It may be the most noteworthy battle since Gozilla versus Kong.
For over a week, a formidable pool of cold, dense, cloud-laden air has settled within the Columbia Basin (see visible satellite image from Thursday).
The cam at Mission Ridge ski area this morning looked down on the cloudy miasma that covers the Columbia Basin.
With a deck of low clouds in place and little solar radiation reaching the surface, the surface air temperatures in the Columbia Basin have been startingly constant, holding in the lower to mid-30sF.
As an example, here are the temperatures at Grant County Airport near Moses Lake. A week of near-freezing temperatures without sun. Not very pleasant.
Widespread freezing temperatures led to substantial surface icing around the Columbia Basin, with some collisions.
Winds have been very light in the cold, dense air in the Columbia Basin, resulting in virtually no power generation from all the wind turbines--and that is for a WHOLE WEEK.
To show this, here are the generation numbers from Bonneville, with green being wind plus solar (obviously very little solar, considering the time of year and the clouds).
One reason that the cold, moist air at low levels is so stable is that it was surmounted by a very strong inversion (temperatures warming with height). Inversions act as barriers to vertical air motion and suppress vertical mixing.
The vertical sounding (from a balloon launched radiosonde) at Spokane yesterday shows a strong inversion from around 3500 to 6000 ft, with an increase of around 14 C ....that is 25 degrees F!!
So we had a Godzilla inversion.
Only a mighty meteorological Kong can hope to destroy it.
And that Kong is a strong Pacific front, with notable winds and lots of precipitation.
I will now show a series of high-resolution forecasts, providing surface (2-m) air temperatures, sea-level pressure, and near-surface winds.
This morning at 7 AM, there was lots of cold air east of the Cascade crest of Washington.
The front had moved across Washington State by 1 PM Saturday (below), with strong winds over eastern Washington. The cool air (blue colors) is gone.
Frontal Kong will win the battle.
To demonstrate this, here is the forecast temperature plot for Pasco (actually many forecasts, with the black line being their average). Rapid warming to well above freezing around 10 AM on Saturday.
The front will also bring Kong-sized precipitation with large values (2-6 inches of liquid water) expected in the mountains (see total through 4 PM Sunday shown below)
I would like a politician pushing wind and solar generation to respond to this type of situation. I regularly monitor the wind generation and it seems there are often during the winter and summer when heating and cooling loads are the highest there is little to no solar or wind generation in Eastern Washington. As a result, thermal plants such as natural gas need to be run to fill in the blanks. When the wind blows, the thermal plants can throttle down but wind is so variable they are still required. It seems a terrible waste of capital dollars and investment. When the turbines are not turning they aren't generating any return on their investment, except for the tax incentives. When the wind is blowing, the thermal plants are turned down, same problem, low return on investment. It doesn't seem like a good thing.
ReplyDelete.. and they have ruined the landscape. They are an ugly blight on the land.
DeleteMeanwhile, our state is in a budget crisis. What the heck? Now heard today epa arrested a man for importing refrigerants. Not that I agree with breaking the law, but the people that bought them from him did so because they cannot afford a replacement system causing the demand. It is as they said. They will break us to meet their goal. While it doesn't nothing.
DeleteOh boy, that's for sure. Can you imagine if they would start putting those up in National Parks. And seriously, our Columbia Basin is exquisite beauty, except for those monstrosities. Talk about Kong and Godzilla. Can we please decommission those things, especially since EROI is mostly negative?
DeleteI suppose some people would say that Manhattan Island would look better without all those man-made skyscrapers or that San Francisco's Golden Gate landscape was ruined by putting a bridge across it. I think the bare hills in the Ryegrass area of Ellensburg are made rather interesting to look at with the wind turbines there, but as they say, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.
DeleteWxman...are you suggesting that we build on every inch of ground? One huge difference is new yorks skyline and the golden gate attract tourism, people travel just to see them. No one cares about a windmill or solar farm, not going to travel somewhere just to see them. So while we dot them all over they are just an eye sore to most and the "benefit" isn't worth it.
DeleteBudd..I am not saying anything about building or not building more wind turbines, only commenting on the looks of the ones that are there. I find them to be rather nice to look at and certainly not any more ugly than other man-made structures that cover our landscape, such as the numerous electrical power poles and lines that appear over many areas of the state. There is actually a visitor center at the Ryegrass Wildhorse wind project which I and many others have visited, so it is not true that no one cares or goes to visit them. However, I respect your right to consider them ugly.
