add it on here. There’s up to up to 90 homes that are claiming damage, from high water anywhere from, you know, a couple inches of mud water to three feet or much of water, according to San Diego County, who’s investigating and handling that?
00:07:36:18 – 00:08:04:20
Speaker 2
We also had a microburst, which was kind of interesting on, on the 18th. So, most of this was elevated convection on the 18th, 19th. It was a mixture. And we’ll show that. But we had elevated convection with most of the rain. So it didn’t matter where you were over the ocean, over the land, over the mountains were receiving similar rainfall, but we had, a couple intense cells that developed in the 80s, the San Diego River, which it’s not really a river.
00:08:04:20 – 00:08:25:12
Speaker 2
It is a river, but it tends to be flashy. And it’s usually dry. It’s usually urban runoff that keeps it flowing and maybe a couple springs. So it jumped up to 7.5ft. And, that was as high as it was in the past two years, even in some of our few but good winter storms that we had.
00:08:25:15 – 00:09:02:08
Speaker 2
And then on the 19th, it went up to almost nine feet. Just to give you an idea, there typically are some road closures and, that type of impacts around the river when it gets that high, you start talking about building problems, parking lots inundated when it gets over ten feet. And we also had a hubbub, so, not unusual here, but to get 60 mile per hour winds from one of our spotters that recorded it and really significant, and we’ll show a little bit of that as well.
00:09:02:11 – 00:09:06:11
Speaker 2
Here’s some of the totals if you’re into lightning, did that change?
00:09:06:13 – 00:09:15:03
Speaker 1
No, no. I remember you sent me slides yesterday. Is that pretty much the same, presentation?
00:09:15:18 – 00:09:16:27
Speaker 2
No, I made some tweaks.
00:09:17:03 – 00:09:18:12
Speaker 1
Okay. What did you say?
00:09:18:15 – 00:09:26:06
Speaker 3
Are you going in and out of presentation mode? Why don’t you just stay out of the presentation mode and just click on the slides? That will probably work better.
00:09:26:09 – 00:09:51:09
Speaker 2
Than you see this? Yes, I see total lightning now. Okay, I’ll just leave it in PowerPoint mode then. Or none slideshow mode. So here’s some of the numbers if you like. Counts and total lightning as well. And this is basically all of our county warning area as shown here. A lot of those strikes occurred on the 18th, which is Saturday.
00:09:51:09 – 00:10:02:06
Speaker 2
And then there was another period on the 19th.
00:10:02:09 – 00:10:06:12
Speaker 2
That changed. I’m seeing the track doors. Are you seeing that?
00:10:06:14 – 00:10:07:07
Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:10:07:09 – 00:10:17:23
Speaker 2
Okay. It definitely seems to still be slow.
00:10:17:25 – 00:10:52:17
Speaker 2
Good old memory and these Dell laptops. Okay. Projected track, which is shown here. So really, the track, it wasn’t necessarily a direct hit by any means. It was well, to the south, offshore, but nonetheless, the actual circulation center was expected to move up, very close to us, as shown here. This was, from Thursday before the event, when the when the system was still a category, three.
00:10:52:19 – 00:10:56:09
Speaker 2
Now, can you see the next slide with the, fire?
00:10:56:20 – 00:11:00:05
Speaker 1
It was slow. I saw it for a. So now I see it, now I see it. Hey.
00:11:00:05 – 00:11:35:05
Speaker 2
Good. So it looks like we made some improvement, but it’s still slow. All right, just before the event, when you’re thinking about, you know, heavy rain coming in and all that, we had a wildfire that broke out on a major interstate, Interstate 15, that goes through the San Bernardino Mountains. It’s called the Cajon Pass. And that wildfire went from 50 acres at 2:30 p.m. to 500 acres at about 4:30 p.m., and ended up being about 3500 acres that evening before they got it under control.
00:11:35:07 – 00:11:59:10
Speaker 2
And conditions improved, less went higher. RH but the interesting thing about that fire was it also, burned about 20 vehicles. About ten of them were completely burned, as you can see here. So, kind of put your self in the mindset. You know, you’re thinking, okay, a big tropical system coming up, monsoon flow, locally heavy rain.
