First Alert Weather Insider

The atmosphere wants to be in equilibrium and will do everything it can to equalize. To accomplish this, air will always flow from high pressure to low pressure. Air flows clockwise around high pressure systems and counterclockwise around low pressure systems. Credit: NOAA Air flows into low pressure centers. As the air rises, the water

November 2022 through October 2023 came in as the hottest 12-month streak on record, according to Climate Central. Here, you can see how many days various areas around the globe experienced a CSI of 3 or higher. This means that climate change has made warmer temperatures at least 3x more likely. Click HERE to learn

Renewable energy is fascinating. Wind turbines convert the kinetic energy (energy of motion) of the wind into electrical energy as the turbines spin. Solar panels work by converting photons (particles of light energy) into electrons, creating electrical energy. In this graphic from Climate Central, they estimate how much energy will be generated over the next

Rainbows are just one of a wide variety of optical effects caused by the interactions between sunlight and various atmospheric conditions. Sunlight is actually a mix of every wavelength, or color, of the visible light portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Credit: https://hubblesite.org/contents/articles/the-electromagnetic-spectrum As sunlight enters a raindrop, it slows down since water is more dense

Snow here on the valley floor is a pretty rare sight. Thankfully, we have a bunch of towering mountains in our backyard. Based on the average of the last 10 years, the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway sees its first inch (or more) of snow on November 23rd. The reason our mountains see more snow than

Twentynine years ago today, President Bill Clinton signed into law the California Desert Protection Act, establishing Joshua Tree National Park as we know it today. Prior to 1994, the land had been designated as a national monument all the way back in 1936. Credit: Spencer Blum Former United States Senator Barabra Boxer explained to me

This week is Flood Preparedness Week in California. Did you know that within the last 20 years, every single county in California has been declared a federal flood disaster area at least once?  The worst flood in California’s history was in 1862 and affected everywhere from Washington to Utah to Baja California. The floods killed

Just after midnight, local time, on October 25th, 2023, a historic, major category 5 hurricane slammed the Acapulco metropolitan area. The National Hurricane Center described the situation as ‘a nightmare scenario for southern Mexico’. The storm rapidly intensified from a tropical storm to a catastrophic category 5 hurricane in just 12 hours. Winds in the

The Climate Prediction Center, a branch of NOAA, has released its seasonal outlook for the upcoming winter. They highlighted the fact that this is the first winter with an ongoing El Nino in several years. This will impact general weather patterns across the country. This winter, most of the southern corridor of the nation will

California is home to hundreds of faults. This partly explains why the state sees so many earthquakes. They can range wildly in size and shape. A fault is a fracture zone between two large blocks of rock. Some, like the San Andreas Fault, are hundreds of miles long, traverse most of the state, and remain

We have been keeping a close eye on El Niño conditions over the last few months. As a reminder, El Niño is part of a climate cycle known as ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation). El Nino represents the phase when sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are at least 0.5 degrees Celsius above average and La Niña

On Saturday, October 14th, 2023, an annular solar eclipse will occur across a wide swath of the western half of the United States. There are a few types of solar eclipses: total, annular and partial. All are caused by the moon passing between the sun and the earth. This causes a shadow to be cast

The Climate Shift Index is a categorical scale made by Climate Central which ranges from negative five to five. Each category is defined as a ratio of how likely a temperature is in today’s altered climate vs how likely it would be in a climate without anthropogenic, or human caused, climate change.  Credit: Climate Central

Fall has been getting consistently warmer since 1970 in more than 230 locations across the United States. This warming is widespread but has been most evident in the Southwest. On average, fall has become 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer across the country. Here in Palm Springs, our fall has gotten 2 degrees warmer since 1970. In

Southern California is home to a fairly unique weather phenomenon known as the Santa Ana winds. The Santa Ana winds are an offshore wind event. This means that winds will flow from the inland deserts toward the Pacific Ocean. This happens when high pressure over the deserts pushes air to the west Credit: USGS Dry air

According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), a water year is defined as ‘the 12-month period starting October 1, for any given year through September 30, of the following year’. The water year measures the total water received by a certain area during that year. Think of it as the fiscal year for water.