Alright before we begin on Major Pacific Storm Elsa here is the Category chart for who will get what, noting that the highest category conditions, a four, will be in the Inland Empire to High Desert areas and sloping weaker category levels west of Los Angeles so get familiar with the map in your area for this system. Now let’s get to the storm …
A powerful Alaskan storm is moving down the coast at the time well north of the forecast areas. The center of the storm will make it into the northeast section of the Martin Storm Diamond on Saturday, New Years Eve.
The Martin Storm Diamond is an imaginary diamond-shaped zone southwest of Southern California, out in the Pacific Ocean. Any upper level low that crosses into any part of it puts most of the Southern California zones in a thunderstorm-infested-dynamic region …
On Saturday, expecting this system to start with strong lifting in the Santa Clarita Valley as the front starts to ignite along the area of upper divergence, with frontal zone motion to the east and storm motion to the north.
As the system digs further south into the Martin Storm Diamond, stronger lifting, moisture, and instability will be available from around Orange County north and eastward … especially the High Desert to Inland Empire zones by early afternoon or evening.
As the system becomes wrapped in moisture, it’ll affect rare zones such as the Low Desert / Coachella Valley areas, and travel along the Ludlow (I-40 areas) in the evening … and after sunset moving through the Colorado River Valley areas.
This system does have the power to produce strong severe thunderstorm winds, heavy rainfall, hail, frequent lightning … and thus this will be a Category Four out of Six system at the center of the dynamics.
Snowfall will be plentiful for the mountains, with a snow level below 5,000 FT for the most part and heavy snowfall … thundersnow is also likely. Snowfall amounts will vary from range to range but at the moment the Winter Storm Watches I issued the other day looks good and the member section will reflect the storm information for the mountains after 9am on New Years Eve along with issuing a possible rare Thundersnow Warning …
My satellite image prediction tool shows the cloud tops being very cold from Saturday morning and evening as the storm erupts across the higher category areas. San Diego will be in the southern end of the system so at the moment have left you out of severe thunderstorms risk , however you could still see passing thunderstorms at times.
So there you have it … Major Pacific Storm Elsa is a category four system aiming for the forecast area on Saturday, bringing with her at the center the risk of thunderstorms, hail, downburst winds, heavy rain and mountain snowfall, and bad travel conditions … Stay tuned to Southern California Weather Force.com
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MEDIUM/LONG RANGE: After this we’ll have a strong offshore flow wind event on Thursday … followed by a storm pattern that could be significant surrounding January 9th. The member section already has the long range information.
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Everyone else is going to have to click the link and go to your micro-climate section and await the alerts that come. Some are out now … and others will be issued.
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Full Members can see the snow level, snow amount, flood risk, rainfall maps, by tomorrow morning before ELSA hits … Don’t miss out! …
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