From the L.A. Times – On Tuesday, researchers announced a new scale to describe the strength of atmospheric river storms, weather events that cause many of the West Coast’s heaviest rains. Unlike other scales that focus on potential damage — such as the Fujita scale for tornadoes or the Saffir-Simpson scale for hurricanes — the atmospheric river scale will also characterize how beneficial storms can be for the water supply among California and other Western states, according to UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. It was created in collaboration with the Department of Water Resources and the National Weather Service. (more)