Wetand News

My new podcast is out and I provide a detailed forecast for this weekend and next week, including Christmas Day.  And then I turn to the great Northeast snowstorm of yesterday, telling you about the amazing totals and the nature of the Nor'Easter s cyclones that produce heavy snow over the region. Here is my podcast: Click the play button to listen or use your favorite streaming service Or stream my podcast from your favorite services:   Listen on Apple Podcasts   Listen on Spotify Podcasts   Listen on Google Podcasts Support the podcast on Patreon and get exclusive content., including my online event tomorrow morning at 10 AM. ___________________________________________

 The Seattle Times had a front page article today saying half of Seattle's residents are depressed and by a small margin we are the most depressed major city in the U.S.! Well, there are many reasons suggested for this depression, including the dismal state of our municipal leadership, but the article mentions an old favorite:  the lack of sun this time of the year. Fortunately, this is one problem that meteorological knowledge can help with.    A secret that most meteorologists know:  that on most days even in our sodden area, there are regions of sun in the sea of clouds.  The areas of rainshadows .   And, if you are able to drive a bit, you can often put yourself under the depression-killing rays of the winter sun. I have talked about rainshadows several times in the blog, but let me provide a brief review.   When air approaches a terrain barrier (such as the Olympic Mountains or Cascade range), it is forced to rise on one side (the windward side) and to sink on the downstream (

Although we expect that the Pacific Northwest will experience a wet, cool, snowy La Nina winter, the opposite is projected for California because of La Nina.  Furthermore, California is going into its "wet season" after a dry fall, and its reservoir system is well below capacity. I will bring you up-to-date on the California water situation in this blog. Let's start with the precipitation anomaly for the last two months:  how precipitation over California differs from normal for the past 60 days.  For nearly the entire state, precipitation has been below normal, but the normally arid southern portions and far western sections only down by 0 to 3 inches.  In contrast, the Sierra Nevada is down 3- 9 inches and some portions of the mountainous northern portion of the State are as much as 9-15 inches less than normal. It is interesting to look at the percentage of normal precipitation for the same period.  YIKES. Much of California has received less than 25% of normal

 Our snowpack percentage of normal has declined quite a bit the last week or so, but don't be too concerned.   Bountiful snow is coming. Here is the latest percentage of normal snowpack from the wonderful SNOTEL website. Slightly below normal in Washington and generally near normal overall in Oregon.  Below normal in Idaho. Remember a few weeks ago when we are 400% of normal?...it couldn't last.  Climatological snowpack is increasing and we had a dry period for a while. If you compare our snowpack to a year ago, we are actually doing much better than 2019 (2019 is left, 2020 is on the right).  Hugely more this  year (you are looking at SWE, Snow Water Equivalent, the depth of liquid water that resulst from melting the snowpack at a location). As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the long-range models are going for cool/wet conditions for the remainder of the winter, something consistent with the energetic La Nina we have in place. Here is the UW WRF model accumulated snowpack for

My new podcast is out and I provide a detailed discussion of La Nina--cooler than normal water in the tropical Pacific-- and its influence on our winter weather.   And I will give you the weekend forecast---telling you about the last dry period for perhaps weeks and where you might see some lowland snowflakes this weekend! Here is my podcast: Click the play button to listen or use your favorite streaming service Or stream my podcast from your favorite services:   Listen on Apple Podcasts   Listen on Spotify Podcasts   Listen on Google Podcasts Support the podcast on Patreon and get exclusive content.  Your support helps keep the podcast free of ads ___________________________________________

 La Nina is strengthening and this has a lot of implications for our upcoming winter. As noted in earlier blogs, La Nina is associated with colder than normal water temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific.  This cold water has global effects, changing the atmospheric circulation around the globe. Let's start by looking at the current sea surface temperatures anomaly (difference from normal) around the world (below).  Blue indicates cooler than normal temperatures and there is plenty of that color along the equator along the central and eastern Pacific--that is the sign of La Nina. Meteorologists have a favorite Pacific area we look at to determine if there is a La Nina:  the Nino 3.4 region (see image) Plotting the sea surface temperature anomaly from normal for this key region shows the water is colder than normal (blue) and by a good amount.  This is La Nina is now a moderate one, on the verge of strong at times. The National Weather Service Climate Prediction Ce

I often get emails and questions about clouds.  People are particularly interested in learning how to identify clouds and to understand what they imply about upcoming weather.  What is meant by the arcane compound names, such as altostratus , cirrostratus , or the intriguing altocumulus lenticularis ? Your final exam To address these questions, I am going to write series of blogs, with this being the first, the reveals the intricacies and power of cloud identification.   Knowing about cloud identification will change your life...in a positive way. Modern cloud identification goes back approximately 220 years to the work of Jean Baptiste de Monet Lamarck in France and Luke Howard in England in 1802-1803. Their essential approach was to divide clouds into four types depending on how they look and three classifications based on their heights.  First, the four types based on appearance: Stratus or strato-form   layered or sheet-like clouds Cirrus or cirro-form:   thin, wispy clouds Cumulus