Blizzards in LA?

[conuly]

Wow. That can be chalked up to climate change probably, right?

Comments

[lilysea]

Very likely

Warmer oceans
= increased evaporation off the ocean surface
= greater snowfalls

plus other changes, too

[silveradept]

I'm sure someone in the media is busily trying to convince us that LA has always had the potential for severe snowstorms, it just hasn't happened until now.

[james]

I think it's caused by allowing women the vote. Also caused by teaching children the Earth is not Flat, as God Commanded.

[adrian_turtle]

Oh, that's just silly. My mom says it's really happening because George Soros is seeding the clouds with graphene oxide.

[moon_custafer]

It’s because David Lynch stopped doing his daily Weather Report a couple of months back. The blizzard was able to sneak in.

[calimac]

I think it's up in the mountains. Blizzards in the mountains there are not totally unknown.

[cactuswatcher]

Yes, it's in the mountains there.

[siliconshaman]

Yup, put more energy into the system, in this case more sunlight being absorbed by darker ice-free artic waters, and you get more energetic weather. I.e the circumpolar atmospheric vortex blows stronger, wiggling more as it circulates around the top of the world, randomly bringing colder weather to lower latitudes... like L.A.

You wait until that hits the El Nino warm air currents coming up from the south later in the year, all squeezed into a narrow corridor over the West Coast... you're going to get rainstorm events that drop months worth of rainfall in just a few hours, falling onto baked hard soil that's unable to absorb it. There will be so much flooding.

[topaz_eyes]

LA County last had a blizzard warning in 1989. Very rare, but not unheard of.

[brokenallbroken]

It's for the mountains at the north end of the county, not in the conurbation. We are, however, under flood watch through Saturday.

I'm given to understand that LA, like Phoenix, would experience a light dusting of snow every so often until the urban heat island grew large enough to make that nigh impossible.

[chez_jae]

What is this 'climate change' you speak of?

:D

[robby]

I live in the San Joaquin Valley and we get snow in the mountains both to the east and west. It snowed here at elevation 30 feet in 2009.