Abstract
Precipitation from a warm winter, orographic storm during Christmas of 1996 in Yosemite National Park and the Sierra Nevada was simulated with the NCAR mesoscale weather model called WRF. The sea-surface temperature of the Pacific Ocean upwind of the mountains was prescribed to six different fixed temperatures and the resulting simulated precipitation compared to the actual storm precipitation. Warm sea-surface temperatures increased the precipitation above normal by as much as a factor of four. Based on the likely increase in precipitation rate and frequency of storms following the Genesis Flood, glaciers thousands of feet thick would have developed in a few hundred years.