A Monster Low Will Develop on Wednesday

 I don't know what to call it.

The leviathan of lows?    The Whale Storm?   The Colossus of the eastern Pacific?

Whatever you call it, the largest midlatitude cyclone I can ever remember is about the form over the eastern Pacific.  Guinness record keepers should pay attention.

Below is the predicted sea level pressure map for Wednesday at 7 AM from the UW modeling system.

Just wow.    A deep low-pressure system of enormous dimensions, extending from Alaska to the latitude of Hawaii.   Roughly 2500 miles in diameter.


Strong winds will spread over thousands of miles as well (see the wind gust forecast below for the same time).


And with its large size and powerful winds over a huge area, this super low will produce immense, dangerous waves.

Consider the significant wave height prediction by the NOAA WaveWatch3 model.   The forecast for Tuesday evening predicts waves reaching 45 to 50 feet.  Extreme waves.


By Wednesday, the area of large waves greater than 25 ft expands and moves eastward, with some large swell reaching the West Coast.


And early Thursday, the Northwest will experience large waves breaking on our coastline (see below),


While all this is going on, California is in the midst of a once-in-a-decade wet/windy weather event.  I will talk about this more in future blogs, but the precipitation totals that are forecast for the next ten days are stunning (see below).   

Flooding from LA to northern California.  Off-the-charts snowfall. 

And some of the smaller dams will soon have to release large amounts of water to prevent them from being overtopped,


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