As a Californian, I would love to see you do videos on the other end of the extreme spectrum: the famous California firestorms (1991 Berkeley, 2003 SoCal, 2017 Wine Country, Camp Fire to name a few). Ive actually thought about what you could bring to the table in discussing that phenomena
Dixie and Caldor too, the span of land those beasts covered is impressive. Especially Dixie my goodness 💔 So many “good” fires to be covered in detail sadly
Yes to all of these! I grew up in San Diego and while I was too young at the time to remember the 2003 fire season, I've heard so many stories from my parents and also am able to remember the 2007 SoCal firestorm very well. I think it would be especially interesting if we could get a video comparing and contrasting a lot of these firestorms because of how much more common they've become over the past few years. Especially when you consider the jump between the 2003 Cedar Fire being the largest in California state history, only for that record to be broken in 2017 with the Thomas fire, then again in 2018 with the Mendocino Complex, then again in 2020, and again in 2021. A 14 year record suddenly being broken 4 times over in 5 years? I've always been interested to find out what's going on weather wise there.
In 2003, you couldn't do PE outside. They made us eat inside (my HS, Santiago, Corona, had over 5K students). The ash on all the cars in the morning was CRAZY!!!!!!
@@tankeater Yeah in the last couple years, while I was still in school we had smoke days where we just all stayed home since it got so bad. And the last couple years we basically just have a smoke season where it's all smoky outside for a month or two from around october to november. This year we haven't really had that though, at least not in Sacramento.
The snow rapidly melting by heavy rain is no joke. That's the same situation that caused major flooding here in Portland back in '96. I was a kid at the time so all I remember is it raining a lot and being happy that I didn't have to go to school lol
Same happened for central valley that same winter I believe, maybe 1997 I was a kid but I remember seeing people on their roofs on the news and then seeing a park under 4’ of water near Sac. Awful set up, this last winter was especially bad because it wasn’t just the mountains with snow, the 2500-4000’ areas also had 1-5’
So glad you covered this! Dealt with this winter firsthand, and it was the craziest winter I’ve ever seen, no where near 2017. Local flooding was extreme, it snowed super low twice, and it seemed like it would never stop raining. Getting 7 inches of shear downpouring rain in 1 day is just like it sounds. One of our drought-ridden reservoirs went from 20% to 102%, flowing over the spillway for the first time in decades. So much was happening all at once. From December to April it was atmospheric river after atmospheric river. This is finally a video that does this crazy winter justice!
Thank you for sharing this with us. As a native of California’s High Desert (59 years), I am used to having two seasons of either extreme heat or cold-linked together by gusty winds. I wouldn’t trade it for anything because the lack of rain gives us about 350 nights of starry skies. This winter was a little different. Over the years I have seen winters of intense rain. The late 1970s gave us a lot of flooding after one of the worst droughts that I can remember. It happened again in 1982 and 1983 when we were hammered with non-stop rain. But neither of those compared to this last year. It wasn’t so much that we had one storm of heavy rain, it was non-stop rain from one week to the next. The beauty of that rain was that we had the most beautiful wild flowers this Spring. The desert and hills looked like they were layered in gold for several weeks.
I know you guys probably wished it would've been spread out more but you guys did desperately need the rain. Unfortunately, droughts rarely end gradually, especially in a state like California.
It's nice to finally see an extreme weather channel cover california. It's such a criminally under-discussed place for extreme weather events, just because it doesn't have tornadoes or thunderstorms very often. But that doesn't make the region boring. Great video!
Usually when people think of natural disasters and California they think of San Andreas or Howard Fault line related earthquakes; but CA’s varied microclimates makes it such an immensely diverse state in terms of what weather can occur.
Excellent work as usual dude! I've been a native SoCal resident my entire life, and it was rough down here but not nearly as bad as up north. For the most part it was just weeks of light yet steady rain, but that tends to add up over time. We had a lot of flooding scares and even had some snow flurries, which people were freaking out over. Where I live is right by some dairies, and the dirt roads in the area were completely flooded and impossible to drive on, which I learned the hard way lol. The tornado in Montebello was definitely freaky, because we never have tornados. All of a sudden it was all anyone could talk about, and I'm sure it was still on people's minds when we had Hilary earlier this year.
here in utah we benefited in a record breaking way as well. as a skier i am so grateful to have been here for the GREATEST WINTER EVER. it will be legendary for years and years. Alta Ski Area ended with a total of 903" for the season. it was truly amazing.
My sister lives up in Agoura, north of Malibu. There's only one road in and out of where she lives and it was closed for almost two weeks after the last event. She's been through all kinds of natural phenomenon living up there for 25+ years, so she and her two sets of neighbors were prepared. She had waterfalls on her property most of the spring and the wildflowers were amazing. They were lucky compared to up north.
one plus of the extra rain here was that we had the most incredible blooming of flowers in the spring, I will always remember the spring of 2023 being verdant and colorful
This is excellent work mate, I lived through this event. It actually is what got me into meteorology as I was fascinated by the insane amount of rain and snow and the reappearance of Lake Tulare. Thank you for making this one!!
I hope they encourage Tulare lake to stay. Some people are lobbying for it but have to contend with the family who drained the lake for agriculture, bought the new dry lakebed, and have held local power as a familly since then. They even diverted flood waters onto their competitors farms.
I'm an atmospheric science student in my second year at UC Davis (First year at the time) who has lived in CA my entire life I enjoyed the wet winter, I remember just staring at radar as the MAR 21 storm moved in as it looked almost tropical in nature as it approached the shoreline.
Do they teach you about geoengineering? Because that is the cause of the extreme weather, dont need a degree to see it, just look up and pay attention....take notes, daily.
@@AdventureAwaits1111hahahha I bet they ignore that as much as men saying they are now woman because wearing a dress. Most democrats ignore things and pretend it's all good. Unless it's a man who is strong. They attack them at every turn.
Phenomenal video! So much to learn from you always. I think this video was really needed, since little to nobody expected last winter’s incredible pattern. Keep up the amazing work!
No doubt it is always sad to wait so long between videos, but if that's what it takes to make these well-conceived, perfectly-produced videos on interesting topics, I'm all for it! You truly do such high-quality videos with intelligent commentary and interesting information.
I wasn't expecting to see a video on my local disaster weather so soon on this channel! Lifelong NorCal local here. It was HORRIBLE. I was living in Oakland at the time and here's some of the things that the weather story doesn't capture: -you didn't mention the raw sewage backflows in SF that lasted until JUNE OF THIS YEAR -none of our infrastructure, including basic housing was designed for this so a lot of things like water heaters (often flameless units) were designed to withstand it; my property management company tried to tell us to wait a week to get our water heater fixed. I could not shower, cook safely or clean for three full days. I couldn't even wash my hands, the water was basically just above freezing coming from the tap and actually caused skin chap; lots of hand sanitizer was used up that week -this period of insanity lasted FOR FOUR MONTHS STRAIGHT -clothing here is necessarily thinner as we typically have super high highs and mids for lows; my polished concrete home flooring ensured that I wore shoes and socks indoors at all times, bundled up in five damn shirts at a time and at one point moved my cat into my bed to keep her warm, she was struggling too (she's very round but even a chubby kitty can only stay so warm) -SF Bay? Yeah built during the Victorian era, the walls in my split building "apartment" were damaged by the constant deluge. It's been almost a year. I've moved. All of my clothes still have a whiff of mildew to them. It could be psychosomatic but I don't feel I'll ever be free of that stink -the weather and floods killed almost all of the chickens in Santa Cruz county due to washing them away or exacerbating avian flu issues; I could not find eggs in a single grocery in Alameda county for two full months -bought sandbags for the first time in my life -not my first tornado experience (that would be in Fairfield in the 1990s; Mather AFB gets them every now and again it's not unheard of) but a friend who had just moved from Seattle to Los Angeles was terrified and all I could do was offer a resigned 🤷🏾 because we were having our own problems 8 hours north -collapsed roofs, SO MANY COLLAPSED ROOFS (from the water no snow) -the most dangerous highway in the state was shut down because CHP was already overloaded, cutting a huge artery of travel between the Bay and Sacramento off briefly; I often use this road to bypass tolls. I was not upset by this tho as it's right on top of an American River levee largely and the drawbridges got dodgy -my bedroom window flooded in the middle of a work call and shut off my internet; my job is largely healthcare related, I was helping someone else with THEIR emergency while having my own😂 I could go on but you get the gist. I'm 38. I've seen everything the state can throw at us, I have never been as exhausted or stressed out as I was by this period. I'm also pretty sure it contributed to the sudden passing of one of the best friends I've ever had in May by complicating the medication supply chain for months after and delaying their insulin raw materials getting to the manufacturers (Oakland is the second largest port in the state) I just hope we collectively take lessons from this but I fear we won't. I personally learned a LOT and am making a lot of difficult decisions about home buying in the future because of it. I don't think I'll be staying. I'm moving out of the country eventually but I have a kid to worry about who I'd like to have a home to go to and if this pattern is any indication (combined with space weather data, huge geek here) I anticipate more of the same this year in Sacramento-which is below sea level and therefore way more flood prone. This state will always be home. When I go abroad I don't tell people I'm American, I tell them I'm Californian, that's how much joy it brings me to come from here! But I also don't see the funds we pay in taxes (14% income tax just as a low paid full time worker, massive vehicle registration taxes, most expensive fuel in the USA despite being an oil production and refinement state, unreasonable property taxes that drove my lifelong 2nd gen California dad to leave or risk never retiring, worst roads in America, higher income poverty level due to extreme cost of living and 5th largest economy globally by itself) being used well and I am seriously looking elsewhere to become stable enough to afford to leave (my spouse is 6000mi away in Europe, it sucks lol). I don't like our governor, most of us don't, but his influential aunt's brand recognition keeps getting him elected and I'm growing increasingly despondent that things will always be this way. Maybe it will get better, we'll see. Cheers!
