Weather, Climate, and Other Science Topics
With our record dry summer and the hottest August on record for many places around the Pacific Northwest, we’ve inevitably had an incredibly active fire season and the smokiest summer I can ever remember seeing west of the Cascade Crest. The latest major blaze – the Eagle Creek Fire – came uncomfortably close to home, […]
What a beautiful day it is today! With a strong ridge of high pressure centered just off our coast, we have bluebird skies, light winds, and very warm temperatures, with many places around the Portland metro area making it into the 80s! This ridge will move right over us for Memorial Day weekend, meaning our […]
So many things to blog about… so little time. Today was by FAR the warmest day of the year for the Pacific Northwest. The Portland Airport hit 81 degrees, making this year the first year since records began back in 1940 that we’ve had an 80 degree high before a 70 degree high. Of course, […]
Good morning! The majority of us didn’t see nature’s pyrotechnics last night, as the atmosphere never really destabilized enough for the predicted thunderstorms to fully develop. However, as the graphic above shows, there was an incredible amount of lightning further east, especially into Idaho and Montana. We are starting out with overcast skies this morning […]
Yesterday, some pretty strong storms rolled through areas of Western Washington, bringing vivid lightning, torrential downpours, and even funnel clouds to multiple locations throughout the state. With cool air aloft and high sun angles warming the air at the surface, the atmosphere quickly became very unstable, and vigorous thunderstorms quickly developed. In order to show […]
Tuesday, July 22, 2014 12:11 a.m. Apparently, there’s been a pretty massive complex of wildfires in Eastern Washington over the past week I’ve been at camp. I’m finishing another day off and need to be back in the kitchen at 7 a.m., but I have enough time to write a brief blog. Here are all […]
Saturday, December 7, 2013 8:38 p.m. Well, I’m back! I’ve been through heck and back over the past few weeks with schoolwork, but I now have some time to write on this blog, and write I shall. OK, well that wasn’t really true. I actually have an atmospheric science 301 FINAL on Monday, and I […]
Saturday, August 10, 2013 3:49 P.M. Good afternoon everybody! Hopefully most of you experienced that absolutely incredible lightning show last night. Thankfully, if you missed it, we’ve got another one stepping up to the plate. First off, let’s look at the radar. Thunderstorms are currently firing up across the area, with some particularly strong ones […]
Friday, August 9, 2013 2:09 A.M. (Yikes!) I was absent the past week for a fishing trip in Canada and knew that Washington was expected to receive some rain. At the time I left, forecasts were calling for over an inch of rain in areas of Western Washington and perhaps up to FIVE INCHES in parts of the […]
Saturday, April 13, 2013 5:04 P.M. From Wednesday, April 10, 2013: “We’ll have some rain coming in Friday afternoon, but I’ll bet my life on having a strong convergence zone somewhere in the area Saturday afternoon due to a cool, moist, onshore flow splitting around the Olympics and converging somewhere along Puget Sound. If I’m still […]
