Wetand News

 You knew it wouldn't last. This has been an extraordinarily fire-free and smoke free summer so far, but our run of smokeless skies is now ending. A rapidly growing fire in northwest California is pushing smoke northward into Oregon and southeast Washington. The McKinney Fire, which started on July 29 and was initially driven by strong winds,  is now over 51,000 acres and uncontained.  The map below shows its location:  due south of Medford and due east of Crescent City   Not far from I5. Yesterday's satellite picture showed smoke from the fire pushing northward into southern Oregon. And today, the smoke plume, thankfully aloft, has reached the Tri-cities and Walla Walla. The wonderful NOAA HRRR-smoke model suggests that more smoke will move into Washington State by tomorrow morning at 5 AM (see below).  Direct hit on Portland!  This is total smoke in the vertical column. But fortunately, most of that smoke will be high aloft, as suggested by the forecast smoke concentrations a

 I hate to tell you this, but the model solutions have shifted during the past several runs:  the result is that the major cooling will be delayed for several days.  Not good. What has changed you ask?  The forecasts from a few days ago had a sharp trough of low pressure moving through on Monday, forcing cooling from off the ocean (see the upper-level (500 hPa) forecast made Wednesday afternoon for Monday at 5 AM). But this morning's forecast for the same level and time is very different, with the trough/low hanging off northern California and a weak trough approach from the west.  This is the kind of pattern that produces a modest step down of cooling, not the large cooling we originally predicted (and hoped for).  80s not 70s. So to update with the bad news, here are the latest NOAA/NWS National Blend of Models (NBM) predictions for Seattle and Pasco. For Seattle, 91F tomorrow and a still warm 84 for Monday, followed by a slide down into the lower 70s by Thursday. Pasco in the Co

My podcast today is all about heat waves. Let's start with the great heat wave dilemma that is never properly explained in the media: The Northwest is slowly warming from human-caused climate change but extreme heat waves are NOT increasing in our region. How can that be? First, let me prove it. Here are the summer (July-August) temperatures over Washington State for the past fifty years.  An increase of about 2F over the period. Some of this could be natural or the result of urbanization/instrument changes, but much of most of it could well be from human-forced climate change.   With warming over the period, the frequency of getting above some threshold like 80 or 90F is increasing.  The Seattle Times did a heat wave story a few days ago and showed this (see below from the ST).   As expected, in Seattle there are more days above 90F as we slowly warm. But then the Seattle Times shows a plot of record daily temperatures in July for Seattle (see below)....and there is very little up

Yesterday on the way home from the UW, I stopped at the local supermarket to buy some food and some cold beer. But I could hardly see into the refrigerated cases:   they were completely covered with a thick veneer of condensation.   I mean a LOT of water (see below). Why was there so much water vapor in the air?   Normally, the initial stages of major heat waves are associated with downslope flow on the Cascades that is relatively dry. Then I got a few emails from folks in northwest Washington complaining about the humidity. OK, I had to figure out what was going on. The best measure of the absolute amount of water vapor in the air....the "stickiness" and discomfort.. is the dew point temperature. This is the temperature to which you have to cool air down to for saturation (100% relative humidity).  For dry air you have to cool it down a lot to get it to saturation. So dry air has low dew point temperatures.   And moist air has high dew point temperatures.    Here in western

Today will be the warmest day of the heat wave event in the western interior, with cooling already occurring over some coastal areas. Yesterday's highs (shown below) ranged from over 100F east of the Cascade crest, to near 100F in the Willamette Valley, to the mid to upper 80s around Puget Sound, and to the 60s over the southern Oregon Coast.   Warmer than normal over most of the region, but few records fell. Today, the temperatures are warmer aloft...and, in fact, the temperature around 5000 ft at the radiosonde site at Quillayute (UIL), on the northern WA coast, was near record levels for the date--not all time records, daily records (see below).  (the dot shows today's temperature and the red line is the record for the date). Today is warmer in some locations and cooler in others.  Below is the difference in temperature at noon compared to yesterday at the same time.   Warmer over Puget Sound, similar in the Willamette Valley, but cooler along the southern Washington and Ore

All heat waves are not alike .    Some are warmer than others, some are short (one day), others last as long as 5-days, some have temperatures rise and fall quickly, while others have a slow rise and rapid fall--or vice versa.  This one won't be a record-breaker, but will extend over 4 days. We are now in the warmest time of the year (see below), so a visitation from a heat wave is not unexpected (see SeaTac temps below, the arrow is today, average max is red, record highs are yellow). The upcoming warm period will be pretty run-of-the-mill on the west side of the Cascades, but more notable east of the Cascade crest. Here is the latest predictions from the NOAA/NWS National Blend of Models (NBM), which combines models, observations and statistics.  NBM has done well with past heat waves! In Seattle (below), high temperatures will rise into the upper 80s on Monday and the low 90s on Tuesday and Wednesday, slowly falling into the upper 80s on Thursday and Friday. And 80+ temperatures

 A solar storm occurred a few days ago and the particles should reach Earth's orbit tonight.   The potential result:  a beautiful auroral display (see example below from Skunk Bay Weather on the Kitsap Peninsula). My podcast reveals the details.  By the way, in Seattle, a good place to view the action might be the kite hill in Magnuson Park after 10:30 PM. And then there is the future heatwave. A potent upper-level ridge will build offshore (see upper-level, 500 hPa map for 5 PM Tuesday below) and this will result in steady warming next week.  The ridge weakens during the subsequent days but does not go anywhere fast.   In my podcast I talk about the warming into mid-week and the potential for several days in the lower 90s in west and well above 100F in the east. 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