Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Record Warmth, Serious Rain

Welcome to Winter! At 11:48 Monday night, the earth's tilted axis reached the point when it is tipped the farthest from the sun on its northern end and the boreal world officially began winter; summer kicked off in the austral hemisphere. But, on the eastern edge of North America it is winter by name only and long standing records are going to come crashing down on Christmas eve and likely on Christmas day, as well. Temps tomorrow will be well into the 70's here in the Old Dominion but the entire eastern seaboard will be cooking and records will tumble.  An El Nino influenced ridge in the jet stream is getting the credit/blame for the warmth and is likely causing the deep trough out west that has brought welcomed snow and rain to the drought stricken west coast. The set up is forecast to continue into 2016. Welcome to the Earth, there is nothing but change coming.
Yesterday we had ground water from the rain, today we got runoff - lots of runoff.  An inch plus of rain in about an hour had water running everywhere and the Hershey Dog Creek within inches of it's banks, rolling and roiling.I've seen it that full but not for quite a while! There was water running everywhere today! And, likely more to come. Happy Holladays and even though damp, I hope you got out and enjoyed today on Earth.