November 05, 2008

The Warm Front Cometh


Now that I have recovered from following the elections, back to weather.

Today should be a very pleasant day..cool, dry, with temps getting into the lower 50s. But change is on the way! An usually strong warm front will move through early tomorrow AM. The air mass will become much warmer and wetter, winds will strengthen and turn to the southwest along the coast and aloft...with rain, sometimes of moderate intensity moving in. There will be rain to our south over Oregon today...but it won't reach Puget Sound until after dinner. The heavy stuff won't get here until 4-8 am tomorrow...and both Thursday and Friday will be wet. The mountains (particularly the Olympics and north Cascades) will get very heavy rainfall...with some locations hit by 5-10 inches over the next two days.

So what do you do? Head to Sequim! There will be a nice rainshadow there tomorrow--as is typical under rainshadow conditions. Take a look at the precipitation forecast for the UW high resolution weather predictions attached.
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5 comments:

  1. BradNovember 5, 2008 at 1:23 PM

    Hi Cliff,

    Can you explain the precipitation forecast? What are the units on the scale on the right hand side? It looks like the scale is labeled "cin". Cubic inches? Over some unit area in 48 hours?

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cliff Mass Weather BlogNovember 5, 2008 at 2:56 PM

    Brad...it is hundredths of an inch...so 256 is 2.56 inches

    ReplyDelete
  3. BradNovember 5, 2008 at 5:13 PM

    OK, that makes sense. Is it a rainfall rate or a total over the forecast period?

    Thanks for this blog. I rely on your weekend forecasts on KUOW a lot, and now I'm finding myself checking your blog daily.

    ReplyDelete
  4. ReidNovember 5, 2008 at 6:40 PM

    Brad,

    The plot shows the forecasted amount of rainfall in the 3 hour period prior to 4pm Thurday, in other words, the amount of rain between 1pm and 4pm local time.

    ReplyDelete
  5. BradNovember 6, 2008 at 7:37 AM

    Thanks. It makes sense to me now.

    ReplyDelete

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