Monday, September 29, 2014

Positively Pixelated

You don't see this every day, but for the 24-hour period ending at 1200 UTC (0600 MDT) Sunday, all of Utah received measurable precipitation, at least as estimated by the National Weather Service's Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service.

Source: http://water.weather.gov/precip/
The Salt Lake City forecast office put together the graphic below summarizing the remarkable increase in river flows during the event.

Source: NWS
How about that Beaver Dam Wash in Arizona, which went from no flow to 11,800 cubic feet per second!

Source: NWS
In case you are wondering where Beaver Dam Wash is, it runs along the Utah Nevada border and eventually empties into the Virgin River in NW Arizona (see the BEA in the map below).

Source: NWS

3 comments:

  1. It looks to me that there was a huge correlation between elevation and rainfall amounts.

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    Replies
    1. The analysis scheme used by the group assumes a climatological increase of precipitation with altitude. I haven't had a chance to examine the data sufficiently to see if that was a good assumption for this event or not.

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  2. When I search about this in on-line, I found that there is a slight relationship between elevation and climate. As elevation increases, the average temperature decreases. I may sound stupid, but this is random thought that came to me while going through this article, is this by any means gonna affect our hydrological service?

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