00:11:59:17 – 00:12:26:23
Speaker 2
And then, forecasters, end up putting spot forecasts out for really aggressive fire, unusual impacts to see. Oh, I haven’t seen too many events where fires are so aggressive that, a freeway the cars are, and we don’t believe it’s a vehicle fire that started at either, but it’s still under investigation. All right, hopefully this change is changing to the.
00:12:26:25 – 00:12:54:03
Speaker 2
But this system was particularly interested, interesting as well, because this was occurring at the same time as the fire. So the very leading edge in the monsoon surge developed some thunderstorms in the Mexico region across the border and their mountains, and then ended up colliding with our seabreeze. That typically makes it well inland through the mountain passes and produced, a dust storm, basically in that region.
00:12:54:03 – 00:13:00:15
Speaker 2
And those 60mph, 60 mile per hour winds that I mentioned.
00:13:00:18 – 00:13:21:24
Speaker 2
The next slide you should be seeing is the, radar composite in that region. And the main thing I want to talk about what the hubbub before we get too much detail into the tropical event was, the collision from the outflow, from the intense thunderstorms that formed on the leading edge of the monsoon collided with our seabreeze.
00:13:21:27 – 00:13:54:08
Speaker 2
And you could if you were following those boundaries itself, you could see that was pretty good. Method for anticipating intense convection forming. We ended up issuing a flash flood warning in that area, and then also issuing a dust storm warning in Phoenix area. Dust storm advisory in our area to be technical, can you guys see the, dam can you see the composite showing, where we issued the warning, where those boundaries collided?
00:13:54:10 – 00:14:00:06
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. Now, I know, I see, yeah. Composite reflectivity here with the warning.
00:14:00:11 – 00:14:37:02
Speaker 2
So I’ll go slow to make sure. So those two events occurred on Friday. With the leading edge of the moisture. So we basically went from clear skies on Thursday. Typical marine layer to, dust storm, flash flood, severe thunderstorm in our desert. And, and then the fire that I showed earlier as well. So the interesting part as when the event unfolded as we begin Saturday morning, very early in the morning, lightning developed over San Diego County very early between 5 and 7 a.m..
00:14:37:02 – 00:15:07:08
Speaker 2
There was, hundreds of strikes between that period, right over the marine layer, right on the coast, well out ahead of the tropical cyclone that that was still down by the, tip of Mexico. Baja. Here’s the sounding, hopefully this shows up in a second here, and you can see how unstable it was. And most impressive was the elevated cape, over a thousand joules of elevated cape.
00:15:07:10 – 00:15:31:11
Speaker 2
So if you basically lift the parcel, synoptic early because you’re not lifting it any other way, there’s no mountain, there’s no heating. So if you lift that synoptic, lay, up to 700 millibars, you take off, and realize about 1500 joules of Cape, as shown here. Next slide. Let me know if it doesn’t show up. Please.
00:15:31:11 – 00:15:59:16
Speaker 2
Is, satellite imagery from that morning, which clearly shows the distinction between almost and MCs very clinic leaf type activity that’s going on to the north. And I say very clinically because it was an area there was no real defined shortwave divergence aloft or anything. There was intense warm air advection and moisture transport, high. The leading edge of it.
00:15:59:27 – 00:16:26:28
Speaker 2
All this was kind of associated with that, providing the synoptic lift that realized the, 1500 joules of Cape above 700mm. So, we basically went from, you know, just, just a partly cloudy night to widespread convection, shown here well ahead. And you actually can see a dry slot, see how the tropical system is broken away from this leading edge.
00:16:26:28 – 00:16:56:17
Speaker 2
You can see the bubbling, overshooting tops as well on the visible that morning. Pretty impressive. Thunderstorm activity. The next slide, I’m going to go to is going to show. The next is combined Precipitable water, which we get May whips and and online and various forms. And I show this because it shows nicely kind of the, the existing monsoon flow that drove moisture northward.
00:16:56:17 – 00:17:27:19
Speaker 2
And it also shows moisture that broke off from the tropical cyclone. And then thirdly, it shows that the actual tropical cyclone stays well to the south, the high precipitable water. We really don’t really get into that until the end of the event, which would be Sunday the 19th. One thing also interesting is on the first day of the event, and what should be showing is, precipitation amounts for just Saturday.