DeleteBudd - you're just looking at the windmills themselves, not the landscape in general. People tend to do that, and don't see what ugly monstrosities these things really are.
DeleteI rather or so enjoy them as well. Shrug. I’m not advocating for more or for their removal, I just don’t consider them ugly or a blight. At one point I’m sure dams were considered the same thing or all the towers for the electrical that go through the mountains. In the end, no matter the solution, someone’s going to complain about the solution being a problem of some sort. It’s what we do best
DeleteJHK. Not me. I am no fan. We worry about habitat for grouse and other birds in the shrub step, yes we take it away with solar farms and the foot prints of wind mills. It scares me that people are so willing to toss out other energy with less impact on land, it is also funny. How do they get away with the environmental impact report for the job?
DeleteMR here's a few questions for you.. Exactly what is it about the windmills that you "enjoy"? Do you have an upper-limit tolerance on windmill construction? Is there a windmill density that you would consider "too much"? What is that limit? Who decides how much is too much? Why is one person's limit alright while another person's limit gets an uncaring "shrug"?
DeleteI'm curious, Cliff. What is the greatest temperature inversion you have observed, or know of? 20+ degrees sounds like a lot, but I wonder how far and in what conditions this phenomenon could go . . . I think there are some pretty enormous inversions around Fairbanks sometimes, for instance.
ReplyDeleteDavid: I don't know what Cliff will answer, but as I mentioned below, just a few days ago the 7 am temp in Glacier was 26.2 F the ski area a bit beyond here and a mere and 3000 ft above us (Heather Meadows' elevation is 4210') they were reporting a temp of 42 F (delta 15.8). I expect that's no record, but this persisted for days. Our yards were loaded with hard frost that didn't melt while it was warm above. Inversions fascinate me!
Delete@David I'm not sure about records, but I've seen multiple times in Alaska and a few valleys in Oregon/ID/MT etc reach 40-50F spreads.
ReplyDeleteIn Tacoma yesterday morning, frost on the grass, car icy, stayed cloudy for the most part, but dry. Woke up around 5:30 this morning to a heavy downpour, it's lightened up just a smidge but still steady rain at the moment at 7AM. Still black as night though.
ReplyDeleteNothing too unusual to see here... This is normal for this area during fall/winter.
With the Arctic Ocean becoming more ice free and then icing up later in the winter season causing less reflected sunlight, does this cause the cold Arctic high pressure to form later and thus delay the time when we an expect really cold weather here in Washington State. During the 1970s I worked on a farm near Othello in eastern Washington. Regularly we would get temperatures in the teens in November while harvesting the sugar beat crop. That early cold weather doesn't seem to happen as regularly any more.
ReplyDeleteI’ve been reading this blog for years and keep learning new things. I wish for a yin-yang balance of appreciation for how wind and solar can help us while also how clear it is that we cannot rely on them. I’m also thankful that the last election protected natural gas as a heating resource. Thank you, Cliff, for promoting science over Ideology.
ReplyDeleteAt 2:00PM KELN Ellensburg the temp is 33°F. 0 wind, and clouds at 1,000 feet {500 ft above me}. There is a slight freezing mist falling. Lovely afternoon. 😎
ReplyDeleteNWS thinks wind will arrive in 2 hours.
Really fascinating explanation, tutorial! There's just been a significant inversion that affected Mt Baker ski area. We were really cold in the valley, looking at temps in the 40's above. That's ending now; new snow is forecast at 3000 and above, with snow level varying like crazy thus next few days. The variability in this area skews statistics (like "average temps") wildly. Can't emphasize that enough ... how misleading some generalizations are when we have anomalies like inversions.
ReplyDeleteIf you had shown the next day for the BPA ver it would have shown 2100 mw of power generation.. The business case for wind has always included down time in their return on investment. Right now wind is considerably cheaper to install than hydro, nuclear, and is a little cheaper than nat gas but the levelized cost of power production gives the edge to wind with solar close behind. The same is true of solar. Note that most of the large solar plants in Eastern Washington are on higher ground that is less susceptable to fogs. Even the unusual fog situation this week did not effect the large stations in the goldendale area. And the picture from Mission Ridge shows badger mountain above it which is where PSE wants to build a large solar farm.
ReplyDeleteI belong to a shadowy underground group that supports a radical and borderline crazy, three-item agenda: balance, moderation, and flexibility. Join us--we are far more numerous than we might seem to be. ;-)
Delete