Bob Chill

It's an "easy" enso setup to make some decent predictions if you just look at the Nino regions. Where I'm getting hung up is the Npac. There is so much warmth throughout the pac basin that it makes me far less confident predicting standard strong nino conditions. But given the strength of the nino, its hard to bet against a wet southern stream. Its still only August but if the Npac/pdo regions continue to be the opposite of what we really want to see, my gut says this winter will do some weird things that few expect/predict. The pessimistic side of me thinks the pac will overwhelm north America and it will be warm and wet with few chances at good snowfall even to our north and west. The optimistic side of me says we're in a long term HL blocking period and even the EPO will punch cold to very cold air into the conus with a suppressed/favorable southern stream. Meaning the winter could be unusually cold east of the Rockies for a strong nino. I would be pretty funny if its a dry winter though. Maybe the southern stream cuts well west of us or stays south of the gulf coast lol

Mushrooms are going nutz down here too. Recent rain and consistent high humidity are the cause. Especially the high humidity. It's been stupid humid down here for weeks. Looking so forward to the first legit Canadian front. It's been a tuff summer working outside

Lol. Down here, any equipment owner/operator is making well over 6 figures. Going rate is $800-1200/day depending on complexity. Forest mulchers are $1,500+ but that kind of work is dangerous and hard on equipment. Fun to watch though haha

Basically both. This is pretty wild for August. PDO region is a literal dumpster fire. You could cook ramen by the square mile. I dont have many concrete thoughts about winter. Seasonal guidance is basically default enso climo but the Pacific overall is anything but normal or default. But it's only August and much will change. If seasonal guidance has the right idea with the AO/NAO, winter will probably produce but the anomalous nature of enso will prob produce anomalous patterns. When and what is above my pay grade

Pretty nice MCS remnant/rebirth moving through down here. Warned sections missed my hood but high quality rainfall this AM with some deep bass rumbles. Blacksburg honking a little for round 2 if we get some sun in between. Smith mtn lake is still over 5' below full pool. Lots of wrecked propellers and shoal beachings this summer lol.

Gnarly storm just moved through in my hood. Warned and verified. 50-60mph gusts and torrential rain. Best storm since I moved. Glad I wasn't on the lake. That would have been scary lol

Just had a sporty storm roll thru. Over an inch in 20 mins with frequent CG. No warning but it was close to that level. Have had 4-5 pretty good storms so far this year. Always fun when nothing gets destroyed. Storm TV thru the window will never get old lol

Sitting around 4" total in the yard but totals are very uneven down here. About 40 miles to my southeast got a stripe of 4-6" yesterday during a mini-train in just a few hours. Areas to my west prob have less than half of my yard. Lake levels haven't responded yet. A testament to how uneven the distribution has been and also how crazy dry the ground has been. Stream levels have only made it back to normal at best.

Finally breaking the back on the drought. It's been straight crunchy dust down here for months. Had a sporty storm roll through a couple hours ago with some gully washing and gusts near 40mph. Picked up 1.3" in under an hour and now round 2 is rolling through. Could be close to 2" by morning. This is awesome

Yea, the pump back operation is pretty interesting. Our property at Leesville lake is near the head of the lake so it's pretty cool when they let it loose. I've kayaked the "surge" from the visitor center to our ramp area. Its not rough or whitewater or anything like that but you move down stream pretty quick lol. The double lake pump back operation is 1 of only 2 in the world. They release during peak demand and pump back during low demand when rates are lower. Free money glitch for the power company lol. Leesville lake can go up and down as much as 10' a day. I've been fishing from shore during big releases and you get chased uphill haha. Leesville is 3.5k acres and smith is over 20k. A full 10' pump back can only raise Smith 1' though so they can't balance the levels in that direction. Smith has an annual draw down in the fall/winter after peak boating season but it's usually short lived. Like a few weeks. We haven't had full pool since last summer and having it so low during peak season is tickin' a lot of people off. No quick fix this time. It's going to take a lot of rain to get back to full pool. Record low is 788.30 looking at the levels data but it happened in 1977 and not 1968 like the news said. I should call and correct them haha

Smith mtn lake is over 5' below full pool. Many ramps including the one in my hood are unusable. Many boats on lifts cannot touch the water. It's apparently the lowest the lake has been since 1968 which was just a few years after it filled up for the first time. Lake levels are generally quite stable and typically don't fluctuate more than a foot or 2 throughout the year. The recent rain helped knocked the dust down but I'm starting to think it's going to take a tropical event to reset this drought with any efficiency. Thankfully the well on our property on the other side of the mountain has no competition from neighboring landowners.

After some MUCH welcomed rain lol, wife and I caught a pretty sick sunset last night.

Fun day. Had our 3rd tstorm of the day roll thru a few mins ago and another on its heels. Nothing close to severe but they've all been noisy. Popcorn boomers

Imo, cansips is prob a best case scenario. -EPO door to door and no deep GOA trough. I don't think the classic nino height pattern will be friendly like it has in the past. Oceans are warm and the pac jet is more problematic. We've needed amplified flow and the majority of our snows over the last 10+ years happened with a -EPO. "Regular" cold has been delivering near misses way too often and ninos aren't known for anomalous cold in the east. Waaaay too early to worry about details of course but personally I'm not that excited about a nino. The only thing that will make me optimistic over the summer (assuming a nino actually happens lol) is a legit +PDO forming. If a nino locks in and the npac sstas are all jacked up, I'll be pretty pessimistic

Second tstorm of the day for my yard. Nothing severe but some good gusts with the first one. One right now is pretty noisy but looks like the severe stuff will stay to my NW. Enjoying the booms and rumbles either way