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 […]
La Ninas typically feature cool and wet springs, and the 2021-2022 La Nina has had that in spades. According to Chief Fox12 Meteorologist Mark Nelsen, Portland just experienced its wettest April on record, the coolest April since 2011, and, as denizens of the Portland metropolitan area know all too well, had a very rare April […]
Yesterday, I went for a stroll through through Azalea Way in the Washington Arboretum, a gravel path lined by cherries, azaleas, rhododendrons, and many other beautiful flowers, shrubs, and trees. Azalea Way has a long and storied history – it was first created by the Puget Mill Company in the late 19th century to transport […]
Last week, and unbeknownst to each other, my brother and mother called me on the same day with the exact same question: “Why does Seattle have so many potholes right now?” My knee-jerk reaction was to rant against our city council and say it’s their fault, but it turns out there are several reasons why […]
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 […]
Last week, the Bootleg Fire, a 400,000 acre conflagration that is still only 40% contained, made headlines when it tripped off a set of high-voltage transmission lines known as the California-Oregon Intertie that transmit electricity between the Pacific Northwest and California. At the time, California was experiencing an extreme heat wave and very high electricity […]
It’s been a while since we had a significant, regionwide, winter windstorm hit the Pacific NW. The last major windstorm to hit the Inland Northwest was the 11/17/2015 windstorm, which brought an extended period of 60-70 mph gusts to Eastern Washington and devastated electrical grids around the region. Avista Corporation, a utility headquartered in Spokane […]
We all know that the winter solstice has the shortest daylight of the year. But you might be surprised to learn that this solstice has neither the earliest sunset, nor the latest sunrise, of any day throughout the year. This past year, Portland’s earliest sunset occurred on December 10, while Portland’s latest sunrise occurred on […]
In my AP European History class back in high school, I remember being astounded by some of the suffixes that the kings and queens had. With a name like Louis XVI, is it any surprise that the French rose up and demanded a change in government? In the spirit of European monarchies, we have our […]
When I was younger, my parents would get me the “Old Farmers Almanac” every year for Christmas. In a time before I knew about dynamical climate models and ensemble-based, bias-corrected seasonal forecasting, the Old Farmer’s Almanac seasonal forecasts were a godsend. Part of the allure of the Almanac for an upstart weather zealot like myself […]
