Last week’s winter storm brought record-breaking rainfall, making the National Weather Service (NWS) one of the busiest departments past few weeks. Since the beginning of the month, the agency has been in a state of emergency as heavy rainfall from a recent winter storm spread from the San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara areas to LA and south to San Diego.
The Korea Daily visited the NWS’s Oxnard office at 10:30 a.m. on February 9. Three meteorologists manned dozens of monitors, keeping a close eye on flooding and wildfires, as well as atmospheric conditions and water rescue efforts. The NWS Oxnard office monitors climate change and atmospheric conditions in the Los Angeles County-San Luis Obispo County area.
“It appears that another ‘atmospheric river’ will move into Santa Barbara County on or after the 18th,” said NWS Meteorologist John Dumas, “with a 30 percent chance of a storm as of the afternoon of February 9.” The forecast comes less than two weeks after the heaviest rainfall in 97 years. An atmospheric river is a narrow, elongated band of rain clouds that originates in the Pacific Ocean and is a kind of ‘moisture conveyor belt’.