Call me: Doubting Tom...
Three feet of rain? Really?
Do you realize what three feet of rain would be like?
Every inch of rainfall typically raises the water level in ground water (rivers lakes and streams) by about a foot.
It would be the precipitation equivalent of 30 feet of snow.
Has three feet of rain ever fallen in one location in one storm? Not in the absence of a cyclone or hurricane.
Thomas logging out.
Oh ye of little faith, I certainly hope the forecasters are wrong but if these mega monster pacific storms stall over the mountains it can rain like you would not believe. Not one single storm but but a series of storms over the next 5 days.
As I stated we had 29 inches over 4 days back in the 80's so after that I believe it can happen. I do remember in the winter of 82-83 when Sugarbowl ski resort west of Lake Tahoe had over 850 total inches of snow.
They're referring to this phenomenon of a relatively narrow band of heavy rain as an "atmospheric river". It's something like 3 storms lined up over 5 days -- out of the Hawaiian area of the Pacific.
Fred's right that an inch of rain equates to roughly 10" of snow, give or take a couple inches due to temperature and moisture content variations. But Doug's right in talking about Sugar Bowl's snowfall totals. (I've had numerous seasons passes at Sugar Bowl, Alpine Meadows and Squaw Valley over the decades.) These are on the Pacific Crest, and you have to remember that the Sierras poach the atmospheric moisture first -- before it gets to the rest of the country. I remember Alpine Meadows still having a 30 foot base in June one year, open until July 4. I used to live in the lee of Alpine Meadows on the west shore of Lake Tahoe, and once got ~5 feet in one afternoon.
It's not for nothing that Sacramento's aging levee system is ranked first or second in the country for disaster potential now. The really scary scenario is a heavy but warm storm front (high snow level like this) hitting a substantial snow pack later in the season and adding the melt run-off to the otherwise heavy rain run-off. 3 feet in 5 days sounds like a lot, and I really don't expect to see it, but I wouldn't say that's impossible here.
Now, it's a fair comment that the weather guessers have been wrong more often than they are right, esp. with respect to quantitative amounts. (For those who remember Pete Giddings on TV out of the Bay Area, his snow reports were almost legendary among Tahoe locals as a joke -- he'd report 5 feet had fallen and we'd wonder aloud if he was measuring the berms thrown up by the plows.)