As a resident of the foothills I always find myself wondering during the crazy winters whether getting into the City of Sacramento will become impossible sometime. So far it's not happened while I've needed to go down there, but I remember either Watt or Howe across the American River having water up to the underside of the car, as well as the reports of levees breaching as a kid. I feel like the sentiment of being Californian before being American is fairly common, we're such a unique place. While we have our problems I find the tradeoffs of even thinking about living anywhere else to simply not be worth it, so I may as well try to do my part to help make it better via my professional pursuits.
Great stuff, Steve. Love your videos as always. I live in the greater San Diego area, further south than where most of the atmospheric river shenanigans took place. For MONTHS we'd keep hearing about this onslaught of weather barraging the north and central coast, only to look outside and see a mild drizzle, 4 out of 5 times. It felt like there were only a few days with moderate rain down here. On the one hand, we were spared from all the damages associated with the storms. On the other, it almost just felt like a slightly wetter winter, with none of the fun that comes with unusual weather.
There was nothing fun about this weather event. In the San Bernardino mountains, most people were snowed in completely, many for weeks. My family was fortunate throughout but the majority were miserable. Our only local grocery store completely collapsed. People were without food, warmth, and basic goods for a long time. Completely unlike anything that has happened for a long time, so no one was prepared.
My wife and I live in the mountains of San Bernardino National Forest, and I can tell you that February 2023 was absolutely nuts! We expect snow in the mountains around that time of year here, but in a single two-week period we got around 10 feet of snow. We were outside digging snow for the full two weeks. By the time the snow stopped, we were exhausted and on the verge of collapse. I am happy we dug though because many of our neighbors did not and had to be rescued as they were buried alive in their houses. Some people had their roofs collapse or gas mains exploded from the weight of the snow on the gas meters outside, causing leaks. Much love and respect to the meteorologist who gave us about a week or so of warnings concerning the impending blizzard on the horizon. We had plenty of supplies and were able to wait the 2 and a half weeks for the roads to reopen that went down the mountain. Many up here that did not take the warnings seriously ran out of supplies early, meaning they either had to hike out or call in to be rescued by emergency services. They were definitely memories that we will never forget for as long as we live.
Amazing work! It was crazy being in the middle of that winter as I lived 45 minutes east of Sacramento. It was pretty insane seeing it pour rain much more often than usual in early January. It did snow twice in my area that same winter (just about 1000ft above sea level) while the sierras were getting crazy amounts of snow. Even at one point some thunderstorms did occur at 3am right over my town. Woke up to see trees rocking violently and pouring rain violently hitting my bedroom window. Crazy experience I wouldn’t forget. Again, good work and keep it up!
Placer county eh, beautiful area! Elevations like Foresthill above 2800-3000’ got like 3-4’ of snow so ridiculous for anywhere below 4000’ lol. I am only early 30s but I heard from many old timers about how 3-4’ used to not be uncommon before the 70-80s so maybe we are just getting back to the way it used to be. Two years in a row seeing 3’ + snow depths below 4k ft
The winter of 2022-2023 was also very significant in Utah, where it effectively ended our major drought for the time being. Before that winter, almost 70% of the state was in the worst drought category, and now only a tiny part of the state is considered to be in drought at all. It was the single wettest year on record for Utah, completely smashing the previous record, and some parts of the mountains received over 900 inches of snow. I personally loved it, and hope that it happens again soon.
Hey, I've Lived in eastern Canada my whole life and I would love a video explaining how we have some of the harshest Winters in the inhabited world. Your content is always fascinating to watch, even for somebody who never really thinks about weather
Great video! Small correction- Highway 9 not 19 was shut down here in the mountains. We went a total of 53 days without power in the Santa Cruz mountains. Had snow, closed roads, land slides, downed power lines, mud slides… you name it. Craziest winter I’ve experienced. Thanks for the informative video- hoping this winter is less extreme!
SoCal resident here. This was the first rain season I thoroughly watched, including paying attention to atmospheric pressure. As for the hail/graupel storm, it was probably one of the weirdest weather events I've ever seen. It was midday, around 2:30-ish P.M when the storm rolled into my area. The difference was literally night and day. I have a picture on the California freeway in between the scattered sunny clouds to the south and a rolling black fog to the north, with a dense network of clouds in the center. Some other notable events you didn't mention were the tropical storm which hit in August (Kay; it didn't do any damage but it led to light rain and ash during a really dry season), the month of February 2019 where some of the harshest rainstorms hit the state nearly nonstop, and recently with Hilary, which also wasn't too notable, only bringing somewhat heavy rain on a warm day, but produced beautiful images at sunset as it was moving into the area.
Your attention to detail and hard work is evident in all of these videos, you do such a good job condensing dense concepts into videos that are easily accessible. Kudos!
This really brought more understanding to why California is so hot and cold (with weather patterns). But it also highlights to me how come when those dry periods end how come California isn’t equipped with more water storage or holding ability with the drought periods. Excellent video as always can’t wait for the next. Would love to see a video about more northeastern tornadoes in the past that have been significant.
There’s plenty of storage in the form of aquifers. The challenge is refilling them from the runoff. But there is also the challenge of controlling the runoff from threatening lives and property. California has a lot of flood control infrastructure, but it was overwhelmed by the extreme rainfall of 2022-23. A big question is whether last winter’s weather pattern was a fluke or a new pattern. And the answer is that we don’t know and it will take years to answer that question with any amount of predictability. And here’s the thing: preparing for the worst case scenario is expensive. Making vast flood control improvements across the state to cope with flukes is a waste of resources. It’s doable because we understand the engineering, but it’s an opportunity cost. Who pays for it? The taxpayers of course, but what is the funding mechanism? State? Federal? Storage of the surplus water from extreme wet seasons is less well understood and suffers from the same uncertainty about changing climate patterns. Sure, you can construct flood plains around rivers, but those require a lot of real estate. Returning to the question of opportunity costs and limited resources, if the 10+ year droughts are also a new normal weather pattern, should California spend more money for flood control and water storage, or should it devote those resources into increasing fire suppression efforts? That’s not cheap either. We often complain about the inaction and ineffectiveness of politicians, but a major reason for that is politicians are subject to competing interests (not to mention hard-to-predict shifts in the political climate-the other climate change). Politicians who “do the right thing” have short careers, while politicians who engage in partisan theater tend to last longer (the Matt Gaetzes and Marjorie Taylor Greens). Setting aside the culture war clowns, the mainstream politicians also face paralyzing issues. Conservative constituents want lower taxes but also want infrastructure improvements. Liberals want more social programs (and despite the stereotype, they don’t want to raise taxes willy nilly). I don’t want to turn this into a political debate. I just wanted to point out that both sides of the political spectrum are hamstrung.
Great vid Weatherbox. I remember vividly in early January there was actually a tornado warning for parts of Central CA at around 3-4 AM, I awoke to the sound of thunder and heavy rain, and I remember seeing Midwest-level lightning outside. Still the craziest weather I’ve ever experienced.
Around the 4:30 point of the video, where you gave us a visual of where the spinning L press system is located, and the cold front that accompanied the storm. I don't see many weather enthusiasts or professionals showing people exactly what a low pressure system is, where the center of low pressure is, or even where a H press area is located. Over the oceans you can see the spin alot better due to the fact there isn't anything over the ocean that could disrupt the storm. Where in the Plains, Midwest, and Southeast. The storms are broken up over the mountainous terrain out west, then reorganize as it makes its way eastward. Reason I mention this is because I have a few kiddos that watch all kinds of weather uploads with me, and when I see something that could help their brains when learning. I do what I can to keep them interested lol. Love the channel! Thanks.
i live in San Diego and March 1st of 2023 was the worst. we experienced hail all day and the high temperature was only 47f. the wind knocked down several trees in my neighborhood. the roofs at our school were like waterfalls.
100 inches of snow in the Sierra? Some spots reached 1,000+ inches! My friends vacation home near the UC Sierra Snow lab got 700 inches, we had to clear snow out of the driveway in mid July. It was 85 degrees.
It surprises me how often weather commentators confuse snowpack and cumulative snowfall. He must’ve read the 126” maximum snowpack in Lake Tahoe and assumed that was the total winter 22/23 snowfall.
