January 08, 2021

Major Atmospheric River Coming, A Good Weekend, Big Waves, and My New Podcast is Online

My new podcast is out:  I discuss our weekend weather forecast, including a beautiful Saturday with easterly winds in the foothills, a decent Sunday, and a deluge that is expected on Tuesday and Wednesday as a major atmospheric river hits our region.

And in the second segment, I examine a question that I have gotten from many of you:  what is the energy source of storms?   Turns out that tropical storms and our midlatitude cyclones acquire their energy in different ways.

Here is my podcast:
Click the play button to listen or use your favorite streaming service (see below)

Some highlights for today

A major storm is developing off our coast (see weather map for 1 PM today) and will produce big waves that will reach our coast Sunday morning.  Good time for wave watching (waves as high as 20-30 feet along our coast) . 959 hPa low center--a major storm with hurricane force winds.


Strong easterly flow will descend into the western Cascade foothills on Sunday afternoon and evening, with gusts to 30-50 mph in places.  Strong southeasterly winds will also occur over Northwest Washington and along the coast (see wind gust forecast at 7 PM Saturday).


Finally, there is the Tuesday-Wednesday deluge as a major atmospheric river hits our region.
The forecast total water vapor for Tuesday morning shows the plume of moisture coming right into Washington State.


And the 72-h total precipitation forecasts ending on Wednesday at 4 PM show as much as 5-10 inches in the mountains.  Worry about flooding and landslides.



You can stream my podcast from your favorite services:

2 comments:

  1. Wow. After all the snow in the mountains, we do not need 5 to 10 inches of rain in the mountains. I'm going to build an ark.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Howabout that stratospheric warming and the shift to cool toward the end of the month? Think we'll get a nice snow to play in?

    ReplyDelete

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