Weather, Climate, and Other Science Topics
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 […]
What happens when you combine an unstable airmass, a mountain range, and daytime heating? You get scattered afternoon/evening thunderstorms that bubble up along the Cascade crest! We saw a ton of those today and they made for some really pretty views looking east from Portland to the Cascades. Today, a weak upper-level trough moved south […]
A lot has happened in the weather department since I wrote my last blog two weeks ago. Washington, Oregon, and California all declared a State of Emergency due to widespread wildfires, and the entire Western US saw one of the hottest August heat waves on record. This heat wave gave California its worst energy crisis […]
Two Sundays ago, I proudly proclaimed that Juneuary would end on the 17th. But taking a look at the webcam from Timberline Lodge this morning, that appears to have been a premature call! Just another example of why you can’t give much weight to any forecasts more than 2 weeks in advance. And don’t even […]
What a wet weekend it has been! Many places across the I-5 corridor have picked up 0.25-0.75 inches of rain over the past 48 hours, but the Olympics and Coast Range have seen much more, with 1-2 inches common. Vancouver Island has been the wettest of all, with two stations on the Southern Vancouver Island […]
Howdy everybody! I’m back after a bit of a hiatus – with our boring weather of late and the first image ever taken of a black hole coming to light last month, I’ve been more focused on the cosmos than the clouds as of late. But with record-breaking temperatures on tap today through Saturday, I thought […]
Good morning everybody! In some ways, this summer and last summer are polar opposites. Last summer, we saw heat wave after heat wave throughout June and July, and this, coupled with a historically poor snowpack from the previous winter, led to water shortages throughout the region and extremely high fire danger throughout much of the […]
Sunday, August 18, 2013 11:38 P.M. Hey everybody. Sorry for not posting for a while… I had a seizure several nights back and screwed up my sleeping schedule, so I’ve just been really unorganized for the last few days. I’m totally fine now. Regular readers of this blog know I have epilepsy, and I talk […]
Friday, August 9, 2013 1:35 P.M. Flash Flood in Gobi, Mongolia in 2004 – Uploaded by Wikimedia User QFL247 It would seem as though the current watches and warnings posted around Washington contradict each other. How can you be at risk of forest fires and flash floods at the same time? Rain mitigates the damage done by fires, […]
