When light shines through water, colors with longer wavelengths are absorbed by the water, with the longest wavelengths absorbed first. Blue and violet have the shortest wavelengths of visible light, so they are able to penetrate the deepest.
"They didn't even try to fly away. They just feebly made noise," a woman told the Santa Barbara Independent on Saturday after spotting over two dozen dead or dying cormorants near Goleta Beach. "A few were on their stomachs, wings spread [and] gasping for breath.... Heartbreaking."
The powerful March storms that drenched Hawaii produced more than 2 trillion gallons of rain and pushed precipitation levels to as much as 3,000% above normal in a 14-day period for this time of year.
Even though the evidence is still early, this could be a very significant event in 2026 and lingering into 2027. Its function in the global earth system is to release heat from the deeper oceans that has been temporarily stored there. El Nino allows that subducted heat to be unearthed.
During this heat wave, "not only are daily temperature records likely to be broken across the region, but even the high temperature records for any day in the entire month of March," the National Weather Service said in a Tuesday morning forecast.
In Grazalema, Spain's wettest town, a year's-worth of rain fell in a fortnight and overloaded the karst aquifer beneath it. Water rushed into homes through floors, walls and even electricity sockets. Authorities ordered everyone to evacuate. I felt a lot of fear, said Sanchez Barea, a guesthouse owner whose home is one of hundreds still in an exclusion zone.
"There's 30% to 40% chance of thunderstorms on Monday. We could see damaging wind gusts, intense rainfall, water spouts or brief, weak tornadoes." Though it's expected to start drizzling overnight, Angelenos likely won't see heavy rainfall until late Monday afternoon, with showers predicted through the evening. The coasts could see 1 to 2½ inches of rain, with up to 5 inches predicted for the foothills and mountains.
The shower activity is going to continue throughout the day, National Weather Service meteorologist Lamont Bain said. As it pertains to thunderstorm risk, there's probably a 10-to-15 percent chance. There is a lot of instability between the upper low pressure and the lower air. That upper low is going to spin out there and not move much, and that's why the rain showers are going to be scattered throughout the day and why the best chances for thunder are out over the ocean.
While cold-stunned iguanas fall from trees in Florida and videos circulate of frozen "exploding" trees in the Northeast, Southern California is working up a sweat. A midwinter heat wave has descended on much of the state and is expected to spike temperatures as much as 20 degrees above normal in the coming week. The summer-like heat is thanks to a ridge of high pressure lingering high in the atmosphere that extends through the San Francisco Bay Area and into the Pacific Northwest.
Northern Monterey Bay and Southern Monterey Bay and Big Sur Coast as well as San Francisco County are under a beach hazards statement which was released by the National Weather Service on Thursday at 12:13 p.m. The statement is in effect until Monday Feb. 2, at 9 a.m. An increased risk of sneaker waves and strong rip currents with breaking waves of 14 to 19 feet, can be expected according to the NWS San Francisco CA.
An extraordinarily warm and mostly sunny January has left the snowpack across California's Sierra Nevada far smaller than usual - 59% of average for this time of year, state water officials announced Friday as they held the season's second snow survey. "We are now about halfway through the typically wettest part of the year," said Andy Reising, manager of snow surveys for the California Department of Water Resources.
