Weather Blog
With wind back in the forecasts, let's visit a bit of terminology that gets tossed around almost as much as autumn leaves during these situations.
One of the most popular questions is wondering what the difference between "breezy" and "windy" is on our forecasts. For me personally, when I write a forecast, I use "breezy" to describe when winds will be noticeable but not have any effect, and "windy" when speeds might start to cause problems. But I don't have a set wind speed that I use to switch between the two, it's more of how I want to paint the mental picture. Generally speaking, I'd say breezy is roughly 15-30 mph, and windy would be 30+. Or, breezy is enough to turn your umbrella inside out. Windy is enough to blow your umbrella down to the next block :) 
Here are some of the peak gusts (35 mph or greater) that I found with the Saturday, October 4 windstorm that hit Western Washington:
Another weekend is upon us -- time to find some cool stuff to "tide" you over until Monday. (That will be funnier in a moment.)
First up, let's do some videos. This one is from the resident time lapser Dr. Dale Ireland, whose gem this week is showing a gray start turning to sunshine over the Kitsap Peninsula on Sept. 26: Read more » 
With this year's rainy and stormy season just getting under way, we get quite a few requests for historical windstorm information.
Lucky for us, we have Wolf Read in our neighborhood. Read is a meteorologist who has compiled extensive research into windstorms that have struck the Pacific Northwest, then turned it into what has to be the best comprehensive database around. Want to compare the top wind speed in Hoquiam from the Dec. 14, 2006 windstorm to those of the 1993 Inauguration Day storm? It's there. Remember a windy day in early March in 1974 but can't find any information? It's there. Just go to: www.climate.washington.edu/stormking (P.S. I was just poking around this site some more Thursday afternoon, and found a link I had overlooked while just parusing past windstorms. Mr. Read has also written up an incredible explanation of how windstorms work here, and how a storm's track affects each region: http://www.climate.washington.edu/stormking/PressureGradients.html. We'll likely go into this in more depth here when we get a good windstorm on the way. 
Happy first day of the official rainy season in Seattle. There's probably some irony that it's still sunny outside, but if you've seen the forecasts lately, you know this is likely the last day we'll be sunny and 70+ for a while -- possibly until next spring.
But October 1st is also the day we reset the annual rain gauge that measure the "water year." In addition to tracking rain from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, we also track rain between Oct. 1 and Sept. 30 since the bulk of our rain comes in the fall and winter. That way, we can better gauge how a true rainy season shaped up, instead of cutting it in half and spreading it across two measurements' like the calendar year rainfall total does. This year, Seattle's water year rain ended up at 34.05" -- about 3" below our normal of 37.07". Eight of the 12 months were below normal, with November, February, May and September well below normal. The only really relatively wet months were December and August. This is somewhat surprising because La Nina winters historically tend to be wetter than normal -- although if you remember, the Cascades ended up with a higher snowpack than usual. Here is the monthly breakdown: Read more » 
It's easy to know when it starts snowing around here -- the tell-tale sign is the 36 e-mails that pop into our bin within seconds of the first snowflake.
But on Mars, where we gather the Internet has yet to make good inroads into their infrastructure, we have to be creative. Enter NASA, whose Phoenix Mars lander has detected snow in the Martian atmosphere. It evaporated before it reached the ground, but we hear it was enough to cancel classes at nearby Olympus Mons Middle School, cause a run on snow chains and it bumped the financial crisis on Earth off the top story of their local newscasts, with Martian meteorologists breathlessly warning of the impending snowflakes, complete with fancy graphics :) Here is the full article from NASA: And you thought the stock market was crazy Monday...
Despite what appeared to be a calm, sunny day, there was actually quite a complex pattern going on the background. We had a warm, east wind trying to warm us up, and some lingering cold air pooled around to try and keep temperatures down. The result? Wildly different temperatures around Western Washington. Get this: It was 89 in North Bend, and 59 on Orcas Island. At Fort Lewis, it was 82, but just up the road in Gig Harbor, it was 75. Go up a few more miles, and it was 79 in Bremerton. Here are some other afternoon high temperatures: Read more » 
You wouldn't think of Maine and Nova Scotia as a hotbed for hurricanes, but Hurricane Kyle managed to survive long enough to make landfall along Canada's Nova Scotia coast.
As to why a hurricane can survive that far north on the Atlantic Seaboard, while the Pacific Northwest, at about similar latitudes, has never had a hurricane, it all has to do with ocean temperatures. The Atlantic Ocean has a warm current that runs along the East Coast and keeps summer and fall ocean temperatures much warmer than the Pacific coast, which has much colder temperatures in the 55-60 range. Here is the entire article, written by AP writer David Sharp. Read more » 
NOAA is working on some new weather modeling that will greatly improve the accuracy of airdrops, because the last thing you want is that big box of supplies to land far away from where you wanted it.
Here is the full article from AP Science Writer Randolph E. Schmid:
Read more »
It's Friday -- time to find the week's best images to hold you over until Monday. (Although this week, it's two weeks' worth since I was out last week.) First up, these fantastic lenticular clouds posted by YouNews subscriber starlisa. Here's another one: Read more » |
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October 6, 2008
- Seattle, Washington
Originally from Port Angeles, Scott graduated from the UW in 1994 with a degree in Atmospheric Sciences and has been producing weather reports for broadcast and on the Web ever since.