I live right between San Francisco and San Jose and December 31st 2022 was a day I'll never forget. I woke up and the side of our house was a river, the ground was unable to absorb water due to so all of it just accumulated above ground. My dad and I were building trenches in the backyard to divert water away from the house but it was too late. One by one each room started filling with water. A family friend and I attempted to get sandbags at the local distribution center, but all roads to the distribution area were submerged. On the drive down, sewers were shooting water up into the air and downtown was under several feet of water. We even saw people on kayaks and stranded cars below train underpasses. We slept in shifts that night removing water from the house with buckets. The house flooded 4 more times that winter but none were as bad as the first one.
So well broken down as always!! I live in Ontario Canada but as a longhaul trucker I was in California during some of the madness last year and was hoping you'd cover it! I'm very fluent with tornados and severe thunderstorms cuz that's what was my main intellectual driver growing up but I was fascinated to learn more about these ARs!
whenever I come back here I always hope to see you have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, I hope to see it happen some day. you absolutely get the "the most underrated weather TH-camr award" in my book
This young man single handed got me more interested in weather, the patterns that come with and the unpredictability of it all. Thank you sir love the content
Such a fascinating video that explains all these weather concepts so well! As an LA resident I dealt with my fair share of rain this past winter. I believe it was the February 27th storm you mentioned (or if not sometime around then) when my mom was driving back to her place from work, and while waiting at a stoplight in Venice Beach it started to hail. The strangest part was that it was actually sunny out so she hadn't been expecting it at all. The entire winter was pretty confusing to say the least. Though I will say if there was one sort of benefit, it was that when SoCal got hit with a tropical storm this past August (which was nearly unheard of in California) everyone knew to be prepared for floods because of how bad the flooding was during the winter. Very interested to see what this winter will hold. Thank you for this video, despite all the damage the rains caused, it's very cool to be able to understand what exactly is going on in the atmosphere to cause all of this
I had lived in Reno at the time. That winter from end of December to February was one of the most brutal in a very long time. Everyone had stayed inside, and you would hear news about communities up in Tahoe trapped and unable to leave and worried if the roof would collapse due to the snow or if they would run out of food. In the end it extended the Skiing/Snowboarding season from March till end of July. Some of the resorts did close during the storms as it was a blizzard, or the lifts didn't work because the snowpack was so high, or all the mechanisms were frozen solid.
You can blame it all on me. I moved from Texas to the Bay area in December last year, and bragged about how I didn't have to ever deal with southeast Texas weather again. Had some legit bad memories of Harvey too, and I guess I deserve it.
My first reaction to 5.5" of rain in a day in Sacramento was, "Is that all?" As a native Houstonian, my idea of extreme rain events is somewhat skewed!
As a person who lives in the Bay Area, I distinctly remember waking up to see snow on the nearby mountains one morning and listening to some people in my art class at school discuss bunking class to go sledding.
this is so interesting to learn about. northwestern colorado got absolutely pounded with snow last winter too so i shouldn’t be surprised it was a crazy winter other places as well!
Excellent job with the video! It was crazy out here in California last year. The rain was much needed and I’m glad it was sufficient enough to pull the state out of drought conditions
Finally someone covers the extreme winter of last season out west. Im surprised no one is linking the influx of moisture to the eruption of Honga-Tonga Honga Haipai. That eruption injected incredible ammouts of water into the atmosphere. Has to he the culprit.
I may be a little biased as I live on the coast of Lake Superior, but I think you should do a more in depth episode about extreme lake effect snow bands, maybe like the storm that hit Buffalo last November or something similar, cover all the things that good into causing them and the clean up efforts in places that get a lot of lake effect snow. I go to MTU in houghton michigan so it’s an ever-present topic and I’d love to hear more about some of the more extreme lake-effect events
@weatherbox, I was one of your first 1000 subscribers and I’m still surprised your channel hasn’t gotten half a million subscribers yet. Keep up the great videos!
I really appreciate this detailed video on last winter! I live in the Santa Cruz Mountains… near 17 and Summit Rd. I pretty much had a breakdown from the point of the snow storm (after however many storms already) until the last AR rolled through in… late March? April? I can’t remember, but I was done with it. We always get dumped with rain in these mountains (at least more so than the valley), and we are used to the problems that causes with landslides and whatnot, but it was seemingly never ending. We never got enough of a break to dry out. We lost so many trees, we now have a landslide on our property we don’t know what to do with, my barn was - and still is - damaged. It was rough. I’m trying to prep as best I can if we get another extra wet winter, but if I’m being honest, I haven’t done enough. 😣 I will say though, I had been dreaming of sledding down our back hill since we moved into our house and I got to do that all day with my younger son after the snowfall, so I did manage to pack in some positive memories despite the mental exhaustion. 😅 We get snow where we are every few years, but not so much that sledding would be possible, so that was a bonus. Core memories made. 😊
I lived in Southern California during this winter and tbh I loved all that rain. I have always loved rain. Southern California, not so much. But it wasn’t so bad in Orange County anyway. What was trippy was how green everything stayed even as winter faded out. It just kept raining, just enough. We went to Palm Springs before we moved and the desert was green all the way there. It was wild.
Every time I think I know something about weather patterns and climate, I watch one of these and am once again humbled. Awesome dive into what happened, really appreciate all the work that's clearly put into gathering all the data and graphically distilling it down for us regular folk to digest. Also love seeing content about the west coast and Pacific based weather. As this video highlights it can be an environment of extremes just like many other places in the US.
I work directly in river monitoring and flood prediction in the central coast of California. Needless to say last year will stick in our minds for quite some time. This video was incredibly well done and showcased a lot of insane footage I haven’t even seen yet!
Awesome video! I live in California and experienced all of this firsthand. A river just outside of my neighborhood overflowed and flooded across the road it was insane. School was cancelled for 2 days. First time I’ve ever heard of school being cancelled due to weather for my area. A nearby town was extremely inundated the National Guard was called out. It was something I’ll never forget.
Where I live in California it wasnt as bad we got like 2-3in of snow compared to what others got it was basically a regular heavy rain day here with a bit of snow so schools were still open
ive always had an interest in natural disasters yknow volcanoes and such, but the way you present your videos has rlly kindled my interest in meteorology and weather patterns, to the point where im honestly considering studying them in college, so thank u for making ur content as ive never seen anything like it and its rlly inspired me!
I’ve been unpacking my room for the last few days and slowly going through all your videos as I go. They’re great things to put on in the background, as I have an interest in severe weather and you are incredible at making such complex things easily digestible while still maintaining both scientific integrity and empathy towards those affected by the weather. Thank you for the videos! PS, if you’re looking for topics, do you think you could cover the 2021 Snowstorm in Texas? I remember it happening so I would especially love to hear your take on how it happened and what went down.
I live right outside the snow area in NorCal, and so last year it actually snowed in my area to the point where my friends were able to have a snow ball fight
I'm not from California but im from Utah and we saw the wettest winter here in salt lake ever it was a crazy winter and we sure needed it we were in severe drought as well. Hoping this year isnt as bad we need another wet winter to really be out of concern. Thanks for the lesson buddy!!!!
My father is a wildland firefighter, and his comings and goings in the summer are forecasted by the atmospheric rivers of the winter before. Where they strike.... Or don't strike... Set the pattern of fire danger and activity for months ahead of time. Since my social life was dependent on him being gone, I would pay close attention to these patterns. Now being an active hiker and camper, we'll plot our summer trips based on winter snow and rain levels. I applaud someone who points out these patterns and their changes, this channel amongst those excellent sources. For last year, was watching these developments closely as I had a sleeper car booked on the coast starlight, which traverses those slopes near the coast. Thankfully flooding and land slides and repairs to the tracks were settled by early April. Seeing southern California that green was quite unusual.
Hi! Is it ok if you did a video on the Arizona heat this past year? At least a hundred people in my town here were hospitalized due to heat stroke. Dozens of cactuses collapsed in the long lasting heat. It was in the 70's all the way up until Christmas. Even now, in January, it's still reaching mid 60s during noon. I've lived in AZ for 17 years but it's never been this bad for this *long*, heat normally dies off during October and starts back up around march.
