Weather, Climate, and Other Science Topics
Meteorological spring begins on March 1st, and you can feel it in the air. After 1.25” of rain on 2/27 and an incredible 2.97” on 2/28, the weather since Tuesday 3/1 has been tranquil, with partly cloudy skies interspersed with brilliant bursts of springtime sunshine. I was walking around the International District yesterday, and when […]
On Friday, Seattle was cut off from the north, the south, and the east due to flooding from the Chehalis River inundating I-5, extreme amounts of snow in the Washington passes, and all roads out of Vancouver BC being closed due to heavy snowfall. None of these individual events are unprecedented – the Chehalis spilled […]
The Pacific Northwest has seen tons of mountain snow over the past 10 days. Since December 9, Snoqualmie Pass has seen approximately 8 feet of snow, and all of the major Cascade ski resorts, from Mt. Baker in the North Cascades to Mt. Bachelor in Central Oregon, opened for limited operations last week. I haven’t […]
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 […]
The next two weeks look unseasonably calm. We’ll see a moderate system swing through on Friday, but other than that, our weather looks warmer and drier-than-average for the next 10 days as a strong, broad ridge of high pressure builds across the Western US. Given the boring weather ahead, I thought I’d do a quick […]
The Pacific Northwest isn’t known for its rapidly changing seasons. We don’t exactly plunge into winter like the Northern Plains, and our slow trudge towards summer out of the depths of January is even slower. June is the hottest month of the year for the Desert SW, but many years, while Death Valley is sweltering […]
With the coronavirus dominating seemingly every aspect of our lives, it’s hard to pay attention to much else, including the weather. The situation unfolding in Italy right now is horrifying, particularly considering that the country was in completely fine shape just two weeks ago, and I fear it is only a matter of time before […]
Featured image credit: Brie Hawkins When Boston hit 70 degrees yesterday, I assumed it was the warmest weather I’d ever witness in New England in January. Well, Boston hit 74 today. 74 is the average high for June 5th and the highest all-time January temperature since records began back in 1872, so this is an […]
Beginning late last week, the GFS (American) model began showing a transition to much colder weather for early-mid January. However, the normally-superior ECMWF (European) model did not, and given how far in advance the forecast was, it was a bit premature to throw the “s” word around. After all, we’ve seen the disastrous repercussions of […]
This will be a quick post (spoiler alert: it’s not), as my work starts relatively early (4am!) and sleep is one of those things in life you don’t want to skimp on. But I felt obligated to at least give you a brief warning about the cold, windy weather on tap for tomorrow morning so […]
