Weather, Climate, and Other Science Topics
Early autumn is usually pretty tranquil for the Pacific Northwest. The semi-permanent ridge of high pressure in the Eastern Pacific that keeps us so dry and mild through the summer is usually still robust enough to keep the storm track to our north, and any storms that do impact our area are generally pretty wimpy, […]
What a change a month makes! Back on the 10th and 13th of March, we had two powerful windstorms roll through the area, with the one on the 10th causing lots of damage to the Northern Interior and creating a lot of coastal flooding and the one on the 13th making my last day of […]
Wow, what a change in weather we have had! From the wettest winter on record to two consecutive weeks with temperatures above 70 degrees! Our transition from autumn to winter is swift, but our transition from winter to spring usually takes a little bit more time. It certainly hasn’t taken much time so far! Last […]
Saturday, October 24, 2015 8:09 pm Visible satellite image of Hurricane Patricia at record intensity approaching the Western Mexico Coast. Taken October 23, 2015. Credit: NASA Terra/MODIS Satellite Patricia was the deepest cyclone ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere. Deeper than Wilma, deeper than Katrina, deeper than Camille, and far deeper than Sandy (all these storms […]
Thursday, October 1, 2015 4:08 p.m. At Sea-Tac, the last time we had a month that was cooler than average for that month was February 2014. Since then, 20 months have passed, with 19 consecutive months being warmer than normal. That’s right… this September was the first colder than normal month since February 2014. We’ve […]
Sunday, November 9, 2014 5:04 pm Every once in a while, a storm so unbelievably massive, so breathtakingly powerful, and so horrendously destructive appears in the models that you literally go into cardiac arrest. This is one of those storms. I’ve seen many crazy, crazy storms in the models. I’ve seen gigantic 930 hPa “bombs” […]
A lion in West Midlands Safari Park: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Just_one_lion.jpg They say March roars in like a lion. Well, March didn’t just have a singular lion, or even an open salvo of them. It had a continuous stampede of them. They say these beasts are endangered, but after this month, I’m not so sure. There seem to be plenty to […]
Thursday, August 29, 2013 2:16 p.m. Alright, I have to give credit where credit is due. Both Scott Sistek and Cliff Mass, my two favorite weather bloggers in the Pacific Northwest, blogged here and here about how we have seen record nighttime/early morning warmth as of late. These blogs are far better than mine… I suggest […]
Thursday, August 29, 2013 11:48 p.m. We got a quarter of an inch earlier this month, but we got nothing in July, and I don’t recall it raining very hard in June either. I was in Micronesia and it was plenty rainy there, but I don’t recall hearing of any torrential rains in Seattle. And […]
Friday, May 10, 2013 1:42 A.M. Good morning everybody! The weather outside today is wonderful… much better than that dreadful weather we had Monday. “Dreadful?,” you might ask? Dreadful. At least for me. At some time during autumn 2012, I decided that I was no longer going to wear shorts (excepting formal occasions, like weddings […]
