Weather, Climate, and Other Science Topics
On Friday, my brother and I traveled up to Stevens Pass and had an amazing time skiing in the sunshine. Conditions were a little icy to begin, but after 11am or so, the south-facing slopes on the backside of the mountain softened up a bit and we were treated to some amazing spring-like skiing. It […]
I’m a firm believer that it’s important to pick up a winter sport if you live in the Pacific Northwest. It could be snowshoeing. Or perhaps heli-skiing is your cup of tea. It doesn’t matter the sport – all that matters is that it requires mountain snow. Why do I hold such a strong belief? […]
11:00 pm Monday What a shift in weather we’ve seen over the last week! In my last blog on 5/31, I was talking about the potential for record heat in Portland on Tuesday, 6/1. Portland indeed set a record that day, hitting 95 and breaking the record of 94 set back in 1970. Perhaps even […]
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 […]
April 2021 was by far the driest April on record for Portland, with only 0.39″ of rain falling at Portland Int’l Airport. This record-dry April occurred on the heels of a much drier-than-average March. As I explained in my last blog post, the entire Western US is experiencing drought conditions, and although the drought is […]
One of our family friends is a brilliant oceanography professor and extremely accomplished skier, and he has a t-shirt that says “Viva La Nina.” It’s a perfect shirt for an oceanographer (since La Nina is a coupled oceanic/atmospheric phenomenon) and a Pacific Northwest skier, as La Ninas tend to bring above-average mountain snowfall to our […]
The weather sounds like the most inconsequential thing to talk about during these times, but if it weren’t for – you know – the global pandemic and revolution stuff – it would absolutely make front-line news. A tornado came through Damascus, OR yesterday evening! Take a look at this video from Tim Lussier… it’s not […]
We live in a completely different world now than just a week ago. I can’t even imagine what the next weeks, months, or even hours may hold, but I know one thing: this virus will completely restructure our society, economy, and culture, and hopefully towards a more equitable, sustainable direction. In this time of great […]
I had originally planned to work on this post last night during the Seahawks/49ers game, but there simply weren’t any boring parts where I could divert my attention from the game and to my computer. From start to finish, it was one of the best football games I’ve ever seen, period. I’m thankful that the Seahawks […]
This will be a relatively brief post because it’s a sunny, warm autumn weekend in the Pacific Northwest, and I don’t want to spend too much time inside on such a rare occasion! Let’s start with some obligatory eye-candy from the GOES-17. Besides being a huge asset to the scientific community, the GOES-17 has been […]
