With area reservoir levels low and river flows lower, the appearance this week of a summer rainstorm catches both residents and area vacationers by surprise.
The cause is an “atmospheric river,” a narrow corridor of concentrated moisture in the atmosphere. Like a terrestrial river, it has currents and eddies, but unlike the Russian River or the Mississippi or the Colorado, it doesn't have banks. Instead, its course meanders across the skies with other weather patterns. And, sometimes, it spills over onto summer plans.
Wikipedia’s entry has the interesting comparison, “Atmospheric rivers are typically several thousand kilometers long and only a few hundred kilometers wide, and a single one can carry a greater flux of water than the Earth's largest river, the Amazon River,”
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One of these phenomenon, a plume of moisture from the mid-Pacific to the West Coast colloquially known as the Pineapple Express, usually appears in late fall. But this one is in the opening days of summer, and according to the National Weather Service in Sacramento may bring the highest levels of atmospheric moisture for late June in the last 30 years for the region.
In other words, it’s really coming down out there. Weather.com says the heaviest amount of rain today, Tuesday, is likely north of San Francisco, heading north to Oregon as the week progresses.
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In Healdsburg, the weekly Tuesday Concerts in the Plaza is in jeopardy of being cancelled, and according to Elizabeth Haskell of Parks and Recreation, the all-women country music group Foxes in the Hen House will be invited back next year.
“My mother is in town, and I love country music, so we had big plans for the concert,” she said.
The last Tuesday concert to be cancelled was Patsy and the Bobcats, another country group, two years ago, on June 29 2011. They were successfully re-scheduled to the 2012 season.
