Strong jet streams often plow into the West Coast in wintertime, but the heaviest rains and snows occur when the flow dips far south over the Pacific, allowing it to bring an atmospheric river of warm, moist air from the subtropics to California.

Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) are receiving prestigious honors from a number of professional bodies for their research, leadership, and commitment to advancing science.

UCAR and NCAR have grown and matured in so many ways, keeping pace as the world around them has also changed. Over the last half century, we’ve watched environmental issues evolve from local foci to regional and global expanses.

By almost any metric, UCAR and NCAR have been successful since the time a half century ago when a small group of people, most of them university professors of atmospheric science, boldly envisioned a national center—run by and for the universities—which would not only serve science and society but also complement and strengthen the universities themselves.

Whether or not they could be definitively linked to a changing climate, weather crises in the first years of the 2000s added regional exclamation points to the global possibilities raised by modeling and theory. A relentless 2003 heat wave in normally temperate Europe took tens of thousands of lives.