Weather, Climate, and Other Science Topics
We finished January on a stormy note. I headed up to Whidbey Island last Friday night the 31st to visit my folks, and we lost power on my way up due to strong southerly winds from an atmospheric river that was aimed primarily at NW Washington and Vancouver Island. We are located at the very […]
Yesterday, my parents drove down all the way from Seattle to celebrate my 27th birthday with me in Portland. I knew that the Willamette was running high, so we decided to go visit Willamette Falls in Oregon City. In my opinion, Willamette Falls is one of the most under-appreciated natural phenomena in the world – […]
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 […]
Meteorologically speaking, I can’t remember ever seeing a more boring November & first half of December in my life. I was looking through some climate stats, and the last time Portland saw at least a half inch of rain was on September 17, when 1.01 inches of liquid sunshine fell at the airport. The last […]
We will enter a much stormier pattern Wednesday that will persist through the weekend and possibly beyond, with moderate/strong systems affecting the area every 24-36 hours. Because these storms will be quick-moving and temperatures will be relatively cool, no flooding is expected and we will instead see significant early-season snowfall in the mountains. Not enough […]
With all of the heavy rain we saw over the weekend, many rivers throughout Western Oregon have reached flood stage and are continuing to rise. Here in Portland, I’ve never seen the Willamette as high, muddy, and debris-filled as it is now. Right now, minor or moderate flooding is occurring on the Siuslaw, Coast Fork […]
Well, it happened. A truly epic late-season snowstorm walloped the Southern Willamette Valley Sunday night and Monday, knocking out power to tens of thousands of people and bringing over a foot of snow to Eugene and over twice that to Bend. Even Portland saw flurries for much of the day, with locations above 500 feet […]
After so many busted snow forecasts this month, I’ll admit that I’m a little gun-shy writing this post. But now that all global models show a snowstorm affecting at least some part of the Willamette Valley Sunday night into Monday, I can remain silent no longer. It now looks likely that heavy snow will fall […]
Remember all that talk about “Snowmageddon 2019” for Portland, with multiple heavy snows for Puget Sound and the Willamette Valley this week? Well, I hate to break it to you folks, but snowmageddon ain’t happenin’ this year, at least for NW Oregon and SW Washington. Parts of Western Washington still look to receive a healthy […]
Finally! In case you haven’t noticed, the weather thus far this storm season has been pretty boring. We’ve yet to see any windstorms, rainstorms, or snowstorms of significance, either in the mountains or the lowlands. But that will change tomorrow. A truly massive storm stretching all the way from the Gulf of Alaska to the […]