00:17:27:21 – 00:17:57:07
Speaker 2
That time period, the rain was heaviest on the coast and just inland. And our mountain regions, as shown here, especially in San Diego County, pretty much had no rain. So it definitely was inverted, strong indication that it was almost entirely elevated convection not favoring, not needing diurnal heating or terrain or even surface space convergence to realize the Cape.
00:17:57:09 – 00:18:18:24
Speaker 2
I got woken up that morning at, 630. Good, good way to get woken up. Better than most ways. Like an alarm clock. The, Or kids yelling the the the lightning was so impressive and so close. I was able to get some shots, basically right out my window are those, lightning bolts showing up?
00:18:18:27 – 00:18:19:14
Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:18:19:16 – 00:18:59:12
Speaker 2
All right. Cool. And the, that’s the period along the coast where we saw hundreds of cloud to ground strikes that morning. Now, I am looking directly west over, about four miles from beaches. So, there were a lot of events going on. A gay pride event. There was, other activities are a lot of people were on the beaches, so it becomes a pretty, sensitive situation, especially when, most people visiting or living in California are not expecting thunderstorms on the beach, even if it’s in the forecast.
00:18:59:14 – 00:19:18:23
Speaker 2
That day was particularly tricky. Early in the afternoon. What should be showing here is some large trees that were knocked over, even though most of the event was elevated base convection and quite heavy because you had, like I said, 1500 miles of Cape to produce heavy rain and lightning. A lot of deaths, above 700 millibars.
00:19:18:26 – 00:19:44:08
Speaker 2
We also seem to have snuck in a couple surface based on the very eastern edge of this mix, if you will. And we we saw, a couple pulse storms that produce wet microburst that in its own created a lot of problems, and damage that’s still, still being cleaned up. I’ve looked at some of the radar data I haven’t had really had much time to.
00:19:44:08 – 00:20:07:15
Speaker 2
I was off on Monday, but, it appears to be some pulse cells on the on the eastern edge of the main area of convection. Now that the all the convection elevated or surface base, most of it was elevated ended up turning in Saturday afternoon into a large strata form area of rain which lifted across the region.
00:20:08:00 – 00:20:29:17
Speaker 2
And in itself, it wasn’t light rain, it was tropical rain. So it was very efficient type of rainfall. What I’m going to show next here is the lightning for for the first day, I think it was most impressive. On the first day, the elevated, convection, most impressive on the first day. And so cloud to ground strikes are shown here.
00:20:29:20 – 00:20:58:18
Speaker 2
And you can see San Diego County, kind of in a southwest to northeast fashion with, significant lightning strikes. All right. Now we’re going to transition into, day two of the event as soon as my computer lets me, it should be showing day two rainfall and so imagine the scenario on day two Sunday. It’s a weekend.
00:20:58:18 – 00:21:21:00
Speaker 2
Southern California. Right. Sunny blue skies as you wake up this morning as opposed to thunderstorms the day before. A lot of clouds in the sky. Everything is good. Truly. That’s kind of how things work down here in other parts, some other parts of the country. But if you base your decisions on what you see that morning, so sunny morning, things are looking good.
00:21:21:02 – 00:21:44:06
Speaker 2
Oh, that was a big storm. The hurricane’s gone. Actually, the hurricane hadn’t even come yet. And then this is the rainfall we got starting about noon, in the mountains. So we had intense surface based convection fire up really early, actually, probably about 1130 in the morning between 11 1130 in the morning. We already had strong echoes over the San Diego mountains and heavy rain.
00:21:44:09 – 00:22:09:12
Speaker 2
And so that’s your normal monsoon, you know, air rising over the mountains, convergence. Realize your LFA and you end up getting, and our Seabreeze boundary, was not a normal spot. It was inland, but it was basically over, like the Ramona area, which is just east of, our office. And that plays an important role in really focusing the intense surface space convection.
