What's causing this stormy spell?
The atmosphere surrounding Earth and its weather patterns can get stuck in place for weeks, and right now a pattern is locked in over the northern hemisphere that's delivering storms from the Pacific Ocean to California,, a professor of meteorology and climate science at San Jose State University, told SFGATE.
In recent years, California has more regularly seen a blocking pattern lock into place, with high pressure parked off the West Coast preventing low-pressure systems, which bring rain and wind, from reaching California. The high pressure acts as a wall, diverting storm systems away from the Golden State. Last winter, this pattern led California to receive little rain in January and February.
"This year, we've actually got the opposite of that, where we have extreme storms coming across the Pacific, one after the other," Bridger told SFGATE over the phone Friday."We've got at least another week's worth coming, maybe almost two more weeks of this coming. It's possible to think of this as just the opposite extreme from what we had last year, where a big, high-pressure system kept us dry. This year, we have a string of low-pressure systems coming through.
In this pattern, the jet stream — a current of fast-moving air high in the atmosphere traveling from the Pacific Ocean across the United States — is acting like a conveyer belt that's moving storms across the Pacific and sending them into Northern and Central California. As these storms form over the Pacific, they collect moisture. Bridger said that you can see the storms lined up and developing across the ocean on satellite imagery.
National Weather Service meteorologist Brian Garcia further explained that the jet stream is in a wavy pattern, moving up and down as it travels from west to east. In this pattern, the jet stream steers storms from the tropical Pacific into California. In the tropics, the systems pull in moisture, and when storms reach a certain threshold of moisture, they're often referred to as atmospheric rivers.
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