Weather, Climate, and Other Science Topics
Can you believe that there are less than 48 hours to go until the Great American Eclipse of 2017? I get giddy just thinking about it. The weather is looking spectacular for nearly everyone – the coast will likely be shrouded in low clouds for the viewing, and there’s still some uncertainty about a weak marine layer […]
I was in 8th grade when I first learned about the Great American Eclipse. Mr. Pearsall, the science teacher at Washington Middle School, gave us a handout on the eclipse and told us not to miss it. 11 years later, I live 25 miles from the path of totality, and I wouldn’t miss this eclipse […]
FINALLY, after several days of coding and several months of troubleshooting, WeatherTogether has its own model charts! Before I go any further, I have to thank Quinn Abrahams-Vaughn for writing some html and javascript pages to get me started with model visualization and Derek Hodges for his guidance on shell scripting and crontabs to automatically […]
Before I discuss this landmark bill signed by President Trump, I have the pleasure of announcing some very good news regarding WeatherTogether! We finally have automatically updating model charts online! You can find these charts at http://weathertogether.net/models. Many things remain on the “to-do list,” such as making an elegant webpage, getting the charts to upload […]
Rumors of ol’ El returning for summer 2017 have been percolating through meteorological echo chambers for the past few months, but in the past few days, mainstream media outlets like the New York Times have spilled the beans to the bourgeoisie and proletariat alike, alerting Americans of all walks of life that another El Nino […]
After a long and dark Pacific Northwest winter, even the biggest storm and snow fans look forward to the longer days of spring. And perhaps no day is anticipated more than the spring equinox, which is, astronomically speaking, the first day of spring. Yet, one of the biggest misconceptions in modern civilization has to be the idea […]
Yesterday evening, while biking to work (I work night shifts at my weather job), I heard the first robin in many months! The first chirp from a robin has traditionally been associated with the beginning of spring. This is apparent in two famous 19th century poems: Emily Dickinson’s “I Dreaded That First Robin So,” a […]
On Friday, the Washington Post published an article concerning a memo drafted by the Office of Management and Budget for the 2018 fiscal year. This memo proposed drastic cuts to NOAA that would lead to a 18% reduction in current funding. At a time when U.S. numerical weather prediction is falling behind the rest of […]
Not many people know that March, on average, is nearly as snowy as February for most of the Cascades and Olympics. Snoqualmie Pass, for example, averages 72 inches for February vs 71.7 inches for March. Yes, March does have an unfair advantage in terms of length, but with days rapidly becoming longer, storms becoming weaker, […]
As I’ve mentioned in some of my previous posts, this has been an exceptionally stormy winter for much of California. While these storms have been crucial in eliminating California’s drought, they have also caused a variety of weather-related hazards in the Golden State. And no hazard has been bigger than the crisis on Northern California’s […]
