Hunt for Wet October?

Yes, I know. The headline was too easy, and has been used before. This morning at the NWS I wrote this in the forecast discussion about our extended forecast:

A deep trough of low pressure over the northeast Pacific along with an impressive jet stream shows some promise of significant rain across all of California for next weekend (23-24 Oct). A growing   number of ensembles and deterministic models are beginning to lean in that direction.

It’s hard not to get excited about that. Let it rain and end this worrisome fire season before the Santa Anas start in earnest! Let’s put a dent in what is now called Northern California’s worst drought on record! Daniel Swain in his blog explains how this might happen: https://weatherwest.com/archives/11383

Projected 10-day accumulated rainfall from European ensemble mean from 10/15 through 10/25.

This extended forecast comes with the baggage of all extended forecasts… fantasy!! I will say in recent years ensemble forecast suites have made improvements to extended forecasts, at least a way to narrow down the possible scenarios to two or three projected outcomes. Ensembles are helpful because it’s like running 50 models. So meteorologists can look at different scenarios and listen to the voices of a choir over one voice of a soloist.