Weather, Climate, and Other Science Topics
Fall is the most rapidly-changing season here in the Pacific Northwest. September generally starts off warm and sunny, with some of our highest fire danger of the entire year. But by late September/early October, temperatures cool substantially as our days rapidly become shorter, and typically, by the 3rd or 4th week of October, we start […]
As of 8/2, Portland and Seattle have seen 48 and 49 consecutive days without measurable precipitation, respectively. Such dry spells aren’t unheard of for the summer – Portland’s record for consecutive dry days is 71 and was set in 1967, and Seattle’s is 55 and was set just back in 2017. But this anomalously long […]
When most Portlanders think of December, they think of Christmas trees, advent calendars, and cars with those big bows on them. Certainly not sunny skies, and much less 50+ degree temperatures to accompany them! But that’s exactly what we’ve seen to begin December. There was no measurable precipitation for the first 5 days of December […]
This past Sunday, I went trout fishing on the Yakima River with my dad and brother. The trout were there, but they were sluggish and not particularly enthusiastic about our flies. We didn’t had any hits on dry flies and had a few hits on nymphs, but we were unable to bring any to the […]
Saturday’s rain was refreshing, wasn’t it? Some spots saw far more rain than forecast as a weak upper-level low slowly drifted southeastward from the Olympic Peninsula through the Willamette Valley and into Central Oregon, while other spots saw hardly any rain at all. This was particularly true for the Puget Sound region, where a local […]
So far this year, I’ve only got one day of skiing in, and I count myself lucky to even have that! I went with some weather colleagues up to Mt. Hood Meadows a few Saturdays back, and the amount of snow cover there was downright depressing. On the other hand, if I can get up […]
Hi all! I hope everybody had a great weekend and enjoyed a rainy Sunday across the region. As damp and dreary as today has been, several even stronger storms will move through the area this week and will give us the classic trifecta of winter weather: wind, rain, and very heavy mountain snow. If you […]
I hope you can forgive me for the click-baity, questionably accurate title. From an astronomical perspective, autumn will begin on 1:02 pm PDT Friday, September 22, 2017, and meteorological fall officially began on September 1st. But after a record-smashing streak of drier and hotter-than-average weather, we’ll finally get our first true taste of autumn next […]
Sunday, March 2, 2014 5:55 p.m. And the hits just keep on coming. After our not-so-close brush with snow (it’s easy to get excited looking at models beforehand, but when push comes to shove, this is Seattle, and we live right next to Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean and are protected from cold air […]
Wednesday, September 18, 2013 4:13 a.m. (one of those nights…) Hey everybody! It’s super early Wednesday morning and I woke up and am having trouble falling back asleep. There are two things that make me fall asleep… writing weather blogs and reading the Bible. I’m not religious, I just want to read it because I’m […]