I live in Danville CA, it is a very rich (and usually quiet) town in the east bay hills. The town just so happens to fill in a valley that has a creek with a relatively wide catchment area. During the last few days of December, light but constant rainfall must have saturated the soil (according to my theory). On December 31st, we were predicted to have a large storm that would drop an inch- and inch and a half of rain and was supposed to peter out around 10:00. By 10 it was coming down harder than a Texas thunderstorm. The creek was having to take in all the water from both our hills, and the valley adjacent to ours. By 11 it was overflowing, my dad and I went to scout out what was happening. El Capitan was already flooded knee deep (later I would learn it was over the average person's head at its peak), firefighters were trying to unclog storm drains, people were getting worried. My dad and I walked around the neighborhood and watched as storm drains, one by one, started to back up. Creek water (at that point it was more akin to a raging torrent on par with the colorado river in the grand canyon) was flowing out of storm drains and into the street. Obviously that is not supposed to happen. Our backyard drains were faulty and clogged (we didn't know this previously because we had recently moved back), and the back yard was starting to seriously flood. It was only a few minutes after we got back home, trying to find a way to drain the back yard, that the storm drain in front of our house started to back up. Luckily our house turned out to be on the top of an incline, but the houses down the street weren't so lucky. Muddy water was pouring down into the dead end street and filling it up. They were lucky their storm drain was somehow able to keep from backing up during the storm because that thing kept chugging along. I went down there a couple times to check on them and see what I could do, but there was little I could do, the water on the sidewalk was knee high, the wheels of one of the minivans a little further up the street were almost submerged. This story is still pretty long, so I will try to summarise what happened after this. We spent the next 45ish minutes trying to bail out the back yard (I'm not kidding), then trying to bail out the water coming out of the storm drain. We did this by tossing it onto soil patches in the hopes it would absorb some of it. Anyway, apparently, a bunch of debris had blocked up the creek near a bridge and that was what caused it to overflow into the storm drains. At one point, we heard chainsaws sounding far off, and a few minutes later, the storm drains reversed back out and the street drained in a matter of minutes. Not a moment too soon because our back yard drain had its outlet near the storm drain and the creek water was just about to start pouring back into it. Anyway, it kept raining for like 5 hours after that but the creek didn't flow into the drains anymore. The main street where the worst flooding occured was a total mud field, and it took weeks to completely clean it. We were lucky, much of the state had flooding that made ours look like a puddle.
February 22 was a record day in Salt Lake Utah... I know this video was about California but all the left-over water from California came to Utah and we got a record year. Thanks for this summery of last winter I appreciate your work. keep them coming!!!
my wife and I moved from western wa to socal temporarily during this window of time. I'd lived in a desert before but she had not. our ac broke in august and took two weeks to fix, but our building was in a good place to avoid flooding/mudslides so when the rain did come it honestly felt like a blessing to us even though we knew it was hard on the locals. I do remember the desert spring green lasting much longer than I was used to from where I'd lived before though. the hills were still full green when I left in may, which can be very bad for fire season.
Well done, sir! I appreciate the analytical depth and lack of sensationalism in how you treat this subject. I remember years ago, looking at a year-to-year list of rainfall totals for California and noticing that "average rainfall" seems to be purely a mathematical abstraction. In any given year, the actual total rainfall is either well above or below the "average." Feast or famine, as you say.
Summer of 2022, during a prolonged deep drought (and 3-4 months ahead of the December storms to come); suddenly in August & September of 2022, news stations started showing extended programs about how to prepare for floods in the middle of record-setting drought. I remember thinking someone knows something is coming. UCLA was at least one of the sources of that long-range forecast. Which was at the time totally contrary to the current conditions. With the effects of Geo-Engineering being real, it makes me wonder how much outside influences played a part in the winter of 2022-3. Not that rain can be artificially materialized on a hot desert day. But once the ingredients and conditions of a storm come together, maybe the "powers that be" could inhance or discourage it. One other atmosphere condition in 2022 not addressed in this excellent video, is the splitting of the northern polar vortex into two or three parts, bifurcation/trifurcation. Great work on this video. Please keep posting. Personally, I don't agree the "Atmospheric River" term. It's waves.
Thank you for helping me understand my crazy state. I live in the California Central Valley and last year (2022) I had sandbags around my house for most of the winter and spring
Bakersfield was wet, cold, and windy during the storms but all the passes leaving the central valley where closed on and off I got stuck in the desert waiting for almost a full day for the pass to open...the craziest thing to see was the miles and miles off semi trucks litering literally every street including the interstate waiting for the pass to open up. It's was insane then dealing with the flash floods and road wasouts in the mountians trying to get equipment and supplies up to ranches was fun county got mad at us for bringing the dozer out and making a new road to get into a few ranches 😅 overall it was a crazy and fun storm season.
I live east of Sacramento in the Sierra foothills. Winter 2022/2023 was insane. During the early January storms, our storm drains reversed direction. The volume of water was so great, we had mini fountains emerging from the drains! We had localized street flooding, but homes in our neighborhood did not flood.
I’m from California and I can confirm that last winter was horrible! Especially New Years Eve and the first weeks of 2023. I also remember the time that it “snowed”
In late- March, the Fujiwhara that passed over SFO was wild. It hit at about 3pm, right at the start of the evening commute. I was driving home from SF along 101 through torrential rain and wind. The freeway is built on a levee just south of the city, and the wind was so strong it was blowing bay water up onto 101. Then I turned the corner by the airport and passed through the “eye”. It was so beautiful and clear for like 15 minutes, and then right back into torrents of rain and wind.
I live in the NorCal, and the tree carnage after the bomb cyclone was immense. Our power was out up where i live in the mountains for 10 days, and they were doing tree work, removing trees from roads, etc, for weeks after it. After historic low lake levels our local reservoir was full to the brim, and overflowing. There wasn't too much flooding up here in the mountains, but a ton of run off and erosion, with mudslides everywhere blocking roads.
I remember the news stations were all "Sorry guys, more rain storms forecasted. I do look forward to seeing the sun again" after making a statement on the California drought. I understand this is messy weather but such rare storms are necessary to bring back water to ease drought. You can't complain about drought and then smack the hand that's helping you.
I felt quite lucky to be a southern Californian last winter, as although the central and northern parts saw a lot of extreme weather problems, SoCal was probably the best it's ever looked as the heavy and persistent rain caused tons of flora to grow on the otherwise dry and largely barren mountains where I live. I'm very near the border so we didn't see many flood warnings or concerning conditions, just very frequent rain.
In the first minuet of the video you can see why it got so bad. Watering plants in the middle of the day by shooting water in the air and hoping it gets to the roots is madness
This was a really fascinating thing to learn about! In regard to future content, as someone from Ohio who now lives in Europe I'd love to learn more about the tornadoes that happen over here and why they seem so much less of a concern than the big windstorms that come in off the Atlantic in the winter :)
This was a crazy event to live through and restarted my interest into weather tracking. I remember we were planning to go to Truckee to do our tradition of visiting the snow but another low pass through and it was a damaging one for us! A neighbor nearly lost his house because a tree collapsed hitting the cornor of it. We were already worried about leaving the house in the mist of this and that near disaster convinced us that we should stay and take care of things
Awesome video! Yeah, it was quite the year - I saw some of the graupel myself living east of San Diego! And then just when it was summer and supposedly all over, we get a close call with a hurricane. What a year
Thank you for your presentation! Being a Californian I learned a lot especially about the different micro climates I didn't realize we have. Very much enjoyed this.
I remember seeing the snow just everywhere in the surrounding mountains here in the south bay, best winter I’ve ever lived through. Tragic for the ones that died and those who were left without power when the cold front swept through, but so thankful for all the water and the beautiful sights, and the super bloom that came later.
This. This is why I'm getting the hell outta here as soon as I can. Lived here my whole life and while there are certainly worse climates, I just can't take the extremity of the valley anymore
Why? This was these years have best weather we had for decades, just wear thicker clothes, the heat waves became sporadic and ends after an week, and the winter is cold, what's not to like?
Central Californian here!! Live near Planada and in Merced County. Fields near our homes were flooded. Planada and Hughson areas had the worst of it and flooded majorly
As a Californian, I would love to see you do videos on the other end of the extreme spectrum: the famous California firestorms (1991 Berkeley, 2003 SoCal, 2017 Wine Country, Camp Fire to name a few). Ive actually thought about what you could bring to the table in discussing that phenomena
Dixie and Caldor too, the span of land those beasts covered is impressive. Especially Dixie my goodness 💔 So many “good” fires to be covered in detail sadly
Yes to all of these! I grew up in San Diego and while I was too young at the time to remember the 2003 fire season, I've heard so many stories from my parents and also am able to remember the 2007 SoCal firestorm very well. I think it would be especially interesting if we could get a video comparing and contrasting a lot of these firestorms because of how much more common they've become over the past few years. Especially when you consider the jump between the 2003 Cedar Fire being the largest in California state history, only for that record to be broken in 2017 with the Thomas fire, then again in 2018 with the Mendocino Complex, then again in 2020, and again in 2021. A 14 year record suddenly being broken 4 times over in 5 years? I've always been interested to find out what's going on weather wise there.
@@Weather_Nerd Dixie was crazy. Largest source fire in CA history
In 2003, you couldn't do PE outside. They made us eat inside (my HS, Santiago, Corona, had over 5K students). The ash on all the cars in the morning was CRAZY!!!!!!
@@tankeater Yeah in the last couple years, while I was still in school we had smoke days where we just all stayed home since it got so bad. And the last couple years we basically just have a smoke season where it's all smoky outside for a month or two from around october to november. This year we haven't really had that though, at least not in Sacramento.
Weatherbox is no doubt the best weather documentary maker, you can’t change my mind.