00:22:09:14 – 00:22:35:09
Speaker 2
So on that day, you should be seeing a slide now, of a little taste of what happened that day between the surface based convection that develops really early, around 11 a am, mostly over the higher terrain and the foothills, and then the widespread round two of elevated convection, which really was, the remnants of Dolores, we had debris flows flooding.
00:22:35:09 – 00:23:23:19
Speaker 2
The image shown up there is the Tijuana River. I want to show you, so not typically what it looked like. I probably should have put this frame first. Synoptic what it looked like. To show you the progress that the surface cyclone, a remnant low, had made and what the upper air pattern was on day two. So, you had a very moist, humid, potential instability atmosphere that triggered around 11:00 am, continued to about 1 p.m., but then you could see on the edge of the radar around 10:11 a.m., you had actual remnants, very disorganized remnants of the surface and mid-level feature of Tropical Cyclone Dolores and, shown on here.
00:23:23:21 – 00:23:48:08
Speaker 2
The actual surface circulation was still well to our southwest, but nonetheless, it had moved much further north for this round two, if you will, of precipitation. Here’s what it looks like on this. This combined precipitable water. And, this shows that the actual low center made some progress northward as you went in time, as it drifted northward in the southerly monsoon flow.
00:23:48:10 – 00:24:11:25
Speaker 2
And you can also notice that, moisture, the initial penetration, warm air advection of moisture, warm conveyor belts, whatever it was, made it all the way to Central California as well before spinning offshore. Getting caught up in that weak upper low that I mentioned to you earlier, rainfall was equally as impressive on on Sunday the 19th.
00:24:11:28 – 00:24:38:21
Speaker 2
That’s when you saw remember earlier we saw 3 to 4in and Ramona, most of that came on Sunday. There were places near Riverside, California which most most of you probably familiar with a valley area, large swath of 2 to 3in of rain in a very short time. And, that area received significant flooding as well. Here’s what the sounding looked like that morning.
00:24:38:23 – 00:25:15:20
Speaker 2
It was, in that afternoon. Sorry. This is more of the afternoon. Extremely tropical. Our percent of the water went up to 2.1in. We were directly in the remnants of the system. And what ends up happening is all that nice surface space convection you saw, that did develop and produced a heavy rain in Riverside and Ramona area that eventually faded about 3 or 4:00 in the afternoon, and we became overcome with not light rain, but like the moderate tropical rains, as the actual remnants moved through and killed a lot of the heating.
00:25:15:22 – 00:25:37:14
Speaker 2
But before it killed the heating, that’s when you saw incredible rainfall of 2 to 4in of rain. It also occurred over Orange County, where we had a mudslide and a fire scar, where the most rain that they’ve seen since the fire started, a fire scar was, was, established a year and a half ago, the most rain they’ve seen.
00:25:37:14 – 00:26:07:14
Speaker 2
And then in a one hour period. So that includes all our, winter events. Since we are a satellite discussion here, here’s the the image of the satellite. Hopefully the infrared and water vapor shows up for you in a second here. And you can see the actual remnants of the, mid-level upper level feature and the cold cloud tops over our area as, the tropical remnants came up, from the south.
00:26:07:16 – 00:26:22:19
Speaker 2
I’m going to skip a slide here to show you, I want to show you some of the impacts here so we don’t run out of time. The slide that should be showing up now is, Dan, do you see someone in a kayak?
00:26:23:01 – 00:26:23:12
Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:26:23:17 – 00:26:53:08
Speaker 2
Okay, so this is in Orange County. Near that fire scar, Silverado Canyon. And, they were seeing rainfall rates of about 3/10 in 15 minutes or, little over a half inch in 30 minutes. And, basically enough rainfall. Not just to cause flash flooding, but to cause debris flow in that fire scar. And the other image to the left, that’s, that’s around riverside area.
00:26:53:11 – 00:27:16:16
Speaker 2
Low lying area where there was flooding, actually. Sorry, that was up a feeling. They basically look the same, which is the high desert area, but the riverside area look the same. I don’t I think I have photos of the but we may not have time to show it. I want, talk briefly about impacts that we don’t necessarily consider as meteorologists as significant, but they are significant.
