Winter Rainfall in Spring

 One of the problems in being a meteorologist is that you suffer twice with bad weather:  once with the forecast and then again when you experience the ill weather.

And the suffering is getting worse.

Tomorrow will be the last dry day for a long time, and this May will end up with rainfall more appropriate for February.

Let me show you the dismal story in 48-h chunks.  

Wednesday will be mainly dry, but Thursday will be wet, with the 48-h precipitation total ending 5 AM Friday (below) showing a moderate atmospheric river coming in off the Pacific, with rain enhanced over the mountains.



During the next 48-h the precipitation revs up over Oregon, with some locations receiving over 2 inches (see below)

Over the next 7 days, the totals are...well..scary, with a number of mountain areas getting three to five inches.  A lot any time of the year, but unusual for May.

Eastern Washington gets substantial rain, particularly in the "extreme drought" area from Yakima to Moses Lake. Rivers are also above normal within the drought warning area.

If you want to view the relentless nature of the upcoming precipitation, check out the prediction of rainfall at Seattle from the NOAA/National Weather Service GEFS ensemble system (see below).    Each gray line is the cumulative rainfall at SeaTac for a different forecast and time increases to the right.  The black line is the average of all the forecasts.  Starting tomorrow, there will be nearly continuous rain, with SeaTac ending up with 2 additional inches.


Keep in mind that the normal TOTAL for the month is 2 inches and we already have two inches in the rain gauge.   So we will have TWICE the normal rainfall by May 19th....and the month will not be over.

Now the really depressing thing is that normally there is a major warm spell in mid-May, one that always came like clockwork.  But not this year.

Do you want to experience 70F or more during the next few weeks?  Go to Hawaii.

The latest extended European Center temperature forecast is predicting much colder than normal conditions into the end of June (see below, blue colors are below normal).  Unbelievable.

Thursday will probably break the record for having the record low high temperature at many western WA locations.

 Being cold and wet through May, with a bountiful snowpack, has major positive implications for the wildfire season, something I will discuss in a future blog.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Time of Year You Can See the Air Move

Image
  Most of the time, you can not see the air move.   You can feel it, but the complex, turbulent motions are invisible to you, except when it interacts with leaves and branches on trees and plants. But for a few weeks of the year, the sky is full of small, cotton-like tuffs that like a natural MRI machine reveals the complex three-dimensional motions of the atmosphere.   Cottonwood season.  And we right in the middle of it.   Being cottonwood aware is of particular value this year.  It reveals the active dispersion and movement of air that makes the outdoors essentially COVID safe, and thus should be of some comfort for those nervous about transmission outside. Cottonwood seeds are embedded in small cotton-like fibers.   A million seeds weigh about 3 pounds.  Yes, each seed and tuff weights about .000003 pounds.   And that fact, plus the cottonwood tuff, means that these seeds fall VERY, VERY, VERY slowly.   So slowly that they are excellent markers for the three-dimensional flow of the
Read more

Why so little lightning in the Pacific Northwest? And a very nice weekend ahead.

Image
During the past 24-hours, there have been a few lightning strokes over the region (see below) but nothing to write home about (see below). It turns out that the Pacific Northwest and the remainder of the West Coast have some of the lowest frequencies of thunderstorms in the entire country (see below). But why?    My podcast provides the answer. And I also give the weekend forecast....and I think most will like what I have to say. To listen to my podcast, use the link below or access it through your favorite podcast service. Some major podcast servers:     Like the podcast? Support on Patreon 
Read more

Strong Atmosphere River Heads into British Columbia and Southeast Alaska

Image
While the Northwest has been drier than normal, it has been drenching wet a few hundred miles to the north. An unusually strong atmospheric river ....a long current of moisture stretching southward to the subtropics...has been in place for days, bringing large amounts of water vapor to Alaska.   And the atmospheric river will be in place for several more days, slowly moving southward. To illustrate, the scale and beauty of the atmospheric river, here is a water vapor satellite image for 11 AM today. The lighter areas have more water vapor.  You can see the current of moisture extending from near Hawaii into central BC.  This current is the result of low pressure over the Gulf of Alaska and high pressure offshore of California.   A forecast of total water vapor content in the atmosphere for 11 PM tonight shows a healthy atmospheric river (white and blue colors indicate the higher amounts of moisture). As this atmospheric river slams into the mountainous West Coast, the air is forced to
Read more