May 31, 2010

Weather Retribution

It is clear than our region has offended the great weather god.

First piece of evidence: the below normal temperature and above normal precipitation of the past 1-2 weeks (see graphic of temperatures at Seattle Tacoma Airport compared to average high and low). For the past ten days the maximum temperature has remained well below normal.But what is remarkable, is that this run of cold and damp is not going to end soon.
Tomorrow will be decent, with partly cloudy skies and few scattered showers. But Tuesday night and Wednesday a strong wet system will cross the area. Take a look at the forecast 24-h precipitation ending 5 PM Wednesday.
Thursday is a break day and then an REALLY strong system hits on Friday...and may be a powerful windstorm on top of rain. Here is the latest (Tuesday noon) output from the UW high-resolution forecast model for 5 AM Friday. A 990 mb low center right off our coast, with strong coastal pressure gradients. I also have the forecast winds--40 kt sustained along the Oregon and southern WA coasts! This is intense weather for June.



Want some good news?...no major weather feature over the weekend.

14 comments:

  1. I agree w/ you. It is just too far away to discuss it. But if its like the way it shows tonight, how bizarre for June.

    Snowpack in my area is 150% of normal. Mostly due to lack of melt this May.

    Thinking about calling Vortex 2, or whatever they call it on the weather channel?, to chase tornados across the basin this Friday. :)

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  2. We were thrilled with the great weather today at Folklife though the kids were mad at me, because I had them ready for cool rain showers and wouldn't let them play in the fountains as usual... *sigh*

    Can we have some tomato weather starting next weekend? Please?

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  3. Cliff-

    Further proving of your point...

    I had left an empty storage container on a table in the back of my house (Issaquah plateau) two weeks ago. By no means an official rain gauge or site, but it has fairly straight sides and a flat bottom. Saturday I went out to put it back in the shed... It had 5 inches of water in it!

    -Fred

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  4. ...but it all turns around in time for Summer, right? Sigh...

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  5. Ok, ok Cliff enough already... tell us great weather Shaman what do or who do have to sacrifice for all is to end!?

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  6. Michael,


    May I suggest tony hayward the CEO of BP?

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  7. It's all making up for last year when the weather god loved us too much.

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  8. Michael -

    I think Prof. Mass may have to use Jeff Renner's line:

    "I'm in prediction, not production."

    But I'm sure he'll take nay cash you want to schlepp his way... ;^)

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  9. I'd sacrifice a pig to the weather gods, but cooking BBQ ribs in the rain really sucks.

    Also there was a nice bit of hard rain on Monday morning in Souty Bellevue that overflowed my gutters. (got out and cleaned out the maple leaf seeds afterwards.)

    I've living in the Seattle area for over 30 years and when I first moved out here, I noticed that we almost never got a "hard rain."

    Has that actually changed? Does the PNW now get real rain in large doses in a short period of time and is that the norm. Was 30 years ago just an aberration that we are now past?

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  10. Over on Scott Sistek's blog, he's indicating this is the remnants of Cyclone Laila. Are there animations that depict this formation's journey all the way from India to here?

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  11. Is there just one weather god?? Somehow I imagine several. I'd like to know which one(s) to be angry with or supplicating to. I thought we had suffered enough until my fellow weather nerd in Arcata asked if you had blogged about the storm coming in. NO!!! The precip doesn't bother me as much as the wind--I am always nervous that it will blow down one of my old deciduous trees or one of the main trunks or more hundreds of feet of wood fence in the pasture, as has happened in the last few years. Tomato weather would indeed be welcome!

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  12. I put up 2 hoop houses over the tomatoes yesterday. Plastic on everything that wants warm.

    Big, big sigh.

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  13. Liembo - this is the best animation that I have found. It's kind of hard to follow, but you can see the moisture get caught up in the westerlies:



    Satellite

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  14. reading all of this from thailand where it's been in the 80's and 90's the past few weeks, makes me glad i'm here. and not there. but i'm going back early july, so i'm hoping all will be better by then. i hope.

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