Dear WeatherCat users who are curious about atmospheric phenomena,
There is another atmospheric river event happening to Northern California and got a bit tired of hearing the term without understanding what it meant. I had looked before but not found anything particularly descriptive. Wikipedia has a decent starter:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_riverThe first sentence is a decent way to think about these:
"An atmospheric river is a narrow corridor or filament of concentrated moisture in the atmosphere."However, it doesn't explain too clearly why these things are happening. There is a NOAA description with a decent diagram:
http://www.noaa.gov/stories/what-are-atmospheric-riversGiven the news in California, NPR featured an article on the research of Duane Waliser
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/20/515838078/new-research-shows-how-atmospheric-rivers-wreak-havoc-around-the-globeIt turns out that atmospheric rivers also cause more intense winds that expected - something California has also been dealing with
da' hard way!Finally there is an Atmospheric River Portal from the Center for Weather Weather and Water Extremes (CW3E)
http://mead.ucsd.edu/There are some predictions on this website that are interesting. Here is the water transport happening with the current atmospheric river:
No wonder it is raining cats and dogs around here!
For your reading pleasure!
Cheers, Edouard