I’m visiting my mom in the Pacific Northwest. This is what my phone blasted to me on my first morning when I woke up.
I’ve never seen a hydrologic outlook on my phone, nor an atmospheric river.
I’m staying with my BFF from college and I asked her what it meant.
She said, “Oh I hate this. It’s a huge amount of rain and flooding.”
I pictured the atmospheric river as a massive body of water running through the clouds above my head.
My friend also told me that she thinks the weather forecasters and meteorologists work too hard to find new terms for long-occurring events.
Here’s the rest of the alert I received:
I was pleasantly surprised to have cloudy skies with blue peeking through. It’s absolutely gorgeous here and such a contrast from the desert of Arizona. I love spending time with my mom, although she’s not doing as well as during my last visit. More on that after I have time to process my thoughts and emotions.
The drive to my mom’s assisted living.
I loved the light in the leaves of this tree at my mom’s assisted living.
What strange weather alerts have you seen? Have you heard of hydrologic events or atmospheric rivers before?
I think the forecasters around here coined that atmospheric river phrase. It’s been around for years and now everyone uses it! However we all know what it means which I guess is a good thing. The other one I love is the “rain shadow”. Have you heard that one?
I know all about the rain shadow thanks to Cat Stevens song 😊 Also in Palm Springs we had a rain shadow because of the mountain blocking the clouds.
It’s the first time I’ve read these terms. Very imaginative weather men.
They must be bored in Seattle with the word rain.
Yes if it rains 250 days out of 365, they must be bored of the simple word; rain.
😅
🥹
Can’t say I ever heard of that either. Maybe weather forecasters are also writers on the side. LOL!
Glad you can visit your Mom. It is hard as they age. I cherish the time with my parents who are still doing pretty well thankfully, but my mom has been having more health issues lately.
Great that you get to reconnect with a BFF as well. I hope the weather forecast continues to be wrong or at least not as bad as what they are thinking.
I believe the forecasters want to be writers too. That’s a fun idea! Thank you for all the good thoughts.
Very welcome 🙂 Have a good day!
😊
I’ve never seen those alerts…we get a flash flood warning occasionally, or wind advisory, but that’s about it
We get a lot of weird weather warnings in AZ like monsoons, flash flooding and haboobs. But when I lived in Seattle cell phones didn’t exist so I never got a warning.