Alferia and Carly Ann WX are up there too
watching alferia gives me a headache, you cant have a speech impediment and have a job of talking lmao@@ashleycantrell9844
I could try but I'd be lying
Storms q, alferia, and carly are top 4, 3, and 2 but weatherbox is no doubt the best
There’s a couple near it but it’s real good
The snow rapidly melting by heavy rain is no joke. That's the same situation that caused major flooding here in Portland back in '96. I was a kid at the time so all I remember is it raining a lot and being happy that I didn't have to go to school lol
Same happened for central valley that same winter I believe, maybe 1997 I was a kid but I remember seeing people on their roofs on the news and then seeing a park under 4’ of water near Sac. Awful set up, this last winter was especially bad because it wasn’t just the mountains with snow, the 2500-4000’ areas also had 1-5’
So glad you covered this! Dealt with this winter firsthand, and it was the craziest winter I’ve ever seen, no where near 2017. Local flooding was extreme, it snowed super low twice, and it seemed like it would never stop raining. Getting 7 inches of shear downpouring rain in 1 day is just like it sounds. One of our drought-ridden reservoirs went from 20% to 102%, flowing over the spillway for the first time in decades. So much was happening all at once. From December to April it was atmospheric river after atmospheric river. This is finally a video that does this crazy winter justice!
seriously it was insane
facts
no lie
Didn’t it rain a lot in like may too? I can’t remember exactly but it seemed like it went through to summer
I live in the central coast of california, and I don’t remember anything from may, but there could have been something elsewhere.
Thank you for sharing this with us. As a native of California’s High Desert (59 years), I am used to having two seasons of either extreme heat or cold-linked together by gusty winds. I wouldn’t trade it for anything because the lack of rain gives us about 350 nights of starry skies.
This winter was a little different. Over the years I have seen winters of intense rain. The late 1970s gave us a lot of flooding after one of the worst droughts that I can remember. It happened again in 1982 and 1983 when we were hammered with non-stop rain. But neither of those compared to this last year. It wasn’t so much that we had one storm of heavy rain, it was non-stop rain from one week to the next.
The beauty of that rain was that we had the most beautiful wild flowers this Spring. The desert and hills looked like they were layered in gold for several weeks.
I know you guys probably wished it would've been spread out more but you guys did desperately need the rain. Unfortunately, droughts rarely end gradually, especially in a state like California.
It's nice to finally see an extreme weather channel cover california. It's such a criminally under-discussed place for extreme weather events, just because it doesn't have tornadoes or thunderstorms very often. But that doesn't make the region boring. Great video!
Usually when people think of natural disasters and California they think of San Andreas or Howard Fault line related earthquakes; but CA’s varied microclimates makes it such an immensely diverse state in terms of what weather can occur.
I think it's the stigma of being California
Excellent work as usual dude! I've been a native SoCal resident my entire life, and it was rough down here but not nearly as bad as up north. For the most part it was just weeks of light yet steady rain, but that tends to add up over time. We had a lot of flooding scares and even had some snow flurries, which people were freaking out over. Where I live is right by some dairies, and the dirt roads in the area were completely flooded and impossible to drive on, which I learned the hard way lol. The tornado in Montebello was definitely freaky, because we never have tornados. All of a sudden it was all anyone could talk about, and I'm sure it was still on people's minds when we had Hilary earlier this year.
here in utah we benefited in a record breaking way as well. as a skier i am so grateful to have been here for the GREATEST WINTER EVER. it will be legendary for years and years. Alta Ski Area ended with a total of 903" for the season. it was truly amazing.
My sister lives up in Agoura, north of Malibu. There's only one road in and out of where she lives and it was closed for almost two weeks after the last event. She's been through all kinds of natural phenomenon living up there for 25+ years, so she and her two sets of neighbors were prepared. She had waterfalls on her property most of the spring and the wildflowers were amazing. They were lucky compared to up north.
Must be old agoura area near chesebro or like Cornell area down kanan. I was at my parents house is in Morrison ranch and it was nothing like that.
@@walkingwithsierra well that's just like, your micro-climate, man.
Always a great day when weatherbox uploads
one plus of the extra rain here was that we had the most incredible blooming of flowers in the spring, I will always remember the spring of 2023 being verdant and colorful
This is excellent work mate, I lived through this event. It actually is what got me into meteorology as I was fascinated by the insane amount of rain and snow and the reappearance of Lake Tulare. Thank you for making this one!!
I hope they encourage Tulare lake to stay. Some people are lobbying for it but have to contend with the family who drained the lake for agriculture, bought the new dry lakebed, and have held local power as a familly since then. They even diverted flood waters onto their competitors farms.
I'm an atmospheric science student in my second year at UC Davis (First year at the time) who has lived in CA my entire life I enjoyed the wet winter, I remember just staring at radar as the MAR 21 storm moved in as it looked almost tropical in nature as it approached the shoreline.
Do they teach you about geoengineering? Because that is the cause of the extreme weather, dont need a degree to see it, just look up and pay attention....take notes, daily.
@@AdventureAwaits1111hahahha I bet they ignore that as much as men saying they are now woman because wearing a dress. Most democrats ignore things and pretend it's all good. Unless it's a man who is strong. They attack them at every turn.
@@AdventureAwaits1111LOL.
@jmeland Why are you laughing?
@@johnfoge1742 lol. lol again.
Phenomenal video! So much to learn from you always. I think this video was really needed, since little to nobody expected last winter’s incredible pattern. Keep up the amazing work!
Hey I know you!!😂
Man oh man. I was just waiting for someone I knew to reply to me here 😂😂 Wassup Broderick!! @@thebroderickhoward
Oh hey weather watcher
Hey what's up!@@thats.insane
No doubt it is always sad to wait so long between videos, but if that's what it takes to make these well-conceived, perfectly-produced videos on interesting topics, I'm all for it! You truly do such high-quality videos with intelligent commentary and interesting information.
I wasn't expecting to see a video on my local disaster weather so soon on this channel!
Lifelong NorCal local here. It was HORRIBLE. I was living in Oakland at the time and here's some of the things that the weather story doesn't capture:
-you didn't mention the raw sewage backflows in SF that lasted until JUNE OF THIS YEAR
-none of our infrastructure, including basic housing was designed for this so a lot of things like water heaters (often flameless units) were designed to withstand it; my property management company tried to tell us to wait a week to get our water heater fixed. I could not shower, cook safely or clean for three full days. I couldn't even wash my hands, the water was basically just above freezing coming from the tap and actually caused skin chap; lots of hand sanitizer was used up that week
-this period of insanity lasted FOR FOUR MONTHS STRAIGHT
-clothing here is necessarily thinner as we typically have super high highs and mids for lows; my polished concrete home flooring ensured that I wore shoes and socks indoors at all times, bundled up in five damn shirts at a time and at one point moved my cat into my bed to keep her warm, she was struggling too (she's very round but even a chubby kitty can only stay so warm)
-SF Bay? Yeah built during the Victorian era, the walls in my split building "apartment" were damaged by the constant deluge. It's been almost a year. I've moved. All of my clothes still have a whiff of mildew to them. It could be psychosomatic but I don't feel I'll ever be free of that stink
-the weather and floods killed almost all of the chickens in Santa Cruz county due to washing them away or exacerbating avian flu issues; I could not find eggs in a single grocery in Alameda county for two full months
-bought sandbags for the first time in my life
-not my first tornado experience (that would be in Fairfield in the 1990s; Mather AFB gets them every now and again it's not unheard of) but a friend who had just moved from Seattle to Los Angeles was terrified and all I could do was offer a resigned 🤷🏾 because we were having our own problems 8 hours north
-collapsed roofs, SO MANY COLLAPSED ROOFS (from the water no snow)
-the most dangerous highway in the state was shut down because CHP was already overloaded, cutting a huge artery of travel between the Bay and Sacramento off briefly; I often use this road to bypass tolls. I was not upset by this tho as it's right on top of an American River levee largely and the drawbridges got dodgy
-my bedroom window flooded in the middle of a work call and shut off my internet; my job is largely healthcare related, I was helping someone else with THEIR emergency while having my own😂
I could go on but you get the gist. I'm 38. I've seen everything the state can throw at us, I have never been as exhausted or stressed out as I was by this period. I'm also pretty sure it contributed to the sudden passing of one of the best friends I've ever had in May by complicating the medication supply chain for months after and delaying their insulin raw materials getting to the manufacturers (Oakland is the second largest port in the state)
I just hope we collectively take lessons from this but I fear we won't. I personally learned a LOT and am making a lot of difficult decisions about home buying in the future because of it. I don't think I'll be staying. I'm moving out of the country eventually but I have a kid to worry about who I'd like to have a home to go to and if this pattern is any indication (combined with space weather data, huge geek here) I anticipate more of the same this year in Sacramento-which is below sea level and therefore way more flood prone.
This state will always be home. When I go abroad I don't tell people I'm American, I tell them I'm Californian, that's how much joy it brings me to come from here! But I also don't see the funds we pay in taxes (14% income tax just as a low paid full time worker, massive vehicle registration taxes, most expensive fuel in the USA despite being an oil production and refinement state, unreasonable property taxes that drove my lifelong 2nd gen California dad to leave or risk never retiring, worst roads in America, higher income poverty level due to extreme cost of living and 5th largest economy globally by itself) being used well and I am seriously looking elsewhere to become stable enough to afford to leave (my spouse is 6000mi away in Europe, it sucks lol). I don't like our governor, most of us don't, but his influential aunt's brand recognition keeps getting him elected and I'm growing increasingly despondent that things will always be this way.
