Weather, Climate, and Other Science Topics
I’m a firm believer that it’s important to pick up a winter sport if you live in the Pacific Northwest. It could be snowshoeing. Or perhaps heli-skiing is your cup of tea. It doesn’t matter the sport – all that matters is that it requires mountain snow. Why do I hold such a strong belief? […]
We really lucked out with our fire season west of the Cascades this year. After one of the driest springs and hottest/driest summers on record, vegetation was incredibly dry and the environment incredibly flammable. Mercifully, the last half of August were cooler-than-average, and September was both cooler and wetter-than-average. And most importantly, neither had dry thunderstorms […]
11:00 pm Monday What a shift in weather we’ve seen over the last week! In my last blog on 5/31, I was talking about the potential for record heat in Portland on Tuesday, 6/1. Portland indeed set a record that day, hitting 95 and breaking the record of 94 set back in 1970. Perhaps even […]
It now appears likely that Western Washington and NW Oregon will experience a series of significant winter storms from midday Thursday through Saturday evening, bringing snow, sleet, freezing rain, extremely strong east winds, and a prolonged period of subfreezing temperatures. I’ve been dying to write this post – I’ve been absolutely swamped the past several […]
I’m not a big beer drinker. However, I always have a few cans of Coors in my fridge in case some friends come over and want to crack a cold one. Why Coors? Because the mountains turn blue when it’s “as cold as the Rockies,” and since I have no stock in the taste, the […]
There are many well-known portmanteaus of snow and catastrophic descriptors, with Snowzilla, Snowmageddon, and Snowpocalypse being some of the primary offenders. But what about a more pedestrian snowfall that still inspires joy in the hearts of adults and children everywhere? I prefer “conversational snow” – not only is it an extremely accurate description (yes, a […]
It’s been said that “snow is the most difficult thing to forecast in the Pacific Northwest.” And while I believe this is often true – our terrain, microclimates, and often marginal temperatures can make snow forecasting extraordinarily challenging – I think a corollary is more appropriate. Lowland snow forecasts are, without a doubt, the most […]
One of our family friends is a brilliant oceanography professor and extremely accomplished skier, and he has a t-shirt that says “Viva La Nina.” It’s a perfect shirt for an oceanographer (since La Nina is a coupled oceanic/atmospheric phenomenon) and a Pacific Northwest skier, as La Ninas tend to bring above-average mountain snowfall to our […]
Happy Christmas Eve everybody! I hope this post finds you all in good health and cheer, or at least as good as things can be considering the times. I was fortunate enough to witness the “Grand Conjunction” last night with Jupiter and Saturn . If you missed it this year, have no fear – it […]
For our high school senior portraits in the Garfield High School yearbook, we had the option of putting a quote next to our name. I quoted the great John Ruskin, a multi-talented, leading English art critic of the Victorian Era. Ruskin wrote the following; I could only include the bolded portion due to space constraints […]
