January 1993 West Coast Heavy Precipitation Event

Charles Norris, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD

This animation sequence shows the January 1993 weather system which socked California with record rainfalls, causing extensive flooding and property damage. Cloud imagery and surface precipitation measurements are combined in this animation sequence. The cloud images are from the GOES spacecraft which is in geosynchronous orbit currently over longitude 112 West. The precipitation measurements are from surface meteorological stations in San Diego and Nevada City. The precipitation measurements are reported in percent of normal January - they clearly show that San Diego received more than four times the normal January precipitation.

This movie was created by Charles Norris and Shyh Chen of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Special thanks to Larry Riddle of SIO for providing the GOES images and meteorological data. The GOES imagery was originally obtained from the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Click here to see this as a movie.