Saturday, June 30, 2011
11:48 P.M.
Hello everybody!!! It’s great to be back on this blog. Between traveling in Europe, attending college orientation, and helping paint my house, I haven’t had much free time. However, my schedule is lightening up and I will get back to these regular blog postings.
This summer has been really cool lately. The last couple days have actually been pretty nice though. If you have enjoyed our recent weather, I have some great news for you. I looked at the GFS Superensemble model, which goes out to 16 days, and it showed a sunny and relatively warm weather pattern anchored over us indefinitely.
The graphic below shows the 1000-500mb thicknesses over our region, which is the height of the atmosphere from the 1000mb level to the 500mb level. Higher thicknesses generally mean higher temperatures.
(UW WRF-GFS Extended model, 00z run – Saturday, June 30th, 11 P.M.)
One week later…
(UW WRF-GFS Extended model, 00z run – Saturday, August 6th, 11 P.M.)
There are some differences in the strength of the ridge over the Pacific, but all things considered, these two maps are very similar. They both show a big blocking high located around at the 40 North latitude line between 150 and 160 West longitude. This big guy prevents most storms from impacting our area. Right now, we are still at risk for some very weak systems from the northeast side of the ridge, but the ridge will strengthen as time goes on, blocking out those systems. As it strengthens, we will enter a very typical summer pattern, with clouds in the morning and sun in the afternoon.
At this point, I think that the weather will generally get sunnier and warmer as we go through the week, with highs approaching 80 by midweek. I don’t see any major heat waves in sight, but if one does surface in the models, I’ll be the first to let you know.
Thanks for reading,
Charlie
