Stage 3 Water Restrictions (it's getting serious, folks!) (Center, Anthony: houses, live)

[Future Trooper]

Originally Posted by franklin9150

Thanks for the update. When was the last time San Antonio was at Stage 3 restrictions?

Good Luck down their I hope restrictions don't last long.

[AnthonySA]

Originally Posted by hello13685

Anthony, your explanations helped a lot, thanks. They taught me new info and I'm appreciative (e.g., the info about desert and the Gulf). It was my understanding, however, that climate scientists have concluded that climate change has made/will make the drought tendencies at 30 degrees that you mention much more severe than they otherwise would have been.

No problem at all, you are very welcome. But I must caution you that it is usually highly misleading to blame any weather event on Climate Change alone. When we discuss climate, we are usually talking about trends over long periods in time. In my opinion, it is a logical fallacy to blame an active or inactive hurricane season, an exceptionally wet or dry year on climate change alone when it takes several years to even point out a climatic trend.

Now, for the San Antonio area specifically, we can examine the annual rainfall each year from 1934-2007 courtesy of The Edwards Aquifer Website


From this data alone, you can see several low and high precipitation anomalies from the mean 30.53" of rain per year in San Antonio. I find it difficult to draw any definite conclusions about our overall annual rainfall trends from this graph. If climate change with respect to precipitation is happening here, it is a prolonged process.

[wCat]

Originally Posted by smitty12

She doesn't want to them speculate on the fact of global warming, just that this drought is somehow caused by it. Or using short term weather to fear monger... That is how it works, any short term weather that can be speculated to support the case for global warming among the "little people" should be hyped. But short term weather like record lows should be dismissed as normal variability.

By short term I mean patterns less that a few years. There are no short term trends that can be proven to support or deny global warming. That is a long term issue, that can only be proven or not over a long period of time. Speculating on the causes of short term weather is just that speculating.

I'm not saying there isn't a Global Climate change problem, but it can not be seen in short term weather trends pro or con. Having Local weathermen speculate on it would be disingenuous.

Smitty....nicely stated. Honestly, I don't know what Hello wants other than to stir the pot. We're talking about stage 3 water restrictions. But if you know hello, then you know the history. Same ole...

[AnthonySA]

Another interesting to look at when considering average annual rainfall (AAR) is looking at the AAR for the state of Texas. You'll note an exceptional gradient between Beaumont and El Paso. San Antonio is situated in the middle of both extremes (the desert to the west, and a much more humid climate to the east).



Our overall weather pattern is dominated by the prevailing winds. Sometimes we can get the Gulf of Mexico (surface) and Pacific Ocean (upper levels) to work in our favor to produce copious amounts of rain; hence the extraordinarily wet years on the chart I posted on the previous posts. Or, on the contrary, we can have a much drier pattern evolve when the Sierre Madre mountains in Mexico influence our weather. (Kind of like the same affect of being on the Leeward/Rain Shadow side of the mountain: see graphic provided from Wikipedia

)

The two conflicting situations yield two extreme ends of the rainfall spectrum. That is a major reason why we're usually in a rain "feast" or "famine." in SA.

[wellguy]

The Grapes of Wrath did deal with the Dust Bowl but the books main theme was the story of the Okies and thier travels to California striving to make a new start and better life in Central Califiornia.

Not to worry I don't used that Okie term in a harmful way. My Family made thsat same journey to California during that time. Like many Okies my Family made TONS of money from farmnig, leasing land to farm,and several oil wells. Of course that's all been sold off except for the land's Mineral Rights.

But's that another story

[scuba steve]

Originally Posted by Steel Man

Someone has a fairly new lawn (looks good). What's with all the drain plugs?

Top secret, quadruple-redundant sewer cleanout system!

[firstclassflyer]

Originally Posted by scuba steve

Top secret, quadruple-redundant sewer cleanout system!

Is that for the "extra big one" after eating a dozen Krystals?

Never know when it's gonna clog!

[wCat]

Originally Posted by wellguy

The Grapes of Wrath did deal with the Dust Bowl but the books main theme was the story of the Okies and thier travels to California striving to make a new start and better life in Central Califiornia.

Actually it's an awesome book. Some thought it was torture reading it in high school. I just thought it might be a better use of Hello's time than trying to politicize the weather.

[hello13685]

It's my view that the climate change scientists are beyond the point of speculation. In my original post I was referring to wanting to hear speculation from garden variety meteorologists.

Smitty, I do certainly hope that climate change is not responsible for our changes. What frightens me is that my friends who grew up in SA in the 1970s told me that they never even needed air conditioning most of the time because it was much cooler then on average. They would sleep comfortably with the windows open at night. Weeks of 100+ days were not even remotely the norm in past decades. With the exception of 07 (I think) they've been the norm for the past four years.

[franklin9150]

Originally Posted by Steel Man

Someone has a fairly new lawn (looks good). What's with all the drain plugs?

Thanks, it's only 6 months old. I hate those things, they should have but them somewhere else...oh well.