Fire Season Ends for Pacific Northwest This Weekend

In my last post on August 9, I talked about a record heat wave slated for the upcoming week. After a month-long blogging hiatus, I get to blog about something much different – a chilly, early-season atmospheric river expected to bring heavy rain Friday & Saturday morning, with periods of rain persisting through the weekend. This atmospheric river should bring up to an inch of rain for the lowlands, several inches of rain for the Cascades, accumulating snow above 6,000 feet, and, if current forecasts hold, an end to the 2021 fire season for Western Washington and NW Oregon. Given how high fire danger has been the entire summer, I don’t think I’ve ever been more relieved to see heavy rain in the forecast.

We can currently see the beginnings of this atmospheric river way out in the Pacific. The 72-hour rainfall totals between 5am Friday and 5am Monday are expected to be around 1-2.5″ for the lowlands and 2.5 – 5″ for the Cascades, with the heaviest rain for Western WA and NW OR occurring Friday into Saturday morning.

We can already see Fri-Sun’s deluge developing on satellite in the North Pacific. Expect heavy rain Fri for WA & NW OR, & periods of rain this weekend. This may be the biggest soaker for the PacNW since Jan 2021 and should end fire season west of the Cascades. #wawx #orwx pic.twitter.com/eVnieCx3er

— Charlie Phillips (@GeoduckChuck) September 15, 2021

Note that this system will not erase the record drought that engulfs much of Western Oregon and the Inland Northwest; it will take a wetter-than-average 2021-2022 storm season to do that. But it’ll put a bigger dent in it than any storm we’ve seen since January 12, 2021, when an atmospheric river dropped 1.94″ of rain on Portland and 2.33″ on Seattle.

I don’t see any washouts after this weekend, but I don’t see any periods of warm and dry weather either. Instead, things look near or slightly cooler-than-average, with just a few showers at times.

After Friday-Sunday’s deluge, light showers and near or slightly below-average temps should persist through at least the following week. No fire weather threats in sight! #wawx pic.twitter.com/GBaOgqUI3f

— Charlie Phillips (@GeoduckChuck) September 15, 2021

I have a big update in my personal life! After three years working as a meteorologist at Portland General Electric, I’ve now accepted a position working as a real-time energy trader at Puget Sound Energy in the Seattle area!

Much of my work at PGE (and at Avangrid before that) was giving forecasts to energy traders – both on the production side for renewables like wind, solar, and hydro, and on the demand side, with energy demand primarily being a function of temperature. As a real-time trader for PSE, I’ll be responsible for buying the energy needed to meet system loads and selling any excess energy we wouldn’t be able to utilize. After several years of providing assistance to energy traders, I’m very excited to be directly trading energy and learning more about how energy markets and the electrical grid work.

Weather forecasting and monitoring will continue to play a role as an energy trader. My ability to forecast the energy output for PSE’s 772 MW of wind capacity in Eastern Washington, 269 MW of hydro capacity on the Baker River and Snoqualmie Falls, and thousands of MW of hydro capacity owned by the Bonneville Power Administration and various public utility districts along the Columbia River, will help me gain insight into the supply picture throughout the Pacific Northwest. On the demand side, I can compare how temperatures are trending relative to forecasts to predict how customer electricity usage will compare to forecasts. But I’ll also be able to learn about the non weather-related variables, like transmission congestion and outages at certain generating facilities, that have an impact on electricity prices throughout the West, and to gain a better understanding of how market economics/policy and how power physically flows on the grid.

The position for a PGE meteorologist has been posted here, and I’d highly recommend it for anybody looking for a challenging and high-visibility role in the energy industry. I learned so much at PGE and am so thankful for the opportunities I was afforded there.

Lastly, Seattle is my hometown, and now that I’m back up here, my blogs will return to more of a Western Washington focus instead of focusing on NW Oregon/SW Washington. I’ll still touch upon the Portland area though, particularly when severe weather is in the forecast. I’ll admit though – after all the crazy weather Portland has seen over the past 12 months, I could use a bit of a break in that department!