Weather, Climate, and Other Science Topics
Atmospheric rivers, like the one over Western WA right now, are strong, narrow, and often slow-moving streams of mild, moist air stretching from the subtropics to the midlatitudes. When this air slams into terrain like the Cascades or Olympics, it is forced to rise, resulting in even more clouds and even heavier rain. The strongest […]
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 […]
Folks west of the Cascade crest smashed record high temperatures today as a Pineapple Express continued to pump extremely warm and moist air originating from the Hawaiian Islands into the region. The fact that today was relatively calm and dry definitely helped, as we were able to get a little more solar insolation and didn’t […]
With a strong atmospheric river underway, I thought I’d take some time to delve a little deeper into these phenomena. In this blog, I’ll cover the basic characteristics of an atmospheric river, how these atmospheric rivers form, and a brief summary of how they relate to the Earth’s heat budget. Throughout the blog, I’ll use […]
Wednesday, January 27, 2016 1:41 am Yesterday, I wrote about the Eastern third of the country and how much of that region was profoundly affected by a major blizzard that halted over 13,000 flights and caused 3 billion dollars in damage. Now, the weather action has shifted back to our neck of the woods, and […]
Thursday, January 21, 2016 5:45 p.m. It’s been pretty wet today. I could explain it with satellite imagery, models, maps, and all that jazz (and I will), but all you really needed to do was to go outside and look at the size of the puddles, both on the road and off it. There was […]
Friday, November 13, 2015 12:57 pm Credit: PRISM Group and Oregon Climate Service. Retrieved from Reddit (yup!) One of the most fascinating things about Pacific Northwest weather is how much our local terrain influences our climate. Just in the state of Washington, we have two mountain ranges that get gobs of snow, a massive ocean off our […]
Thursday, November 12, 2015 9:53 am Everybody talks about atmospheric rivers. Atmospheric river here, atmospheric river there. And while the “atmospheric river” term is certainly useful and is used in scientific literature, it also comes across as a bit of a euphemism. It sounds so nice and tranquil, like a stream flowing through the heavens, […]
March 11, 2013 10:40 P.M. I tried to be creative and somehow link the post I made ten days ago to this one, but when I typed “Lil’ Wayne Rain” or even “Lil’ Wayne Precipitation” on Google Images, all I got was Lil’ Wayne making it rain (aka throwing money in the air, because that’s what […]
Friday, March 1, 2013 11:39 A.M. Weezy approves of the weather. Well everybody, it has been awhile. I had a midterm today, and I have midterms Monday and Thursday next week. It never ends! However, I have a brief break between classes and I thought I’d post a blog instead of eat some lunch. I’m […]
