In past blogs I have talked about atmospheric rivers---plumes of moisture approaching our region that generally start in the tropic and subtropics. These moisture rivers are generally associated with warm air (since warm air can contain more water vapor than cold air) and they can dump huge amounts of precipitation when they interact with the substantial...
Visit to China, the Great Firewall, and An Amazing Jet
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You might have noticed my blog decreased in frequency a bit during the past week and there were some issues with the graphics.The reason?...I have been in Beijing the last ten days giving a short-course on weather systems and forecasting technology to forecasters from throughout China. My colleague in this adventure was Brad Colman, head of the Seattle...
Amazing Sierra Snows
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Although the Cascade snowpack is roughly normal this year (which is low for a La Nina year in which we expect it to be above normal), the central Sierra Mountains of central CA have been hit very, very hard.The Alpine Meadows ski resort near Lake Taho is closed today due to unprecedented snowfall, high high winds and avalanche hazards.The nearby Squaw Valley has had the greatest seasonal snowfall on record, with 45 inches overnight at 8200 ft.Snow has even hit lower elevations in northern CA, with highway 101 closed between San Francisco and Eureka.The good news for California is once they get through Saturday that...
Finally, A Warm Day
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Today several locations in western Washington reached in the low 60s....in fact some surged into the mid-60s. Offshore flow helped....as air descended down the western slopes of the Cascades it it is compressed and warmed. Here is the profiler data for today from Seattle and you can see the strong SE flow off the Cascades.And here is the model surface...
California Gets Hits
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You want intense weather? Then head down to California! With a high amplitude trough over the eastern Pacific, one system after another is heading to California. Here are some amazing statistics noted by my colleague Mark Albright:Point Reyes north of San Francisco reached 79 mph.At Burns Canyon 20 miles N of Palm Springs at 6300 ft, there was a wind gust of 96 knots (110 mph) at noon Sunday 20 March 2011. In contrast, at 11 AM the wind was nearly calm at Palm Springs.The 27-hr total ending last night at 10 PM 20 March 2011 was 6.06 inches in Santa Barbara of which 4.13 inches fell in just 12 hours. Their...
Changing Weather Pattern Reduces Radiation Risk, Brings Improved Weather
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Normal 0 21 false false false ES-MX X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 ...
Latest On Japanese Radiation
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Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 ...
Revenge of La Nina
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Putting aside the cross-Pacific radiation issues for this blog (again, absolutely no reason to be concerned here on the West Coast), we have had notable very heavy precipitation during the past several days. Slides have stopped north-south train traffic, strong thunderstorms with thunder and lightning have pummeled the lowlands, and some mudslides...
The U.S. West Coast is NOT at Risk from Radiation
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Today I got calls and emails from all sorts of folks, worrying about the Japanese radiation reaching the Northwest in dangerous quantities. Potassium iodide pills, used for thyroid protection from radioactive iodine have been stripped from the shelves in Seattle.I think the reality is clear...there is no serious radiation threat to us here in the...
Latest Pacific Trajectories From the Japanese Reactor and Amazing Rainshadow
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A few people emailed me asking for update trajectories from the vicinity of the Japanese reactors. These trajectories use the NOAA Hysplit model, driven by output from the U.S. GFS global forecasting model. I have launched trajectories from 50, 4500 and 9000 meters above the surface. Keep in mind that there are considerable uncertainties in such...
Where would the radioactivity go?
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Although any injections of radioactivity for the damaged Japanese reactors would be highly diffused, with very low concentrations, by the time it got to us, I did a trajectory analysis using the NOAA Hysplit Model. I first released the trajectories in the general region of damaged region at 10, 1000, and 5000 meters. Here is what I got:And there...
Tsunami
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A number of people emailed today about the tsunami, including their concerns about radioactivity from Japan reaching the Northwest.It turns out that the leading national research center for tsunamis is here in Seattle (National Center for Tsunami Research). At the Center they have developed numerical simulation models for tsunami events.Here is a...
Good Blow
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As advertised, we had a nice, little windstorm today. The satellite image at 10 AM was beautiful (see below). The low/trough was within the hook-shaped clouds. We call this feature a bent-back occlusion or warm front and the strongest winds are generally on the western and southern portions of the hook. One rakish research paper calls this "the...
Heavy Rain
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Some amazing rain today...here is the radar image at 9:56 PM tonight...wow...lots of yellows--that is all heavy rain. It is pounding on my roof right now.And today with the front there was a very intense rainfall band crossing the Sound around noon...here is the radar image. If you look closely, there were some reds in there....a downpour, probably...
Cold and Wind
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Look at the temperatures over the past four weeks: Today, was the first day since mid-February that we reached the normal high....three weeks! February was the seventh coldest at Sea-Tac since 1948. I suspect that if we looked at the period from Feb 15 though March 7th, it would be in the top three cold years at this location. A series of storms...
Good News and Bad News
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The good news for some is that there is little chance of lowland snow for the next week, which probably means we are out of the woods on that. Lowland DOTs can relax. The bad news for some...the faucet is about to be turned on.Interestingly, although the last month has been substantially cooler than normal (consistent with La Nina!), we have in fact...
Endless Spring
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The weather will be quite benign the next few days...downright boring after all the action of the past month. I don't want to jinx anything, but we are now entering northwest spring.In the eastern part of the U.S. there are frequently big storms in March---remember the old saw of March coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb? For us, March...
