More severe weather down south, calm up north

January 19, 2010
5:51 P.M.

Hey guys. So as I'm sure you noticed, we were very warm today. The high at Komo's downtown TV station was 60 today, and the low was a balmy 52. Even though the jet stream has gone to our south, we are still under the influence of a warm, moist air mass originating from further south. The weather in Southern California has been extremely severe. Los Angeles had a tornado warning and flooding over Long Beach, while the coast saw winds up to 80 miles per hour. I'm actually not surprised one bit that they did get a tornado; events like these are actually fairly common in the storms that hit Southern California. They have much more of a tropical element to them and they can be much more intense than a lot of our Pacific Northwest storms (at least in my opinion). They don't exist as often as ours do though, and usually they only occur on El Nino years. But they can be very powerful.
I'm sorry I really have to and study for my three huge tests tomorrow (and NONE of them are finals! That's next week.). Once the semester is over I'll have more free time to update the blog.