Weather, Climate, and Other Science Topics
FINALLY! After 56 days of no measurable precipitation for Seattle and 57 for Portland, both streaks will end tonight as a relatively strong front moves through the area. The front is associated with an upper-level trough/associated ~995 hPa surface low currently centered near Haida Gwaii. The water vapor imagery below looks more reminiscent of a […]
It’s not much, and not everybody will get wet. But for the first time nearly two months, rain is in the forecast for parts of the Pacific Northwest! The summer of 2017 has been extraordinarily dry for the Pacific Northwest. Following a soaker on June 15 that dropped 0.42 inches at Portland and 1.05 inches at […]
The first major heat wave of the year is living up to the hype! Portland and Salem hit 98 and 101 respectively yesterday, and today, they simply switched highs. According to Mike Newman (a fellow weather buff from the Portland area), today’s high of 101 at the Portland Int’l Airport was just 1 degree below […]
Sorry for the post hiatus folks! I just got back from a week-long trip with my folks to Cabo San Lucas and had a great time fishing, beach-combing, dancing, and eating all sorts of delicious food over there. We’ve had a pleasant start to June, and the past two days have been simply exceptional! Yesterday, […]
The 2016-2017 winter has been an extraordinarily wet winter for California, but Washington and Northern Oregon have actually been drier than normal for most of the winter. But with Seattle on track to break their all-time reocrd for monthly rainfall in February and Portland not too far behind, one wonders what is responsible for the […]
After dealing with lowland snow Sunday/Monday, heavy rain Wednesday/Thursday, and a minor windstorm today, Pacific Northwesterners will finally get a much-deserved respite from the wacky weather we’ve witnessed recently. Today’s winds were caused by a degrading 999 mb cyclone making landfall on the Olympic Peninsula. As is typical, the strongest gusts were in the mountains, […]
I apologize for not posting as much as I would like recently! I’ve been very busy tweaking the site and preparing for WeatherTogether’s booth at WeatherFest, which is part of the American Meteorological Society’s (AMS) annual conference. As luck would have it, the AMS conference is in Seattle this winter, so it definitely made sense […]
A major pattern change is in store for us next week. After dealing with very cold temperatures and heaps of snow for those lucky folks in Portland, we will see temperatures in the 50s, snow levels above 7000 feet, and very heavy rain as an atmospheric river plows through the Pacific Northwest. There is still […]
While we’ve been cool and dry here in Western Washington over the past few days, areas of Southern Oregon and Northern California have been getting absolutely pummeled with snow! With modified arctic air already in place, a system that was still strengthening as it made landfall stormed ashore the Oregon/California border last night and dropped […]
In some of my previous blog posts this week, I talked about the potential for a major, extended arctic blast that could hang around for the first two weeks of January. Unfortunately for snow lovers, there has been a massive change in the models over the past couple days towards a much warmer pattern. We […]
