Weather, Climate, and Other Science Topics
I’m writing this blog from a hotel in Greenwich Village in New York City! I flew in here on Wednesday afternoon to spend a few days in the city before going to the Hamptons Jazz Festival on Long Island, a summer-long jazz festival hosting some of the biggest names in jazz. Unfortunately, I was feeling […]
Saturday, November 7, 2015 2:13 pm Less than a week ago, Cyclone Chapala slammed into Socotra, a small Yemeni Island some 150 miles east of the Horn of Africa, and Yemen, a small country on the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula currently embroiled in a brutal civil war, becoming the first hurricane-force cyclone to hit […]
Tuesday, October 6, 2015 3:29 pm A tower atop Campbell Hall, Western Oregon University collapsing under the 100+ mph winds of the Columbus Day Storm. Credit: Wes Luchau, Statesman Journal The Pacific Northwest has never gotten hit by a hurricane and never will. Our waters are simply too cold to sustain a tropical system. For a […]
Tuesday, September 11, 2012 9:17 P.M. It’s El Niño–Southern Oscillation… …For Dummies! Let me first start out by saying no copyright infringement is intended. I know that doesn’t change anything, but it makes people less likely to sue you for “stealing intellectual property.” Nobody likes a thief, but people are generally kinder to thieves with good […]
Thursday, September 15, 2011 10:08 A.M. Sea Surface Temperatures at different points in the Equatorial Pacific on week centered around 9/7/11 The above picture is from NOAA’s CPC (Climate Prediction Center). As you can see, there has been a clear trend as of late for a cooling of the SST (Sea Surface Temperatures) in the […]
El Nino and La Nina are both part of the El Nino Southern Oscilliation (ENSO) pattern in the eastern tropical Pacific ocean. This oscillation, or switching, refers to the temperature of the water in that region. In a La Nina phase, the water temperatures are cooler than normal, and in an El Nino phase, the […]
Tuesday, January 5, 2010 5:50 P.M. I said in yesterday’s post that El Nino brings warmer and drier than normal weather to the Pacific Northwest. But I realized that I did not explain why. You see, what El Nino does is amplify the jet stream. You would think that this would give us more rain, […]
