In a real sense, the winter season began today along the entire West Coast. Nearly simultaneously, snow struck higher elevations in the Cascades (including Paradise on Mt. Rainier) and in the Sierra Mountains (Donner Pass and Squaw Valley Resort), while rain wind hit southern California (see pics below).
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| Paradise at Mt. Rainier |
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| Donner Pass |
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| Hollywood |
Take a look at the upper-level (500 mb) chart this morning. Pretty amazing...low heights over the Northwest and a strong trough and strong winds (indicated by the closeness of the height lines) over central and southern California.
And now the bad news--the computer models are more emphatic than ever that we will have to deal with a second La Nina year...yes, a double dip. Here is an example of a collection of various models:
Most of the them are calling for negative sea surface temperature anomalies (differences from climatology) and the Climate Prediction Center's coupled atmosphere-ocean simulation system is even more emphatic. Although this year's La Nina is a bit weaker than last year's, examination of previous double dips indicate that the second year can have a similar impact even if weaker. The good news....skiing should be good this year and we will have lots of water next year.
Finally, some major radar news. The Camano Island radar is back on line after being updated to dual-polarization. So far there is no place for you to see the new dual-pol radar products on the web. I am hoping that we can soon put some of the them on the department web site within a few weeks. Several of you have also asked is there a place where are the radars are combined for your viewing pleasure...there is...my department is combining the U.S. and Canadian radars and you can access these graphics here. This interface uses google maps technology, allowing you to zoom into the area of interest.
