A cluster of crazy weather is heading for the U.S. in February as the El Niño weather pattern continues into 2024.
Forecasts suggest both the east and west coasts will be hit with another round of wild weather due to a “very complicated and rapidly transitioning situation,” Fox Weather reported Thursday. A Pacific jet extension is likely to hit in early February, bringing huge amounts of precipitation to the west coast in what’s known as an “atmospheric river,” meteorologist Colin McCarthy told followers.
Previous atmospheric rivers have caused enormous flooding, snowfall, damage and deaths in Washington, Oregon, California, and well up into the Rocky Mountains. San Diego county declared a state of emergency Monday over catastrophic flash flooding throughout the city and surrounding area.
A Pacific jet extension will roar across the Pacific to begin February, bringing the potential for a significant atmospheric river event for California and the West Coast.
A classic El Niño pattern. Stay tuned. pic.twitter.com/zmWsur9bI4
— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch) January 23, 2024
And since California was built by idiots who didn’t realize that rainwater and snowmelt from the surrounding mountain ranges can’t percolate through concrete and tarmac, I’d say SoCal residents should get ready for a very messy rest of the winter.
Things aren’t much better on the east coast.
“For the first half of January, that polar vortex kind of stumbled and fell foul there, moved south. We had the arctic outbreak,” VERISK research scientist Judah Cohen told Fox Weather. “But now it’s, it’s back together, let’s say, and, it’s a very tight spin, rotation of the polar vortex. All the cold air is receding back towards the North Pole, and we’re going to have a milder end of the month of January.”
In layman’s terms, it’s going to get warm again. Then it will get cold again. And then I guess we’ll just have to wait and see? (RELATED: Videos Show Floods, Snow Causing Mass Damage And Chaos In California)
But don’t panic too much. We went through a series of atmospheric rivers and polar nightmares throughout 2022 and 2023. So, can we finally just admit we’re no longer living in symbiosis with the natural world and this is the only reason y’all get so panicked about precipitation?