00:27:16:25 – 00:27:38:29
Speaker 2
You should be seeing a screen here of a baseball field. Is that showing up? Yeah. So the Padres game, as much as we like to poke on the weather in San Diego. So the Padres game, had not been they’ve been postponed. They were postponed earlier this year in May because we had a very wet May, but they actually got the game off afterwards.
00:27:39:01 – 00:28:01:06
Speaker 2
The Padres game was called off due to rain. They had problems with people running on the field and trying to slide on the tarp and security issues like that. Then the angels game up in Orange County was also called off. That was an ESPN Sunday Night Baseball game. So very high profile. That would be like canceling. If you’re not a baseball fan, you’re not going to be able to relate it.
00:28:01:06 – 00:28:32:22
Speaker 2
But that would be like canceling Monday Night Football, big time. And that’s the last time Anaheim canceled. The game was 1995. So to me, those two events in itself, economically and, with the amount of people attending those events and the national coverage was, quite impressive to get to have a rainout in an area just not used to seeing rain outs.
00:28:33:09 – 00:28:57:21
Speaker 2
And then the rest of my slides here are a little bit more of a summary of, of, some of the impacts, but you probably get an idea in a sense, now that, urban areas, mountain areas were were basically inundated by racial. Now, it’s not unusual for our mountains and, and I’m already hearing, you know, out in the mountain, you know, that Ramona area has never seen rain like this.
00:28:57:23 – 00:29:17:18
Speaker 2
They saw rain like this last summer on August 3rd. It just hit a different location. So location, location, kind of like real estate is, is is important to where it actually is coming down. But for the coast here, the difference in this event from last year, we saw thousands of lightning strikes last year on the coast.
00:29:17:18 – 00:29:57:06
Speaker 2
And you probably remember the Venice Beach fatality. But the difference with this event was the elevated instability, the amount of it. So the efficiency of of realizing that instability. And then, out of that instability, the rain rates that were coming down to give Lindbergh Field an inch and a half of rain, just very impressive. I want to show you real quick here before we wrap it up, the, the river gauge down in San Diego, that should be showing up that, those two spikes in itself, that’s that’s something you see in the winter out of that river.
00:29:57:12 – 00:30:19:23
Speaker 2
And it is a flashy river, and it does cut through, a major, urbanization area, but it’s a nice indication of urban downtown San Diego of just how much volume of water was coming through. We didn’t have any swift water rescues, which was a little bit surprising. There were some cars submerged under water in low lying areas.
00:30:19:25 – 00:30:38:06
Speaker 2
There were some cliff rescues on the beaches because people just basically were scrambling from the beach both days, especially Sunday because the morning started off sunny and, scrambling to get up. The if you can imagine a lot of the beaches here that it’s not like just going to a parking lot and getting out and going to the beach.
00:30:38:14 – 00:31:02:04
Speaker 2
There’s steep cliffs, there’s steep walkways and bridges and things like that to get down to some of the beaches. So they became pretty hazardous. When you have, torrents of water coming down the cliffs and mud and, and debris. So I want to highlight here at the end, because I think I’m out of time is the, the data sets that we’ve provided.
00:31:02:04 – 00:31:31:07
Speaker 2
This is a support services. Even though we were, you know, in some cases way too low on the precipitation forecast on the amounts and, and too conservative in that regards. We did get the message out, as best as we thought was possible on Thursday, that this would be a a weekend wide event, very unusual, type of situation with a lot of activity of lightning all the way to the beaches.
00:31:31:14 – 00:31:53:04
Speaker 2
And what should be showing here is kind of our, our prediction or our message to, to core partners about what we expected coming out, of this event. A lot of areas we could improve and fine tuning it. I don’t have time to go into it, but some of the high resolution models were incredibly all over the place.
00:31:53:12 – 00:32:13:17
Speaker 2
Which is not unusual for monsoon, because monsoon is quite predictable in a sense. The models know that you’re going to get forcing over the mountains heating. They know the instability, the Cape, and they may not put it in the right location, but they tell you that the mountains are going to have heavy rain. In this case, some of the high resolution models went from all or nothing.
