All Climate Events

Monday February 26, 2018. 4 PM. The Paroxysmal Precipitation of the Desert: How Hard Can It Rain?  James Smith, Princeton University. Sponsored by Princeton University.  More information here. 

To assess how hard it can rain, we examine the climatology and physics of hailstorms. Links between hailstorms and extreme rainfall are strong, especially for the arid and semi-arid regions of the western United States. Analyses will focus on two regions: the dry lands of eastern Oregon, and the Colorado Plateau of southern Utah. Two storms provide models for examining extreme rainfall from hailstorms: the June 14, 1903, Heppner hailstorm (supercell) in eastern Oregon, and the Sept. 14, 2015, Short Creek hailstorm in southern Utah. Each represents distinctive features of the climatology of extreme rainfall. Polarimetric radar measurements are used to characterize the dynamical and microphysical processes that result in extreme rainfall rates. The broad objective of this research is to develop new approaches for assessing the climatology of extreme rainfall.