The 48-h total precipitation ending 11:48 PM last night from Seattle Rainwatch shows the big differences over the lowlands (this is not valid over the mountains or south of Olympia). Some locations got to 5 inches or more. And there was a well-defined rainshadow NE of the Olympics.
The forecast worked out quite well, both for precipitation and wind. The air was quite unstable after the system went by and there are reports of a tornado at the Frederickson Boeing plant in Puyallup, Washington. (see pic)
Well, I'm not so sure that the NWS forecasters did that well. At 11:07 a.m., they upgraded the High Wind Watch to a High Wind Warning for 5 p.m. to 4 a.m. Then at 11:56 p.m., they downgraded it to a Wind Advisory, until 6 a.m. But then about 3 and 1/2 hours later, they cancelled even that. And my experience of a few hours of notable winds made it much ado about very little.
ReplyDeleteBelieve me, I'm VERY happy it didn't materialize. But I wish that the NWS forecasters would have owned up to it a bit more in their subsequent weather discussions, explaining what actually happened compared to what they had predicted.
Interesting wind patterns yesterday. My anos only recorded a peak gust at 12.302 m/s (27 mph) here in Bothell. Other places really got blown about though!
ReplyDeleteCliff - I'm 99.5% sure that's a picture of a train set. Did you tip that over to show us what might happen if a real train was in the path of a tornado? :)
ReplyDeleteWe had a pretty stormy day and night here in the Mid-Willamette Valley. I was amazed there wasn't more coverage on the aftermath. Thanks for posting!
ReplyDeleteThe picture of box cars on their sides looks a whole lot like someone's HO gauge model railroad.
ReplyDeleteI'll bet you're just checking if people really look at your pictures.
need like buttons! Like the train car comments :-)
ReplyDeleteI've got a meteorological question. Models, satellite imagery, and even some precip measurements show "streaky" precip maxima from this storm (and others like it). For instance, if you look at the WRF 4/3 km hourly precip, high precip is organized in stripes parallel with the windfield. The 24 totals for Victoria, BC and surroundings show a strong stripe-like orientation. These seem akin to rainbands in a hurricane, so I suspect embedded convection. What causes these formations?
ReplyDeletei'd say it's pretty good when they predict 1.94 inches of rain between 23:00 9/27 and 23:00 9/29, and the actual total ends up being 1.83 inches.
ReplyDeletethose are real rail cars! tornado in puyallup!
In the Mill Creek area it seems we were in a bit of a donut hole for much of the rain. No doubt it rained but generally seemed less than reported other places. The UW radar display seemed to show the classic convergent zone without heavy rain many times when other areas were hammered.
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ReplyDelete"...you claim that there were very strong winds this weekend, when clearly there wasn't."
ReplyDeleteBoris, did you look at the regional map of recorded winds in Cliff's post? The numbers are real.
What was really remarkable about this past event was the regional smashing of rainfall records, going back to the beginning. Remarkable.