Friday, June 17, 2011

April Showers Bring May Showers Bring June Showers...

It's no surprise to anyone who lives in Salt Lake that this has been an incredibly cool and wet spring.  I just took a look at the climate data for May and it is impressive.

For Utah as a whole, May was the 8th coldest in the 117 year period examined by the National Climatic Data Center.
Source: NOAA/NCDC
And the 2nd wettest.
Source: NOAA/NCDC
As shown in the analysis below, May was characterized by anomalous 500-mb troughing over the entire northwest United States.

Source: NOAA/ESRL
Persistent troughing over the northwest in May was reflective of a pattern that has dominated the entire spring (Mar–Apr–May), as shown in the 90-day 500-mb height anomaly analysis for the period from 4 Mar – 1 Jun.  Note the scale change, which makes the anomalies seem a bit more ominous than those above.

Source: NOAA/ESRL
And the troughs just keep coming.  The latest NAM puts a deep upper-level trough over Idaho by 1800 UTC (1200 MST) Sunday.  With 700-mb temperatures falling to near 0C, there will be cool rain in the Salt Lake Valley and snow in the Wasatch above 9500 feet yet again.

No comments:

Post a Comment