Wetand News

Midsummers in the Pacific Northwest are dry on average. Really dry.  Drier than Phoenix.  In my podcast, I tell you why. And then there is the forecast for this weekend and next week.   As expected this time of the year, it will be dry .   But it will also be cool, as a trough of low pressure parks of our coast, while high pressure builds inland. (see image for Sunday morning).  The results will be onshore flow west of the Cascade crest, with low clouds in the morning, but sun during the afternoon most days. Upper level (500hPa, about 18,000 ft) heights (like pressure) at 8 AM Sunday morning.  A deep low is west of BC and a ridge is found just west of the Rockies. Worried about smoke?  Actually, this pattern will be favorable for western Washington and Oregon, with BC, eastern WA, and CA smoke pushed eastward.   To hear the full story, listen to my podcast below or select your preferred streaming service    

  During the past week or so, several fires were started in British Columbia and east of the Cascade crest.  Some were initiated by lightning, and strong westerly (from the west) aided growth in some locations. But the meteorological situation is shifting, which has implications for fire initiation and spread--and in a generally positive direction The high-resolution visible satellite image yesterday around noon shows the smoke from several fires in southeastern British Columbia, a fire in the northeast Cascades, two in the Okanagan area of northwest Washington, one near Wenatchee, and another in the Blue Mountains near Walla Walla. Western Washington and northwestern Oregon were essentially smoke-free with the influx of clean marine air.  The latest air quality analysis is favorable (green) for the westside: Interestingly, as some of the fires revved up during the heat of the day, they became clearly evident in weather radar imagery (see below, red circles indicate the features) This

Last week we witnessed a major failure in science communication regarding the Northwest heatwave. A failure that misinformed you and millions of others, and a failure that highlighted glaring weaknesses in the media's ability to cover important scientific issues.  And it revealed the disappointing behavior of some members of the scientific community. >recent blogs describe the situation in detail. Within a week, an international group of scientists, policy researchers, and others rushed to create and distribute an attribution analysis of the heatwave.  A study trumpeting an extreme claim in the first sentence of the report: " Based on observations and modeling, the occurrence of a heatwave with maximum temperatures as observed in the area was virtually impossible without human-caused climate change" As I will show below and previously demonstrated in my recent blogs, this claim is not supported in the document or by the rigorous science, and, in fact, the materi

 During the recent heatwave, which peaked in western Washington, western Oregon, and British Columbia on June 28th, many noticed an unusual haze, particularly at lower elevations west of the Cascades.    And this was not wildfire smoke:  it was something else. To illustrate, here is an image from the Space Needle Panocam on June 28th around noon.  The image directed towards the Olympics really shows the brownish haze layer. And a picture around the same time from northern Kitsap County looking towards Whidbey Island (from Greg Johnson's Skunk Bay Weather site) showed the murk.  Yuck. The haze was even visible in some early morning visible satellite images (see below for June 28th). So what was this hazy miasma over western Washington and British Columbia?  It wasn't wildfire smoke, as shown by the NOAA HRRR Smoke analysis at noon Monday, June 28th. I suspected it was photochemical SMOG and checked with air quality expert Phil Swartzendruber of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency a

This is sea breeze season in the Pacific Northwest and my podcast today tells you all about it. The Northwest has sea breezes of many sizes and strengths, from the coastal sea breezes along the WA/PR coast to the daily influx of cool air into the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound, to the regional "sea breeze" that descends the eastern slopes of the Cascades into eastern Washington. And for intense, sand-blasting sea breezes, no area has a stronger one than southern Oregon. Finally, my podcast will give you the forecast for the next week and I will give you a first look at a potentially cooler, wetter period starting next weekend. Listen to my podcast below or select your preferred streaming service     Like the podcast? Support on Patreon

 It is perhaps ironic that when cool, cloudy air floods western Washington as it did yesterday, winds surge in eastern Washington, leading to the potential of rapid wildfire growth. The visible satellite image this morning shows the situation.  Cool, dense, cloudy marine air has inundated western Washington and extends up the river valleys to the crest.    If you look closely, you can also see smoke from the British Columbia fires extending over northeast Washington. Yesterday, an upper-level trough (or low) moved through (see graphic at the 500hPa pressure level, about 18,000 ft), resulting in the energetic influx of marine air.   Looking at the observations above Seattle Tacoma Airport (time on x-axis, height on the y-axis), you can see major cooling in the temperatures (red lines in C) and a dramatic shift to moderate southerly winds below about 5000 ft. The Cascades blocked most of the low-level cool air so that eastern Washington stayed warm.   This sets up a pressure difference a

Synopsis Society needs accurate information in order to make crucial environmental decisions. Unfortunately, there has been a substantial amount of miscommunication and unscientific handwaving about the recent Northwest heatwave, and this blog post uses rigorous science to set the record straight. First, the specific ingredients that led to the heatwave are discussed, including a high-amplitude ridge of high pressure and an approaching low-pressure area that “supercharged” the warming. Second, it is shown that global warming only contributed a small about (1-2F) of the 30-40F heatwave and that proposed global warming amplification mechanisms (e.g., droughts, enhanced ridging/high pressure) cannot explain the severe heat event. It is shown that high-resolution climate models do not produce more extreme high temperatures under the modest global warming of the past several decades and that global warming may even work against extreme warming in our region. Importantly, this blog demon