We have gone several years since the last big windstorm from off the Pacific.
This year may be different. This blog will tell you why.
Major Northwest windstorms are associated with intense low-pressure centers reaching our coast and then moving to the northeast. As illustrated below, these storms possess intense pressure differences around them, which produces strong winds.
Big Pacific cyclones hitting the Pacific Northwest are rare during strong El Nino and strong La Nina winters.
To illustrate this fact, the figure below shows you the sea surface temperature difference from normal in the central tropical Pacific, the key indicator of El Nino and La Nina, from 1860 through 2000. Normal (or neutral years) are found from -0.5 to 0.5 C. Moderate to strong El Ninos occur when temperatures are more than 1°C above normal. Moderate to strong La Nina's when temperature is more than 1°C cooler than normal.
Why are neutral years better for strong low centers approaching our coast?
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Announcement: Free Public Lecture at Kane Hall on October 10: Global Warming, the Jet Stream, and Cold Waves
All of you are invited to attend what should be an excellent public lecture by Professor Jonathan Martin on how global warming affects the jet stream and cold air outbreaks.
It will be a timely and interesting lecture accessible to non-meteorologists and given in honor of UW Professor Peter Hobbs.
The talk will be at 7 PM in Kane Hall room 210.
If you would like to go, please register online here:
Parking is available (at a modest cost) in the UW Central Garage, which is located directly under Kane Hall. Or take the light rail (the UW stops are a 5-10-minute walk away).
As the map shows -- wetter is also likely. The Climate Prediction Center in their seasonal prediction (now to January 2025) agrees. Pete Parsons of Oregon thinks a wet November.
ReplyDeleteI fear for the trees where I live if we get a storm like Cliff describes. They have taken such a battering, and many have fallen, in the past few winters. None have caused damage to our place, but I don't know how much more violent weather they will be able to take.
ReplyDeleteMarjorie Taylor Greene says the weather is being controlled (space lasers?). Can we send it to Canada if we know who to ask...
DeleteI can't understand how such people get into high office.
DeleteWell since MGTand republicans alike say Democrats control the weather maybe the Democrats will give us a major windstorm and a major Artic outbreak this winter, one cane hope.
ReplyDeleteWe had our local arborist take the sails out of our tall western pine trees. He cut the heavy branches down, for a pseudo bonsai effect.I hope this works to help them take a battering winstorm.
ReplyDeletePortland can't handle another major wind storm, the last one was just last January, and devastated the area. Most folks were without power for days, and PGE had to call in work crews from over ten states in order to remove all of the downed trees and restore power.
ReplyDeleteIt was fun looking at the windstorm chart. I can recall four of them, going back to Columbus Day.
ReplyDeleteI think the Chanukah Eve storm was ten years earlier in December 2006, so we are really overdue.
ReplyDelete