Wetand News

Update:  Because of this blog, my weekly weather segment on NPR radio station KNKX has been cancelled permanently.  The KNKX statement has misleading information, with claims that are demonstrably untrue. Update2:  There is a major error in the Seattle Times story.  My original blog never criticized the protesters or BLM activists.  My criticisms were limited to VIOLENT individuals who destroy property and hurt people.  Please read my original blog if you want to confirm this.  Some folks are choosing to misinterpret my words. Update3:  There are two types of mobs.  First, mobs the hurt people and destroy property.  Second, there are social media mobs that attempt to destroy those they disagree with or attack different viewpoints.  We have seen both types of mobs here in Seattle during the past months.  Neither is good. ____________________________________________ Take a walk around downtown Seattle.  You will be shocked by a shuttered, dystopian city and made angry by the inact

Seattle this AM.  Some wildfire smoke is evident on the horizon. Late July and early August are climatologically the driest time of the year (see below) and mother nature is follow the typical game plan.  Here in Seattle it hasn't rained since July 22nd! But our run of dry days is going to end for most of western Washington tomorrow, as the first weak front of Augusts moves through and the temperature change will be chilling. The latest infrared satellite picture shows the weak front poised to move in tonight and tomorrow morning.  Yes, we have seen more impressive fronts, but this is August! The UW high resolution WRF forecast 24-h precipitation total ending 5 AM Friday morning indicates the wettest conditions will be on the western slopes of the Cascades, northwest Washington, and southern BC.  A weak convergence zone is expected over northern Puget Sound. But what will get your attention will be the temperature change, with highs going from around 80F earli

The U.S. Navy plays a huge role in global environmental monitoring and prediction, ranging from taking observations in the world's oceans and monitoring Arctic sea ice, to running highly sophisticated numerical models of the atmosphere and ocean.  If anything ever happened to the National Weather Service's weather prediction models, the U.S. Navy stands ready as an immediate backup. The crucial role of Navy meteorology and oceanography was a reason I jumped at the offer of interviewing Navy Rear Admiral John Okon, who holds the role of Oceanographer of the Navy, putting him in charge of the vast Navy environmental enterprise.    Admiral Okon was going to come to Seattle for Seafair/Fleet Week, but COVID-19 cancelled those plans. But even with Seafair cancelled,  Admiral Okon still wanted to reach out to Northwest residents and so he agreed to this interview, in which we discussed a number of weather and ocean issues over roughly twenty minutes.  Please check out the

Everyone needs some good news this year and in this blog I am going to give it to you.    We are half-way through the Washington State wildfire season and so far the area burned is far below normal.  We have not had any major fires. And the latest forecasts suggest that this happy situation will continue. To illustrate, here is the burned acreage on lands protected by the the Department of Natural Resources (excludes some Federal lands) from January 1 through July 31st.  This year there has only been 678 acres burned, the second lowest during the past decade.  And most of this is just grass fires. Now some media folks and a few (less than honest) politicians have been saying that this has been a worse than normal fire year so far.  Let me show you how they are "stretching" the truth.   Here is a plot of the number of fires counted by DNR.   So far we have had 558, which is more than normal. But this increase has been mainly due to small fires ignited by folks, homebound by C

Smoke is now covering the Northwest, but most of it remains aloft.  The haze was obvious this morning from the SpaceNeedle Pano Cam, as was some mid-level instability clouds (altocumulus and altocumulus castellanus for those of you who enjoy cloud names). But it was in  early morning satellite imagery that the smoke was really evident.  Thursday's mornings visible satellite image around 6 AM showed the smoke clearly (the hazy stuff), with a few mid-level cumulus as well.  Stark shadows of the clouds on the smoke. The National Weather Service HRRR-smoke model shows the distribution of smoke aloft at 5 AM this morning, as diagnosed by their system.  You see the red area near the Oregon/California border?  That is the huge July Complex Fire, which now covers 82,000 acres , and is the biggest source of regional smoke. Such smoke rises and spreads out aloft. We do have some local fires, but those are small and generally under control, and not major sources of regional smoke.  But the re

Tomorrow should be a record-breaking day in eastern Washington with temperatures surging above 105F in a number of locations, accompanied skin-cracking low humidities and even moderate winds. The forecast surface temperatures for tomorrow are simply stunning, with the Columbia Basin being ground zero for the warmth (the white areas are above 104F!), The map of relative humidity at the same time shows some locations getting down to around 10%---extraordinarily low.  Seattle will be dry....but no where as arid. The eastern Washington/Oregon heat is associated with a feature known as a thermal or heat low , something made clear by the sea level pressure map at that time.   Warm air has less density than cooler air, which contributes to the low sea level pressure.  Look closely and you will see the pressure lines will be close together  over eastern Washington.  Such large pressure differences will produce stong wins, in this care strong easterly winds. With extreme warmth, low humidities,

Today will bring 90s a significant portion of western Washington and some daily high-temperature records will be broken, with many locations getting into the low to mid-90s.  Tomorrow will be 10F cooler, but the real threat will occur later tomorrow in eastern Washington where  very threatening conditions regarding wildfire initiation and growth are probable. Let's start with a graphic I have never shown you before:  the difference in temperature between yesterday and today (for 10 AM).  Warming by 2-12 F over the eastern side of Puget Sound, but cooling along the coast.  Consider that many locations in western WA surged into the mid to upper 80s yesterday, low to mid-90sF is guaranteed for today.   On the other hand, the cooling on the coast is important reflecting lots of low clouds and beginning of the inland movement of marine air. But now the threat.   I have spent a lot of time on wildfire meteorology lately (I have an NSF grant to work on it), and just finished the NW