Weather, Climate, and Other Science Topics
There are many well-known portmanteaus of snow and catastrophic descriptors, with Snowzilla, Snowmageddon, and Snowpocalypse being some of the primary offenders. But what about a more pedestrian snowfall that still inspires joy in the hearts of adults and children everywhere? I prefer “conversational snow” – not only is it an extremely accurate description (yes, a […]
It’s been said that “snow is the most difficult thing to forecast in the Pacific Northwest.” And while I believe this is often true – our terrain, microclimates, and often marginal temperatures can make snow forecasting extraordinarily challenging – I think a corollary is more appropriate. Lowland snow forecasts are, without a doubt, the most […]
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 […]
One of our family friends is a brilliant oceanography professor and extremely accomplished skier, and he has a t-shirt that says “Viva La Nina.” It’s a perfect shirt for an oceanographer (since La Nina is a coupled oceanic/atmospheric phenomenon) and a Pacific Northwest skier, as La Ninas tend to bring above-average mountain snowfall to our […]
Happy Christmas Eve everybody! I hope this post finds you all in good health and cheer, or at least as good as things can be considering the times. I was fortunate enough to witness the “Grand Conjunction” last night with Jupiter and Saturn . If you missed it this year, have no fear – it […]
When most Portlanders think of December, they think of Christmas trees, advent calendars, and cars with those big bows on them. Certainly not sunny skies, and much less 50+ degree temperatures to accompany them! But that’s exactly what we’ve seen to begin December. There was no measurable precipitation for the first 5 days of December […]
For our high school senior portraits in the Garfield High School yearbook, we had the option of putting a quote next to our name. I quoted the great John Ruskin, a multi-talented, leading English art critic of the Victorian Era. Ruskin wrote the following; I could only include the bolded portion due to space constraints […]
We’ve seen a dramatic shift in most model solutions over the past 48 hours. On Monday, models showed a very deep low – approximately 965-970 mb – making landfall near the northern tip of Vancouver Island, bringing very strong winds/extremely high waves to the coast, windy conditions to Western Washington, and breezy conditions to Western […]
Good evening all! There’s a lot of buzz regarding Friday’s storm, so I thought I’d write a quick update clarifying some of the potential impacts of the storm and how the forecast has changed since yesterday. Models continue to show a very strong but weakening cyclone arriving from the west on Friday, bringing heavy rain […]
