Weather, Climate, and Other Science Topics
Since Christmas, the storm track has shifted south to California, bringing heavy rain and mountain snow to the Golden State. Parts of the Sierra Nevada have seen over 20 inches of liquid-equivalent precipitation, much of it in the form of snow. The most recent tempest occurred on January 4th and 5th. The image below shows […]
Freezing rain is finally over for most of Western Washington. I went out for a walk around Sandpoint Way earlier this evening, and though temperatures were above freezing and the roads were bare and wet, the sidewalks were still a slippery, icy mess. Reports ranged from around 1/8″ of an inch of ice near Bothell […]
After a record-hot and dry summer/autumn, storm season has finally arrived to the Pacific Northwest. A moderate cold front on Friday brought the first measurable rain of October to Western Washington, and on Saturday, a persistent Puget Sound Convergence Zone formed over the Seattle area. With a total of 0.72 inches of rain at Sea-Tac, […]
Earlier this week, South-Central Montana – and Yellowstone National Park in particular – experienced extreme flooding as an atmospheric river dumped several inches of rain onto a rapidly-melting, well-above-average snowpack, pushing the Yellowstone, Stillwater, and Clarks Fork rivers to record levels. The flooding forced the evacuation of 10,000 citizens and the National Guard rescued 87 […]
On Friday, Seattle was cut off from the north, the south, and the east due to flooding from the Chehalis River inundating I-5, extreme amounts of snow in the Washington passes, and all roads out of Vancouver BC being closed due to heavy snowfall. None of these individual events are unprecedented – the Chehalis spilled […]
When I was younger, my mom and I would always explore Seattle and look for the biggest puddles to (safely!) drive through after heavy rain events. We knew all the key spots – Lake Washington Boulevard through the Washington Arboretum always had some rather shallow but very lengthy puddles, and there were also quite a […]
Fall is the most rapidly-changing season here in the Pacific Northwest. September generally starts off warm and sunny, with some of our highest fire danger of the entire year. But by late September/early October, temperatures cool substantially as our days rapidly become shorter, and typically, by the 3rd or 4th week of October, we start […]
The 2021-2022 storm season is knocking at our door. Take a look at the precipitable water imagery over the East Pacific and note the dramatic stream of subtropical moisture barreling towards the Pacific Northwest. This is technically an “atmospheric river,” a long, narrow filament of moisture from the subtropics (in this case, the East China […]
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. […]
Last Wednesday, the United States Bureau of Reclamation (USBR), a government agency that oversees water resource management in the Western US and Great Plains, announced that they would close the main irrigational canal that draws from Upper Klamath Lake for the 2021 irrigation season. This canal, known as the “A” canal in the USBR-sponsored Klamath […]
