Wetand News

 Today, was the first day this spring in which the temperatures got above normal in Seattle (see below, average highs and lows are shown by the purple and cyan colors).   Yes, temperatures rose to an unimaginable 61F.  It felt very good, particularly since the last few mornings have been MUCH cooler than normal, with lows in the mid-30s. The recent cool weather has not been limited to Puget Sound but extended over the entire West Coast, something illustrated by the figure below, which shows the difference from normal of the daily average temperatures for the past two weeks.   Most of western Washington, Oregon, California, and the southwest states were more than 2F c ooler than normal.    Chilling statistics The cause of this icy reign?    La Nina and the associated and very persistent atmospheric circulation pattern it sets up.   This pattern is illustrated by the upper level (500 hPa--about 18,000 ft) weather map for 2 PM last Wednesday (March 24th).   A high amplitude ridge of high

_______________ Announcement The Northwest Weather Workshop, the annual gathering to talk about Northwest weather, climate, and major meteorological events, will take place on May 1, 2021. This year we will have a special session on the meteorology of the September 2020 regional wildfires. The meeting will be online. More information, the agenda, and registration information is found here: https://atmos.uw.edu/pnww/ ____________________________________ A powerful cold front moved through the region yesterday. At Camp Muir at 10,000 ft winds gusted to 143 mph , with winds over 100 mph for 15 hours.  Amazing. But the front, with its intense horizontal pressure gradients, also brought strong winds to the surface, as shown by the maximum gust map on Sunday (shown below--click on the map to expand).  50-60 mph over Northwest Washington and the coast, and 55-80 mph along the eastern slopes of the Cascades and stretching into southeast WA.    The strong flow accelerated as it descended d

A powerful Pacific front is bearing down on Washington State, reaching the coast tomorrow morning. Behind the front is unusually cool air for late March, cold enough to bring snowflakes to the higher hills of the region, and bountiful snow in the mountains.  And there will be winds . The predicted surface weather maps provide the story (below).  These maps show sea level pressure, temperature (color shading, blue is cold, yellow is warmer), and near-surface winds. The first weather map, valid for 8 AM Sunday morning, shows the front (red line) offshore.  That front is in a region lower pressure (a pressure trough) and you will note much cooler (bluer) air behind.  Also, note the large north-south pressure difference across western Washington...that means winds. By 11 PM Sunday night, quite cold air pushes across western WA and Oregon, and is well into eastern WA. And the forecast for 11 AM Monday, literally brings chills down my back, with primo cold air in BC and the whole Northwest u

It is an age-old hope of mankind:  to control the weather. And in this podcast, I will answer the question:  can mankind alter the weather?    Can we weaken or strengthen storms?   And much more. My podcast also includes the weekend weather forecast for the region, promising a favorable Saturday, a strong front on Sunday, and unusually cool air on Monday.  And some good news for skiers! Here is my podcast: Click the play button to listen or use your favorite streaming service (see below) You can stream my podcast from your favorite services:   Listen on Apple Podcasts   Listen on Spotify Podcasts   Listen on Google Podcasts

Important Message: The strange lights Thursday night were the debris from a Falcon-9 launch vehicle that were re-entering the atmosphere. ____________________ One of the most enjoyable aspects of this blog is that readers send me cloud pictures for identification or discussion. Most can be readily explained and others require some detective work. But every once in a while I get a picture that stumps me, and today I will show you such an image. I received this photo from a well-known photographer, Steve Mullensky of Port Townsend (his Facebook page is here and a story about him here .)    So this image is from a reputable individual and is not some photoshopped wonder. You got to admit this object looks like a missile with a trailing smoke plume. But you need more information.  The image was taken at 7:11 AM on Tuesday, March 16th using a telephoto lens (2000 mm).  The picture was taken from Port Townsend looking east (he estimated 98 degrees from north, somewhere between Glacier and

Several of you asked whether the drone sailboat, Saildrone 1054, survived its rendevous with a vigorous Pacific storm. The answer is yes .   35-40 mph winds and 25-30 ft waves did not appear to cause any problems. The small autonomous weather station is now returning to port and will be deployed around a hurricane next year.   That will be a more severe test.   The saildrone also had another unmanned vehicle for company during the last few weeks, an underwater glider (see picture).   NOAA has a fleet of these, capable of diving as much as 1000 meters beneath the surface while taking oceanographic observations. The combination of these two sensor systems may be a potent way to sample the environment in advance of and behind tropical storms. And now about the tornado. A weak twister struck near the town of Ilwaco on the southwest Washington coast around 8 PM on Friday, March 19th.     The National Weather Service produced a map of the tornado path (see below) and they estimated that the

The media is full of stories suggesting that global warming has greatly reduced the mountain snowpack in the Pacific Northwest. Activist "climate justice" groups like 350Seattle have taken the snowpack loss claims even further, suggesting the current snowpack is "half what it should be": But the truth, backed by observations, contradicts such apocalyptic descriptions, as I will show you in the blog. Recently, the Office of the Washington State Climatologist (who is Dr. Nick Bond of UW JISAO) put online a wonderful tool for visualizing snowpack at some major locations in Washington State.  Plotting up the actual snowpack trend proves to be highly educational. I am going to show you the change of snowpack for over the past fifty years.   Why fifty years?  Because that is the period when human emissions of greenhouse gases have gone up rapidly and when GLOBAL temperatures have risen more quickly (see plot below).  If you are looking for a period to see changes in North