Maybe it will get better, we'll see.
Cheers!
As a resident of the foothills I always find myself wondering during the crazy winters whether getting into the City of Sacramento will become impossible sometime. So far it's not happened while I've needed to go down there, but I remember either Watt or Howe across the American River having water up to the underside of the car, as well as the reports of levees breaching as a kid.
I feel like the sentiment of being Californian before being American is fairly common, we're such a unique place. While we have our problems I find the tradeoffs of even thinking about living anywhere else to simply not be worth it, so I may as well try to do my part to help make it better via my professional pursuits.
I live in Oakland too and i saw so many mini lakes formed that people could go skiing on them due to potholes
Great stuff, Steve. Love your videos as always.
I live in the greater San Diego area, further south than where most of the atmospheric river shenanigans took place. For MONTHS we'd keep hearing about this onslaught of weather barraging the north and central coast, only to look outside and see a mild drizzle, 4 out of 5 times. It felt like there were only a few days with moderate rain down here.
On the one hand, we were spared from all the damages associated with the storms. On the other, it almost just felt like a slightly wetter winter, with none of the fun that comes with unusual weather.
There was nothing fun about this weather event. In the San Bernardino mountains, most people were snowed in completely, many for weeks. My family was fortunate throughout but the majority were miserable. Our only local grocery store completely collapsed. People were without food, warmth, and basic goods for a long time. Completely unlike anything that has happened for a long time, so no one was prepared.
San Diego native/resident too… remember when people were making these huge water slides and floated on inner tubes down the streets 😂
My wife and I live in the mountains of San Bernardino National Forest, and I can tell you that February 2023 was absolutely nuts! We expect snow in the mountains around that time of year here, but in a single two-week period we got around 10 feet of snow. We were outside digging snow for the full two weeks. By the time the snow stopped, we were exhausted and on the verge of collapse. I am happy we dug though because many of our neighbors did not and had to be rescued as they were buried alive in their houses. Some people had their roofs collapse or gas mains exploded from the weight of the snow on the gas meters outside, causing leaks. Much love and respect to the meteorologist who gave us about a week or so of warnings concerning the impending blizzard on the horizon. We had plenty of supplies and were able to wait the 2 and a half weeks for the roads to reopen that went down the mountain. Many up here that did not take the warnings seriously ran out of supplies early, meaning they either had to hike out or call in to be rescued by emergency services. They were definitely memories that we will never forget for as long as we live.
Amazing work! It was crazy being in the middle of that winter as I lived 45 minutes east of Sacramento. It was pretty insane seeing it pour rain much more often than usual in early January. It did snow twice in my area that same winter (just about 1000ft above sea level) while the sierras were getting crazy amounts of snow. Even at one point some thunderstorms did occur at 3am right over my town. Woke up to see trees rocking violently and pouring rain violently hitting my bedroom window. Crazy experience I wouldn’t forget. Again, good work and keep it up!
Placer county eh, beautiful area! Elevations like Foresthill above 2800-3000’ got like 3-4’ of snow so ridiculous for anywhere below 4000’ lol. I am only early 30s but I heard from many old timers about how 3-4’ used to not be uncommon before the 70-80s so maybe we are just getting back to the way it used to be. Two years in a row seeing 3’ + snow depths below 4k ft
😊
The winter of 2022-2023 was also very significant in Utah, where it effectively ended our major drought for the time being. Before that winter, almost 70% of the state was in the worst drought category, and now only a tiny part of the state is considered to be in drought at all. It was the single wettest year on record for Utah, completely smashing the previous record, and some parts of the mountains received over 900 inches of snow.
I personally loved it, and hope that it happens again soon.
Hey, I've Lived in eastern Canada my whole life and I would love a video explaining how we have some of the harshest Winters in the inhabited world. Your content is always fascinating to watch, even for somebody who never really thinks about weather
🤣😂 only a Canadian would say that
Great video! Small correction- Highway 9 not 19 was shut down here in the mountains. We went a total of 53 days without power in the Santa Cruz mountains. Had snow, closed roads, land slides, downed power lines, mud slides… you name it. Craziest winter I’ve experienced. Thanks for the informative video- hoping this winter is less extreme!
SoCal resident here.
This was the first rain season I thoroughly watched, including paying attention to atmospheric pressure.
As for the hail/graupel storm, it was probably one of the weirdest weather events I've ever seen. It was midday, around 2:30-ish P.M when the storm rolled into my area. The difference was literally night and day. I have a picture on the California freeway in between the scattered sunny clouds to the south and a rolling black fog to the north, with a dense network of clouds in the center.
Some other notable events you didn't mention were the tropical storm which hit in August (Kay; it didn't do any damage but it led to light rain and ash during a really dry season), the month of February 2019 where some of the harshest rainstorms hit the state nearly nonstop, and recently with Hilary, which also wasn't too notable, only bringing somewhat heavy rain on a warm day, but produced beautiful images at sunset as it was moving into the area.
Your attention to detail and hard work is evident in all of these videos, you do such a good job condensing dense concepts into videos that are easily accessible. Kudos!
This really brought more understanding to why California is so hot and cold (with weather patterns). But it also highlights to me how come when those dry periods end how come California isn’t equipped with more water storage or holding ability with the drought periods. Excellent video as always can’t wait for the next.
Would love to see a video about more northeastern tornadoes in the past that have been significant.
There’s plenty of storage in the form of aquifers. The challenge is refilling them from the runoff.
But there is also the challenge of controlling the runoff from threatening lives and property. California has a lot of flood control infrastructure, but it was overwhelmed by the extreme rainfall of 2022-23.
A big question is whether last winter’s weather pattern was a fluke or a new pattern. And the answer is that we don’t know and it will take years to answer that question with any amount of predictability. And here’s the thing: preparing for the worst case scenario is expensive. Making vast flood control improvements across the state to cope with flukes is a waste of resources. It’s doable because we understand the engineering, but it’s an opportunity cost. Who pays for it? The taxpayers of course, but what is the funding mechanism? State? Federal?
Storage of the surplus water from extreme wet seasons is less well understood and suffers from the same uncertainty about changing climate patterns. Sure, you can construct flood plains around rivers, but those require a lot of real estate.
Returning to the question of opportunity costs and limited resources, if the 10+ year droughts are also a new normal weather pattern, should California spend more money for flood control and water storage, or should it devote those resources into increasing fire suppression efforts? That’s not cheap either.
We often complain about the inaction and ineffectiveness of politicians, but a major reason for that is politicians are subject to competing interests (not to mention hard-to-predict shifts in the political climate-the other climate change). Politicians who “do the right thing” have short careers, while politicians who engage in partisan theater tend to last longer (the Matt Gaetzes and Marjorie Taylor Greens). Setting aside the culture war clowns, the mainstream politicians also face paralyzing issues. Conservative constituents want lower taxes but also want infrastructure improvements. Liberals want more social programs (and despite the stereotype, they don’t want to raise taxes willy nilly).
I don’t want to turn this into a political debate. I just wanted to point out that both sides of the political spectrum are hamstrung.
Great vid Weatherbox. I remember vividly in early January there was actually a tornado warning for parts of Central CA at around 3-4 AM, I awoke to the sound of thunder and heavy rain, and I remember seeing Midwest-level lightning outside. Still the craziest weather I’ve ever experienced.
That February snowstorm in the Bay Area was crazy. I will never forget waking up to that and literally rubbing my eyes in disbelief.
Around the 4:30 point of the video, where you gave us a visual of where the spinning L press system is located, and the cold front that accompanied the storm. I don't see many weather enthusiasts or professionals showing people exactly what a low pressure system is, where the center of low pressure is, or even where a H press area is located. Over the oceans you can see the spin alot better due to the fact there isn't anything over the ocean that could disrupt the storm. Where in the Plains, Midwest, and Southeast. The storms are broken up over the mountainous terrain out west, then reorganize as it makes its way eastward. Reason I mention this is because I have a few kiddos that watch all kinds of weather uploads with me, and when I see something that could help their brains when learning. I do what I can to keep them interested lol. Love the channel! Thanks.
i live in San Diego and March 1st of 2023 was the worst. we experienced hail all day and the high temperature was only 47f. the wind knocked down several trees in my neighborhood. the roofs at our school were like waterfalls.
100 inches of snow in the Sierra? Some spots reached 1,000+ inches! My friends vacation home near the UC Sierra Snow lab got 700 inches, we had to clear snow out of the driveway in mid July. It was 85 degrees.
It surprises me how often weather commentators confuse snowpack and cumulative snowfall. He must’ve read the 126” maximum snowpack in Lake Tahoe and assumed that was the total winter 22/23 snowfall.
