Government Launches Study to Better Predict El Nino Rain

Navy planes with special electronic gear will fly into the heart of heavy rain off the West Coast to give weather forecasters a 12-hour jump on winter storms fueled by El Nino.

Government scientists, universities and the U.S. Navy are teaming up to study the concerns that El Nino will generate storms and increased rain, especially in Oregon and California this winter. Officials for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration outlined the new study last week.

In addition to the P-3 aircraft, the National Weather Service will install a system of 30 drifting buoys from San Diego to Seattle to measure conditions offshore 12 to 36 hours before storms strike the coast.

“One of the main causes of the severe weather experienced along the West Coast during winter is the low-level jet, which is a river of wind that occurs near cold fronts in winter storms,” said Martin Ralph, principal investigator for NOAA’s Environmental Technology Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. “Many times this jet contains a great deal of moisture and can cause extreme coastal rains when it hits the mountains,” he said.

The new study is named CALJET--California Land-Falling Jets Experiment. “One unique aspect of CALJET is that we intend the P-3 data to be transmitted in nearly real time for direct use by operational weather forecasters in winter storms approaching California . . . similar to what is done for hurricane forecasting,” Ralph said.

Dave Reynolds, a lead investigator for NOAA’s National Weather Service in Monterey, said one of the biggest challenges of predicting weather there is accurate precipitation forecasts. “It is critical that we be able to accurately predict the timing and intensity of precipitation to improve flood forecasts,” Reynolds said. “Being able to accurately predict the low-level wind and moisture structure of a storm is critical to predicting the precipitation amounts.”