Lorton precipitation amounts June 3-9, 2013

Seasonal forecasts were updated this week, one for hurricanes, the other for El Niño.  

As I reported in April, this year was forecast to be an active year for hurricanes in the Atlantic basin by The Tropical Meteorology Project, headed by Colorado State University's Dr. William Gray.  In their updated forecast, released June 3, they continued to foresee a very active 2013 Atlantic hurricane season. Given the above-average forecast, they are still calling for an above-average probability of United States and Caribbean major hurricane landfall.  Which is essentially the same as what was said in April - additional statistical prediction schemes that had been developed reconfirmed their earlier conclusions.

This month’s El Niño forecast by the Climate Prediction Center is for the neutral conditions to continue, as reflected by the persistence of near-average sea surface temperatures across much of the equatorial Pacific Ocean.  So how does this matter in the summer?  The chances for the continental U.S. and the Caribbean Islands to experience a hurricane increase substantially during La Niña, and decrease during El Niño.  The reverse is true for winter storms, but let’s enjoy our summer before worrying about that.

This week in Lorton Tropical Storm Andrea left us with 3.46” of rain, but we got about an inch earlier in the week too so it was a wet week!   My rain gauge in Lorton recorded the following precipitation at 6am on the day indicated for the previous 24 hours.

Date

Precip

Mon 06/03/2013

0.53”

Tue 06/04/2013

0.40”

Wed 06/05/2013

0.00”

Thu 06/06/2013

0.00”

Fri 06/07/2013

2.33”

Sat 06/08/2013

1.13”

Sun 06/09/2013

0.01”

Weekly Totals :

4.40”