I live right between San Francisco and San Jose and December 31st 2022 was a day I'll never forget. I woke up and the side of our house was a river, the ground was unable to absorb water due to so all of it just accumulated above ground. My dad and I were building trenches in the backyard to divert water away from the house but it was too late. One by one each room started filling with water. A family friend and I attempted to get sandbags at the local distribution center, but all roads to the distribution area were submerged. On the drive down, sewers were shooting water up into the air and downtown was under several feet of water. We even saw people on kayaks and stranded cars below train underpasses. We slept in shifts that night removing water from the house with buckets. The house flooded 4 more times that winter but none were as bad as the first one.
Yessssss!!!! Amazing day when you upload!
Thanks isaac!
So well broken down as always!! I live in Ontario Canada but as a longhaul trucker I was in California during some of the madness last year and was hoping you'd cover it! I'm very fluent with tornados and severe thunderstorms cuz that's what was my main intellectual driver growing up but I was fascinated to learn more about these ARs!
whenever I come back here I always hope to see you have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, I hope to see it happen some day. you absolutely get the "the most underrated weather TH-camr award" in my book
This young man single handed got me more interested in weather, the patterns that come with and the unpredictability of it all. Thank you sir love the content
Such a fascinating video that explains all these weather concepts so well! As an LA resident I dealt with my fair share of rain this past winter. I believe it was the February 27th storm you mentioned (or if not sometime around then) when my mom was driving back to her place from work, and while waiting at a stoplight in Venice Beach it started to hail. The strangest part was that it was actually sunny out so she hadn't been expecting it at all. The entire winter was pretty confusing to say the least. Though I will say if there was one sort of benefit, it was that when SoCal got hit with a tropical storm this past August (which was nearly unheard of in California) everyone knew to be prepared for floods because of how bad the flooding was during the winter. Very interested to see what this winter will hold. Thank you for this video, despite all the damage the rains caused, it's very cool to be able to understand what exactly is going on in the atmosphere to cause all of this
I had lived in Reno at the time. That winter from end of December to February was one of the most brutal in a very long time. Everyone had stayed inside, and you would hear news about communities up in Tahoe trapped and unable to leave and worried if the roof would collapse due to the snow or if they would run out of food. In the end it extended the Skiing/Snowboarding season from March till end of July. Some of the resorts did close during the storms as it was a blizzard, or the lifts didn't work because the snowpack was so high, or all the mechanisms were frozen solid.
You can blame it all on me. I moved from Texas to the Bay area in December last year, and bragged about how I didn't have to ever deal with southeast Texas weather again.
Had some legit bad memories of Harvey too, and I guess I deserve it.
My first reaction to 5.5" of rain in a day in Sacramento was, "Is that all?" As a native Houstonian, my idea of extreme rain events is somewhat skewed!
@@joshuaharper372 My reaction as a Californian was “What?!”
As a person who lives in the Bay Area, I distinctly remember waking up to see snow on the nearby mountains one morning and listening to some people in my art class at school discuss bunking class to go sledding.
amazing work man, really awesome.
this is so interesting to learn about. northwestern colorado got absolutely pounded with snow last winter too so i shouldn’t be surprised it was a crazy winter other places as well!
Thank you for this video!
Thank you for watching!
Excellent job with the video! It was crazy out here in California last year. The rain was much needed and I’m glad it was sufficient enough to pull the state out of drought conditions
Finally someone covers the extreme winter of last season out west.
Im surprised no one is linking the influx of moisture to the eruption of Honga-Tonga Honga Haipai.
That eruption injected incredible ammouts of water into the atmosphere.
Has to he the culprit.
I may be a little biased as I live on the coast of Lake Superior, but I think you should do a more in depth episode about extreme lake effect snow bands, maybe like the storm that hit Buffalo last November or something similar, cover all the things that good into causing them and the clean up efforts in places that get a lot of lake effect snow. I go to MTU in houghton michigan so it’s an ever-present topic and I’d love to hear more about some of the more extreme lake-effect events
As a fellow yooper I agree.
@weatherbox, I was one of your first 1000 subscribers and I’m still surprised your channel hasn’t gotten half a million subscribers yet. Keep up the great videos!
I really appreciate this detailed video on last winter! I live in the Santa Cruz Mountains… near 17 and Summit Rd. I pretty much had a breakdown from the point of the snow storm (after however many storms already) until the last AR rolled through in… late March? April? I can’t remember, but I was done with it. We always get dumped with rain in these mountains (at least more so than the valley), and we are used to the problems that causes with landslides and whatnot, but it was seemingly never ending. We never got enough of a break to dry out. We lost so many trees, we now have a landslide on our property we don’t know what to do with, my barn was - and still is - damaged. It was rough. I’m trying to prep as best I can if we get another extra wet winter, but if I’m being honest, I haven’t done enough. 😣
I will say though, I had been dreaming of sledding down our back hill since we moved into our house and I got to do that all day with my younger son after the snowfall, so I did manage to pack in some positive memories despite the mental exhaustion. 😅 We get snow where we are every few years, but not so much that sledding would be possible, so that was a bonus. Core memories made. 😊
I lived in Southern California during this winter and tbh I loved all that rain. I have always loved rain. Southern California, not so much. But it wasn’t so bad in Orange County anyway. What was trippy was how green everything stayed even as winter faded out. It just kept raining, just enough. We went to Palm Springs before we moved and the desert was green all the way there. It was wild.
Thank you so much for being a credible voice who takes in depth meteorological knowledge and popularises it for us enthusiastic weather lovers.
This video is nothing less than a brilliant piece of journalism.
As someone who experienced this insane experience in the Bay Area. I’m just gonna say, last years skiing season, was AMAZING!
Yes! Weatherbox upload = good day
Best weather TH-cam channel. Love your content man! Combo of weather, history and science
Every time I think I know something about weather patterns and climate, I watch one of these and am once again humbled.
Awesome dive into what happened, really appreciate all the work that's clearly put into gathering all the data and graphically distilling it down for us regular folk to digest. Also love seeing content about the west coast and Pacific based weather. As this video highlights it can be an environment of extremes just like many other places in the US.
I work directly in river monitoring and flood prediction in the central coast of California. Needless to say last year will stick in our minds for quite some time. This video was incredibly well done and showcased a lot of insane footage I haven’t even seen yet!
Great video. As an Oregonian (1957) it’s been interesting over the decades of storms to hit WA, OR, & CA.
Awesome video! I live in California and experienced all of this firsthand. A river just outside of my neighborhood overflowed and flooded across the road it was insane. School was cancelled for 2 days. First time I’ve ever heard of school being cancelled due to weather for my area. A nearby town was extremely inundated the National Guard was called out. It was something I’ll never forget.
Where I live in California it wasnt as bad we got like 2-3in of snow compared to what others got it was basically a regular heavy rain day here with a bit of snow so schools were still open
ive always had an interest in natural disasters yknow volcanoes and such, but the way you present your videos has rlly kindled my interest in meteorology and weather patterns, to the point where im honestly considering studying them in college, so thank u for making ur content as ive never seen anything like it and its rlly inspired me!
I’ve been unpacking my room for the last few days and slowly going through all your videos as I go. They’re great things to put on in the background, as I have an interest in severe weather and you are incredible at making such complex things easily digestible while still maintaining both scientific integrity and empathy towards those affected by the weather. Thank you for the videos!
PS, if you’re looking for topics, do you think you could cover the 2021 Snowstorm in Texas? I remember it happening so I would especially love to hear your take on how it happened and what went down.
I live right outside the snow area in NorCal, and so last year it actually snowed in my area to the point where my friends were able to have a snow ball fight
I'm not from California but im from Utah and we saw the wettest winter here in salt lake ever it was a crazy winter and we sure needed it we were in severe drought as well. Hoping this year isnt as bad we need another wet winter to really be out of concern. Thanks for the lesson buddy!!!!
Ever since last winter, I always wondered how and what created it. Seeing how it built up. Thank you for this video! Just gained a new subscriber.
Love the Video! You should do the severe weather Event of December 2021 next.
Another excellent and top notch quality video, have a great one dude
I love these videos. They teach so much about such interesting meteorological events.
I love this channel. You naturally make this so interesting!
My father is a wildland firefighter, and his comings and goings in the summer are forecasted by the atmospheric rivers of the winter before. Where they strike.... Or don't strike... Set the pattern of fire danger and activity for months ahead of time. Since my social life was dependent on him being gone, I would pay close attention to these patterns. Now being an active hiker and camper, we'll plot our summer trips based on winter snow and rain levels. I applaud someone who points out these patterns and their changes, this channel amongst those excellent sources. For last year, was watching these developments closely as I had a sleeper car booked on the coast starlight, which traverses those slopes near the coast. Thankfully flooding and land slides and repairs to the tracks were settled by early April. Seeing southern California that green was quite unusual.
Goddamn, the weather is in a frenzy in California
It's very mild weather, just varying amounts of precipitation!
Hi! Is it ok if you did a video on the Arizona heat this past year? At least a hundred people in my town here were hospitalized due to heat stroke. Dozens of cactuses collapsed in the long lasting heat. It was in the 70's all the way up until Christmas. Even now, in January, it's still reaching mid 60s during noon. I've lived in AZ for 17 years but it's never been this bad for this *long*, heat normally dies off during October and starts back up around march.
