Three storms threaten to strike U.S. at once
By Seth Borenstein
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON ? Moisture-laden storms from the north, west and south are
likely to converge on much of America over the next several days in what
could be a once-in-a-generation onslaught, meteorologists forecast
yesterday.
If the gloomy computer models at the U.S. Climate Prediction Center are
right, we'll see this terrible trio:
=95 The "Pineapple Express," a series of warm, wet storms heading east
from Hawaii, drenching Southern California and the far Southwest,
already beset with heavy rain and snow. Flooding, avalanches and
mudslides are possible.
=95 An "Arctic Express," a mass of cold air chugging south from Alaska
and Canada, bringing frigid air and potentially heavy snow and ice to
the usually mild-wintered Pacific Northwest.
=95 An unnamed warm, moist storm system from the Gulf of Mexico
drenching the already-saturated Ohio, Tennessee and Mississippi valleys.
Expect heavy river flooding and springlike tornadoes.
Meteorologists caution that their predictions are only as good as their
computer models. And forecasts are less accurate the further into the
future they attempt to predict. "The models tend to overdo the formation
of these really exciting weather formations for us," said Mike Wallace,
a University of Washington atmospheric scientist.
Yet the more Wallace studied the models, the more he became convinced
that something wicked was coming this way.
"It all fits together nicely," he said. "There's going to be weather in
the headlines this weekend, that's for sure."
The National Weather Service yesterday issued a statement warning that
several inches of snow could fall by the end of the weekend in the
central Puget Sound lowlands, including Seattle. The snow could begin as
soon as tomorrow night, particularly in areas north of Seattle, with a
growing chance of snow farther south Friday, the weather service said.
Highs through this weekend are expected to be in the low- to mid-30s,
with lows in the mid- to high-20s.
"Don't sound the alarm," weather service meteorologist Johnny Burg said.
"But tell everybody to just pay attention to future forecasts."
The three storms are likely to meet in the nation's midsection and cause
even more problems, sparing only areas east of the Appalachian
Mountains. Property damage and a few deaths are likely, forecasters
said.
"You're talking a two- or three-times-a-century type of thing," said
prediction-center senior meteorologist James Wagner, who has been
forecasting storms since 1965. "It's a pattern that has a little bit of
everything."
The exact time and place of the predicted 1-2-3 punch changes slightly
with every new forecast. But the National Weather Service, in its weekly
"hazards assessment," alerted meteorologists and disaster specialists
yesterday that flooding and frigid weather could start as early as
Friday and stretch into early next week, if not longer.
"It's a situation that looks pretty potent," said Ed O'Lenic, the
Climate Prediction Center's operations chief. "A large part of North
America looks like it's going to be affected."
Kelly Redmond, deputy director of the Western Regional Climate Center at
the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nev., where an unusual 18 inches
of snow is on the ground, said the expected heavy Western rains could
cause avalanches. Southern California and western Arizona have had three
to four times the normal precipitation for the area since Oct. 1.
"Somebody is in for something pretty darn interesting," Redmond said.
Somebody already knows.
A wintry blast yesterday closed schools and glazed roads with ice and
snow in the Rockies and on the central Plains, a 40-mile stretch of
Interstate 5 was closed north of Los Angeles after up to 3 feet of snow
fell in the region, and new flooding hit northeast of Phoenix, killing
one man and leaving another missing.
Various levels of winter-weather advisories and storm warnings were in
effect into this morning from Arizona to Connecticut, the weather
service said.
Up to 2 feet of snow was possible in Colorado, where one traffic
fatality was blamed on the weather and an avalanche blocked U.S. 550
about 40 miles north of Durango, the weather service said.
The last time a similar situation seemed to be brewing ? especially in
the West ? was in January 1950, O'Lenic said. Seattle received 21 inches
of snow, killing 13 people in an extended freeze, and Sunnyvale, Calif.,
was the scene of an unusual tornado.
The same scenario played out in 1937, when there was record flooding in
the Ohio River Valley, said Wagner, of the prediction center.
He was worried about the Ohio and Tennessee River valleys as the places
where the three nasty storm systems could meet, probably with snow,
thunderstorms, severe ice storms and flooding. Some of those areas
already are flooded.
The converging storms are being steered by high-pressure ridges off
Alaska and Florida and are part of a temporary change in world climate
conditions, O'Lenic said.
Over equatorial Indonesia, east of where a tsunami hit Dec. 26,
meteorologists have identified a weather-making phenomenon called the
Madden-Julian Oscillation. It's producing extra-stormy weather to its
east. Similar oscillations in the north Atlantic and north Pacific are
changing global weather patterns. Add this year's mild El Ni=F1o ? a
warming of the equatorial Pacific ? which is unusually far west, Redmond
said.
Seattle Times staff reporter Warren King contributed to this report;
yesterday's weather was reported by The Associated Press.