Since the historic storm on Monday, you’re probably hearing more about atmospheric rivers.
When the weather becomes big news here in California, it’s usually about atmospheric rivers.
It’s not something we used to hear about some years back. Sure we had low pressure systems and big storms, but you didn’t hear a lot of TV weather forecasters using the term atmospheric rivers
So want is an atmospheric river exactly?
The meteorologists’ official description defines it as a long narrow ribbon of moisture that carries water vapor from the tropics. The term Pineapple Express used to be how it was commonly described. The term atmospheric river debuted in the 1990s and caught on because of the amount of water these ribbons can contain.
A researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at U-C San Diego says a series of these atmospheric rivers can cause a “cascading chain of impacts.”
And all the cascading can lead to flooding as we saw tragically here in San Diego.
Mayor Todd Gloria said this week that mayors in other states have told him of the harsher weather in their areas of the country in recent years too.
While there may still be arguments about climate change, there certainly is no doubt that the weather is certainly making more news these days.
(Photo Getty Images)
Photo: Getty Images