00:32:13:19 – 00:32:36:23
Speaker 2
They would show heavy rain along the coast next run, almost nothing on the coast and just endless. So, numerical weather prediction. It was definitely a challenge. Getting the message out was a challenge. People did adhere to it. There were people that canceled event, and then there was other events. Del Mar, racetracks, they’ve just invested millions of dollars into the track.
00:32:36:28 – 00:33:00:21
Speaker 2
Had their grand opening that weekend. I, I think they were able to sneak off a lot of it because they had a lot of it on Friday. Former Bruce Jenner was down there, that type of event and, that event, very high profile, right on the beaches, is the type of event, where you hope we’re getting our message out, too, but not necessarily.
00:33:01:01 – 00:33:20:28
Speaker 2
It’s nice when Mom and Pop get the message and cancel their pool party, but it’s nice when you have the big events. A lot of the beaches were closed on Saturday in the morning. It’s difficult to close them, but they did try closing them, because of the amount of lightning. So that’s all I have. Dan, do we have time for any questions or discussion?
00:33:20:28 – 00:33:27:12
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. Any questions or a discussion out there?
00:33:27:18 – 00:33:49:26
Speaker 2
This is Scott. I have a question about what’s the impact of this for the fire season from here until, say, October, November is this I know in the short term, I suppose I could put the damper on anything that happens. But, what’s the long term outlook for a fire season now, given this one event of heavy rain?
00:33:49:28 – 00:34:10:26
Speaker 2
Yeah, it’s a great question. And we have a good analog. Even though it was a different type of storm. And in the month of May, San Diego had 2.5in of rain downtown San Diego. And then the mountains had, quite a bit more than that. That put a big damper on fires. And really, there was no fires up until mid June, late June.
00:34:10:29 – 00:34:39:09
Speaker 2
Now, because the because of the time of year that all the seasonal vegetation, grasses, things like that are already cured, dead. So a lot of that live formerly live moisture and live moisture is not going to absorb any of this rain. Most of it’s going to go into runoff or local absorption. So what it’s going to do is buy us some time because it helps our get fuels like our thousand, our fuels are just completely saturate.
00:34:39:09 – 00:35:10:11
Speaker 2
They’re going to go back to May levels, that we saw with how cool May was and how wet the month of May was. So they’ll respond quickly. And you’re not going to see any major fires now when you get later into August. After a couple of weeks of this, assuming we don’t have any other similar event where the RH is very high, you’re going to see a quick transition where the fire potential, is going to go right back up because of our fine fuels just not being exposed to any of this moisture.
00:35:10:11 – 00:35:34:01
Speaker 2
So it’s almost like a waste of moisture. But it’s the time of year where a lot of things go dormant and they’re seasonal and they’re cured out. And unfortunately, you don’t get a lot of benefit. There’s not also a lot of benefit drought wise. Because other than local ponds that, that they use to pick up water from helicopters and things like that, or feed agriculture or feed, yeah.
00:35:34:01 – 00:36:02:29
Speaker 2
Agriculture and animals and that type of thing. Small retention pond will show some recovery, but overall really no impact. So I think to answer your question, when we go into September and October, we’re going to need, this summer, a couple more events like this before we’re thinking September, October. It’s not a, it’s not a high or above normal fire potential or long term deficits for precipitation remain.
00:36:03:01 – 00:36:23:12
Speaker 2
One season two up to two season in our northern areas, around the San Bernardino Mountains, where that fire I showed you occurred up to two seasons in there of missing precipitation over the past four years. So the long term drought, I think, is going to win out in the short term. But this does buy us some time.
00:36:23:14 – 00:36:25:15
Speaker 2
Thanks.
00:36:25:17 – 00:36:33:21
Speaker 1
Any other questions?
00:36:33:24 – 00:36:41:19
Speaker 1
Okay. Hearing none, we want to, thank Alex for his time. This was, this was great. Alex. Thanks very much.
00:36:41:21 – 00:36:50:25
Speaker 2
Yeah. Thanks for the technical difficulties. I I’m guessing it’s either the the laptop or and or the Wi-Fi, but, sounds like we eventually made it to work out, right?
00:36:51:02 – 00:36:54:16
Speaker 1
Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you again and have a great day, everybody.