Weather, Climate, and Other Science Topics
When I was little, I remember how the Summit at Snoqualmie would always put out a “Photo of the Day,” chronicling the weather conditions each day up on the mountain. Now, they have an Instagram and take photos whenever they feel like it, and while I guess it serves the same purpose as the “Photo of […]
It was a fringe event once again, but many places around Puget Sound saw a second lowland snow event yesterday morning and afternoon! It wasn’t as widespread as predicted due to the center of low pressure making landfall near Grays Harbor instead of the mouth of the Columbia, resulting in warmer easterly winds during the […]
First off, I apologize for getting this out so late – I’ve been extraordinarily busy between the WeatherTogether/WeatherQuack merger and work. Trust me, I wanted nothing more than to give y’all a forecast for the November 3rd snow. But I’ll give you the next best thing – a review, and then a look forward to […]
With a strong atmospheric river underway, I thought I’d take some time to delve a little deeper into these phenomena. In this blog, I’ll cover the basic characteristics of an atmospheric river, how these atmospheric rivers form, and a brief summary of how they relate to the Earth’s heat budget. Throughout the blog, I’ll use […]
Today was just a prelude to the stormy weekend ahead, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t exciting! A cool and unstable air mass poured into the region, bringing brief but heavy showers to the lowlands and heavy snow in the mountains above 5,000 feet. The satellite picture taken this afternoon by NASA’s polar-orbiting TERRA satellite […]
Our first respectable storm of the season drenched Western Washington and Oregon with heavy rain on Wednesday and Thursday, bringing an inch of rain to many places in the lowlands and several inches in the mountains. Over the past 24 hours, the rain has primarily been concentrated over SW Washington and NW Oregon as a […]
One of my recent posts talked about how the transition to winter is quicker than the transition to spring. Though the post was concerned with temperature changes and had a global perspective, we in the Pacific Northwest tend to experience a particularly rapid pattern change as our summertime Eastern Pacific high disintegrates and strong zonal […]
We got a taste of winter in mid-September, when an unseasonably cool upper-level trough dropped several inches of the white stuff to Timberline, Paradise Ranger Station, and many other locations in the Cascades above 5,500 feet. But an even chillier upper-level trough is currently over the area and will direct cool, moist and unstable air […]
Now that we are officially in autumn, I can hardly contain my excitement for storm season to get underway. Our transition from autumn into winter is fast and furious; in only 1 1/2 months, we’ll be in the stormiest period of the year, and there’s even a chance for lowland snow by then! No month […]
FINALLY! It’s one thing to be overjoyed at the first stormy forecast of autumn, but to actually see the moderate rain, gusty winds, and even the mountain snow associated with it is nothing short of wonderful. And believe it or not, another storm is right on its heels! Let’s just cut to the chase and […]