Thank you for showing the Kern. It was like seeing an almost dead river come back to life. Still flowing pretty good, too.
I live in Danville CA, it is a very rich (and usually quiet) town in the east bay hills. The town just so happens to fill in a valley that has a creek with a relatively wide catchment area. During the last few days of December, light but constant rainfall must have saturated the soil (according to my theory). On December 31st, we were predicted to have a large storm that would drop an inch- and inch and a half of rain and was supposed to peter out around 10:00. By 10 it was coming down harder than a Texas thunderstorm. The creek was having to take in all the water from both our hills, and the valley adjacent to ours. By 11 it was overflowing, my dad and I went to scout out what was happening. El Capitan was already flooded knee deep (later I would learn it was over the average person's head at its peak), firefighters were trying to unclog storm drains, people were getting worried. My dad and I walked around the neighborhood and watched as storm drains, one by one, started to back up. Creek water (at that point it was more akin to a raging torrent on par with the colorado river in the grand canyon) was flowing out of storm drains and into the street. Obviously that is not supposed to happen. Our backyard drains were faulty and clogged (we didn't know this previously because we had recently moved back), and the back yard was starting to seriously flood. It was only a few minutes after we got back home, trying to find a way to drain the back yard, that the storm drain in front of our house started to back up. Luckily our house turned out to be on the top of an incline, but the houses down the street weren't so lucky. Muddy water was pouring down into the dead end street and filling it up. They were lucky their storm drain was somehow able to keep from backing up during the storm because that thing kept chugging along. I went down there a couple times to check on them and see what I could do, but there was little I could do, the water on the sidewalk was knee high, the wheels of one of the minivans a little further up the street were almost submerged. This story is still pretty long, so I will try to summarise what happened after this. We spent the next 45ish minutes trying to bail out the back yard (I'm not kidding), then trying to bail out the water coming out of the storm drain. We did this by tossing it onto soil patches in the hopes it would absorb some of it. Anyway, apparently, a bunch of debris had blocked up the creek near a bridge and that was what caused it to overflow into the storm drains. At one point, we heard chainsaws sounding far off, and a few minutes later, the storm drains reversed back out and the street drained in a matter of minutes. Not a moment too soon because our back yard drain had its outlet near the storm drain and the creek water was just about to start pouring back into it. Anyway, it kept raining for like 5 hours after that but the creek didn't flow into the drains anymore. The main street where the worst flooding occured was a total mud field, and it took weeks to completely clean it. We were lucky, much of the state had flooding that made ours look like a puddle.
February 22 was a record day in Salt Lake Utah... I know this video was about California but all the left-over water from California came to Utah and we got a record year. Thanks for this summery of last winter I appreciate your work. keep them coming!!!
As a weather guy I just gotta say I love this channel!
“I had such a great day, I can’t see how it can get any better”
Weatherbox: **submit**
my wife and I moved from western wa to socal temporarily during this window of time. I'd lived in a desert before but she had not. our ac broke in august and took two weeks to fix, but our building was in a good place to avoid flooding/mudslides so when the rain did come it honestly felt like a blessing to us even though we knew it was hard on the locals.
I do remember the desert spring green lasting much longer than I was used to from where I'd lived before though. the hills were still full green when I left in may, which can be very bad for fire season.
Well done, sir! I appreciate the analytical depth and lack of sensationalism in how you treat this subject. I remember years ago, looking at a year-to-year list of rainfall totals for California and noticing that "average rainfall" seems to be purely a mathematical abstraction. In any given year, the actual total rainfall is either well above or below the "average." Feast or famine, as you say.
Summer of 2022, during a prolonged deep drought (and 3-4 months ahead of the December storms to come); suddenly in August & September of 2022, news stations started showing extended programs about how to prepare for floods in the middle of record-setting drought.
I remember thinking someone knows something is coming.
UCLA was at least one of the sources of that long-range forecast. Which was at the time totally contrary to the current conditions.
With the effects of Geo-Engineering being real, it makes me wonder how much outside influences played a part in the winter of 2022-3.
Not that rain can be artificially materialized on a hot desert day. But once the ingredients and conditions of a storm come together, maybe the "powers that be" could inhance or discourage it.
One other atmosphere condition in 2022 not addressed in this excellent video, is the splitting of the northern polar vortex into two or three parts, bifurcation/trifurcation.
Great work on this video. Please keep posting.
Personally, I don't agree the "Atmospheric River" term. It's waves.
Thank you for helping me understand my crazy state. I live in the California Central Valley and last year (2022) I had sandbags around my house for most of the winter and spring
Bakersfield was wet, cold, and windy during the storms but all the passes leaving the central valley where closed on and off I got stuck in the desert waiting for almost a full day for the pass to open...the craziest thing to see was the miles and miles off semi trucks litering literally every street including the interstate waiting for the pass to open up. It's was insane then dealing with the flash floods and road wasouts in the mountians trying to get equipment and supplies up to ranches was fun county got mad at us for bringing the dozer out and making a new road to get into a few ranches 😅 overall it was a crazy and fun storm season.
Great work Weatherbox, thanks for the in-depth information.
I live east of Sacramento in the Sierra foothills. Winter 2022/2023 was insane. During the early January storms, our storm drains reversed direction. The volume of water was so great, we had mini fountains emerging from the drains!
We had localized street flooding, but homes in our neighborhood did not flood.
I’m from California and I can confirm that last winter was horrible! Especially New Years Eve and the first weeks of 2023. I also remember the time that it “snowed”
In late- March, the Fujiwhara that passed over SFO was wild. It hit at about 3pm, right at the start of the evening commute. I was driving home from SF along 101 through torrential rain and wind. The freeway is built on a levee just south of the city, and the wind was so strong it was blowing bay water up onto 101. Then I turned the corner by the airport and passed through the “eye”. It was so beautiful and clear for like 15 minutes, and then right back into torrents of rain and wind.
VIDEO IDEA: Cover the historic March heat wave of 2012 that turned winter into summer. Love your channel man, keep up the good work!
I live in the NorCal, and the tree carnage after the bomb cyclone was immense. Our power was out up where i live in the mountains for 10 days, and they were doing tree work, removing trees from roads, etc, for weeks after it. After historic low lake levels our local reservoir was full to the brim, and overflowing. There wasn't too much flooding up here in the mountains, but a ton of run off and erosion, with mudslides everywhere blocking roads.
I remember the news stations were all "Sorry guys, more rain storms forecasted. I do look forward to seeing the sun again" after making a statement on the California drought. I understand this is messy weather but such rare storms are necessary to bring back water to ease drought. You can't complain about drought and then smack the hand that's helping you.
I mean, you can; it's not like the weather cares
I felt quite lucky to be a southern Californian last winter, as although the central and northern parts saw a lot of extreme weather problems, SoCal was probably the best it's ever looked as the heavy and persistent rain caused tons of flora to grow on the otherwise dry and largely barren mountains where I live. I'm very near the border so we didn't see many flood warnings or concerning conditions, just very frequent rain.
In the first minuet of the video you can see why it got so bad. Watering plants in the middle of the day by shooting water in the air and hoping it gets to the roots is madness
This was incredibly well done!!
came from yt recommend;
feel so surreal watching a weather analysis of what did happen in my state
Hey man! Really appreciate you covering this topic being from SoCal. It was very interesting seeing snowfall in areas of Los Angeles!
This was a really fascinating thing to learn about! In regard to future content, as someone from Ohio who now lives in Europe I'd love to learn more about the tornadoes that happen over here and why they seem so much less of a concern than the big windstorms that come in off the Atlantic in the winter :)
"babe not now new weatherbox just dropped"
Incredible video. This is the kind of info that love
This was a crazy event to live through and restarted my interest into weather tracking.
I remember we were planning to go to Truckee to do our tradition of visiting the snow but another low pass through and it was a damaging one for us! A neighbor nearly lost his house because a tree collapsed hitting the cornor of it. We were already worried about leaving the house in the mist of this and that near disaster convinced us that we should stay and take care of things
Awesome video! Yeah, it was quite the year - I saw some of the graupel myself living east of San Diego! And then just when it was summer and supposedly all over, we get a close call with a hurricane. What a year
Thank you for your presentation! Being a Californian I learned a lot especially about the different micro climates I didn't realize we have. Very much enjoyed this.
I remember seeing the snow just everywhere in the surrounding mountains here in the south bay, best winter I’ve ever lived through. Tragic for the ones that died and those who were left without power when the cold front swept through, but so thankful for all the water and the beautiful sights, and the super bloom that came later.
This. This is why I'm getting the hell outta here as soon as I can. Lived here my whole life and while there are certainly worse climates, I just can't take the extremity of the valley anymore
Why? This was these years have best weather we had for decades, just wear thicker clothes, the heat waves became sporadic and ends after an week, and the winter is cold, what's not to like?
Central Californian here!! Live near Planada and in Merced County. Fields near our homes were flooded. Planada and Hughson areas had the worst of it and flooded majorly