Dawson McDougal wrote:
"Weatherlawyer" wrote in message
oups.com...
Dawson McDougal wrote:

Here's a weather lesson for you, something you may not encounter all that
often across the pond, a classic winter storm combined with upslope flow
at the surface, this spells disaster for areas of higher elevation 7,000+ ft.

Parts of Wyoming and Nebraska will see anywhere from 1 to 3 feet of snow
from this system, could turn into a bad one for the entire northern plains
if it can gather enough moisture.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ifps/MapClic....202088&rlon=-

Over here we generally have just the one form of snow. On the west
coast where the strong winds come in the temperature rises. This
invariably happens with every Low. So if this system causes snow it
falls wet and messy.

British and Norwegian weather very much depends on the Azores High and
its counterpart the Icelandic Low.

This is turning into a very classic, major and predictable (if you can believe that)
winter storm for the northern plains.

Anywhere from 10 to 32 inches of snow can be expected in the warning area.

The Laramie Mountains are picking up close to 3 feet of snow (due to upflow
conditions) while on the plains, anywhere from 10 to 24 inches of snow will fall.
Outside the warning area, people can expect 2 to 6 inches. This is one of the
biggest storms I've seen in a while.) It's bigger than the Northeast Storm
and doesn't have the direct bennefit of the ocean to work with.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/New...3?img_id=17185

The states you mention though are typically very dry during the summer
months, southern California can expect little or no rain during the late
summer, take a look at the averages. Nevada is obviously dry because it is
mostly desert, however, the rest of the states you mention do experience
thunderstorm activity during the summer.

I obviously have no experience of continental weather; much less than
that for the N American continent. I did once try, on another forum
somewhere, to explain the above phenomenon in terms of the so called
Southern Oscillation.

I worked out that the El Nino and La Nina effects are no mre than
singularities that appear sometimes due to the runs of the lunar phases
as I had expected it to. Now and again a run of phases will produce
exceptional hurricanes in the North Atlantic as it did last year the N
Atlantic Oscilation.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/New...3?img_id=17180

I don't know nearly enough about astrometry to say what part of the
cycles they come from. I doubt it is that difficult to go to the next
stage of empirically forecasting them the way they forecast tides. Once
they give it a fair go.

I don't know if I will live long enough to see that though. Even
experts in all the oceanographic earth sciences are convinced that the
moon directly raises tides -so there is no hope for much from that
quarter in anybody's lifetime.

Not that the really important things in life have ever required
"theoretical" solutions.

This is a cop-out though: "Nevada is obviously dry because it is mostly
desert."
And it highlights a different way of looking at things that we have.

You talked about "a classic winter storm combined with upslope flow at
the surface".
Until recently looking at the information on the BBC weather sceen you
could see the progression of Lows and Highs from the Mid Atlantic to
Norway and France. And you would know instantly what that would mean.
The presenter only had to highlight where they thought it would affect
the most.

(Now they just stand in front of a bag of porridge waving at it. But
that's just one of the local problems with having fools in authority. I
gather things are much worse over there.)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/bbcweat...st_media.shtml

If you had said a Low reaching from somewhere west or east of the
mountains of so and so I would have been better able to follow you. Not
that you were wrong, just that it's how a body gets used to
understanding something.