Very strong winds have hit the coast as the first trough moves its way northward immediately offshore (see weather map for 7 PM). Extremely strong pressure gradient over the offshore waters.
Winds at Hoquiam gusted to 61 knots (70 mph).
And the second low is still out there...and starkly beautiful in the latest infrared satellite picture (see below). The new forecast models suggest that the second low will be too far north to give the Puget Sound lowlands a heavy dose of winds...so it appears the next few hours through 1 AM will be the main event.Heavy rain continues over the Olympic Peninsula, the Willapa Hills, and parts of the Cascades. The latest values from the UW/SPU Rainwatch system are shown below...remember much of the mountains and SW of the Olympics is blocked (why we need a coastal radar!). Really, a coastal radar would have been a big help for this storm, with all the uncertainties in the complex pattern offshore that the models are getting only partially right!
There are some savage wind gusts west of olympia on oyster bay.
ReplyDeletethey are as strong now as they were this morning.
is that predictive of stronger winds later?
I'm in Hoquiam, and it's starting to feel like the storm from 07. I know it's not as bad, but it's gusting pretty good at this time.
ReplyDelete"starkly beautiful." Will you come help me put my shingles back on my house? j/k.
It sure does look like it is moving in now. There are an awful lot of barbs on those wind flags! Our barometer here @ Vaughn Bay, on Case Inlet is 29.20 and falling. The winds are picking up.
ReplyDeleteAt 7:53pm BLI was reporting 43° with an 8mph NE breeze. The 8:53pm report shows 54° with winds gusting to 39mph from the SSE. We should see 60+ winds before the storm is over.
ReplyDeleteIt's really interesting to compare these storms to the Nor'Easters of the Atlantic coast. The Atlantic storms have a much tighter, closed circulation. Almost like cold hurricanes.
ReplyDeleteThe Northwest storms are big with open centers.
So, I live on a few acres in Federal Way. Lots of trees. Have some woods where wild animals live ( coyotes, owls, etc ). As I'm walking across my lawn to the shed to get my gas-cans just in case the power goes out, in the middle of my lawn is a large owl just standing there. He is in the wide open just surrounded by about 100' of grass in each direction....Dog is acting weird too in the house. Something's up. Have never in my life seen an owl sitting in the middle of my yard. I'd say winds here in fedway are gusting to around 30 right now.
ReplyDeleteI should have waited a few minutes to post. Gusts up to 51mph as of 9:07.
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ReplyDeleteHey Cliff: you need to twitter. Because you get twittered about alot. http://bit.ly/1a3PbV
ReplyDeleteIt's kinda calm in Hoquiam just now. Bracing for more.
East Bellevue... gusts to 32 with barometer at 29.26 and still falling. Temp 48.6. We've had 0.35" of rain so far since midnight.
ReplyDeleteThis is not quite as bad as 24 hours ago, yet. Our Monday wind gust was 40.
FWIW, the previous storm was worse than this one here in Sammamish. I was woken up a ton during the first one, and last night it just wasn't as windy nor as rainy. Maybe the storm moved?
ReplyDeleteThe last storm was wild enough to wake me up and knock power out in my school. Didn't happen this time.
ReplyDeleteNW Interior hit not as bad with this one. More rain-little less wind. Less outages. Quicker passage. Warnings taken down faster. Less of a rain shadow. With these storms there is bound the be balance. A mean block in the coming weeks?
ReplyDeleteNot sure why, but this storm was much worse for us here in Lake Stevens. The wind kept us up all night, pounded the south side of our house. We are still having decent wind gusts here. I don't know how strong the wind got last night, but it was definitely much stronger than Monday's storm.
ReplyDeleteNot much happened at all here in Woodinville. We were fully expecting for a power outage (a dog barks and the power goes out here). We had one minor flicker around 10. It even mostly stopped raining until late, must have fallen into some mini convergence zone?
ReplyDeleteI think it was just a case of being wrong about where it was coming in. Maybe it hit farther north and thus the majority of Puget Sound was not in the thick of it. In any case, it's another great example of the weather folks on TV trying to walk the fine line and having it blow up. Within 24 hours it went from being worse than the first storm to the same, back to being slightly stronger, to "it's coming in earlier than we expected" to really nothing at all for the majority of folks I know here in the PS. You gotta feel for them -- it has to be super hard to get it right here.
ReplyDeleteCliff, I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say we are eager for your opinion on the up coming low pressure system Wednesday night.
ReplyDeleteAre we really looking at a round 3 similar to last night's storm?
I haven't seen much of anything about it at NWS, but komo seems to think it's another storm with at least as much punch as last night's. I'll chalk it up to news hype until I read today's NWS weather discussion this afternoon.
I also noticed that cold front coming down this weekend, looks like it might be interesting to watch that one as well.
ReplyDeleteThe NWS Area Forcast Discussion here:
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/sew/gafd/latest_webafd.html
Speaks of yet another system coming in on Monday.
Although checking the images from UW it does looke like Wednesday night into Thursday might be the most interesting. I'm really looking forward to seeing the weekend runs and also this afternoons NWS forcast discussion.
I imagine one of these next 3 storms will turn out to be stronger than expected, but might be a little early to tell for sure.
First time visiting Cliff's blog. Nice!
ReplyDeleteLooking to spend Fri night-Sat night 11/20-11/21 watching a storm from a lovely B&B. Any suggestions on the best blustery spot within a few hour drive of Seattle?