Rough weather on the way

WEATHER TIDBITS

I’ll bet all the Chamber of Commerce promoters were using up lots of

film Monday.

Deep ultramarine blues punctuated by puffy cumulus drifting by

with a thin stream of cirrocumulus and cirrus fibratus running

southwest to northeast at 2,800 feet. But “cirrosly,” folks, the

visibility has gotta be at least 75 miles at the surface.

At 1 p.m. Monday the air temperature was 68 degrees, humidity was

64% and the dew point was 53 degrees. The barometer is at 1016

millibars -- a 1004 millibar low is passing northwest to southeast

350 miles north of here at about Santa Cruz.

Moderate to heavy snow is once again dumping all over the Tahoe

area, which has had the snowiest April since 1963.

In the north, Eureka had its wettest April in 40 years as well.

9.66 inches -- normally 4.09 inches.

Tidbitter.com sees thunderstorms, some possibly severe here by

Saturday. There’s a real buckle in the jet stream that will drive it

south almost to Hawaii, then back north-northeast into the Gulf of

Alaska and take another deep dive southward along the California

coast. This erratic pattern is the fuel for possible strong

convection with even the threat of a funnel cloud.

This theory of mine is by no means set in stone or anything. It’s

just a pattern I’ve seen happen a few times in 45 years of observing

the sometimes quirky nature of our usually mellow climate.

But the ingredients are there for a possible attack of

cumulonimbus sometime by Saturday or so, maybe. Watch, it’ll probably

be 90 degrees and sunny. Either way, it’s OK cause we get to be here

in Laguna and just remember, the gloomiest day in Laguna is still a

million times better than the best day almost anywhere.

* DENNIS McTIGHE is a Laguna Beach resident. He earned a

bachelor’s in earth sciences from UCSD and was a U.S. Air Force

weather forecaster at Hickman Air Force Base, Hawaii.