The Windstorm That Never Came: A Failure of Communication

Last week, there were strident warnings of a strong windstorm from the National Weather Service, which were amplified by conventional and social media.      

The storm never happened.  

Instead, we had a short period of winds gusting to 30 mph or so, producing little damage and few power outages.  I received dozens of emails about the errant forecast.  Folks were not happy.

As I will describe below, the problem was not the technology of weather prediction, but the poor communication of forecasts and their uncertainty.  

The Problematic Prediction

Last Tuesday, the National Weather Service put out a high wind warning for the western Washington lowlands for Wednesday (see below).

According to the official definition, a High Wind Warning means that dangerous winds (sustained 40+ mph or gusts 58+ mph) are imminent or occurring, requiring action.

A warning should only be provided when a forecaster is absolutely sure that the threat will occur.   This was NOT the case for this event.  Not even close.   I describe why below.

This problematic warming was then amplified by the traditional media and further hyped by social media "influencers" and local weather enthusiasts, few of whom have degrees in meteorology.  A sampling below:

The day before, I tried to deflate the hype in my blog since it was clear the forecast was excessive and wrong.

Below are the maximum winds observed last Wednesday.  Most locations had gusts of only about 30 mph.  A few in their 30s.  Only near the water were higher gusts noted (46 mph near the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and 59 mph on southwestern Whidbey Island).

This time of the year, after the leaves are down and following earlier wind events, there are very few problems with gusts under 30 mph.  Very minor problems for 30-40 mph.   Only when winds gust to above 50 mph do series power outages become apparent.  

No wonder this "event" was a big disappointment for those looking for intense weather.

Are you ready for some inner baseball of the weather forecasting business and to view some state-of-the-science tools?

On Tuesday, of the major international weather prediction centers, only the American was producing a strong, very small-scale low-pressure center moving up the Northwest coast.  

To illustrate, here are the 36h forecasts for sea level pressure and surface winds for the American GFS model and the European Center (ECMWF) model, both valid at 4 PM Wednesday.  The GFS had an intense mini-low, and the ECMWP had a weak inland low.

I was immediately suspicious of the GFS storm.  First, the GFS is far less skillful than the European model.  And I have learned from experience that such small features are often bogus or poorly predicted. 

But there were more reasons to be worried.  The National Weather Service runs ensembles of many forecasts, each a little different, to get a handle on the uncertainties of the forecast.   The NWS ensemble forecasts made Tuesday morning for Wednesday were ALL OVER THE PLACE, indicating great uncertainty.  

Earlier on Tuesday, the NWS forecast seemed to recognize this uncertainty in a graphic they produced (see below).  Very nice.

But later that day, they literally threw caution to the wind and put out the high wind warning:

Next, let me show you a graphic from the  Seattle Windwatch site, which my group provides to the city.  

This graphic presents the maximum gusts predicted over Seattle by the NWS and several modeling systems for the forecast cycle starting at 4 PM on Tuesday.

The observed winds are shown in black (with a high of around 35 mph).  The shading shows the range of forecasts by the US model (GFS). 

The NWS forecast wind (yellow color) was at the extreme top of the ensembles, showing they were gambling on a low-probability solution.  The UKMET forecast (light red) and Canadian model forecast (dark red), both consistently more accurate than the American model, were almost perfect.

So we had a situation in which the NWS forecasters did not properly consider uncertainty, nor did they recognize that historically better forecasting systems had a very different (and more benign) forecast.

The conventional media, like the Seattle Times (see below), went with the poor NWS forecast, and the weather amateur YouTube channels, Facebook, and X outlets exaggerated the event even more.

Let me be honest, perhaps too honest.  A major problem is the deterioration in the forecasts of the National Weather Service. 

Their global model, which drives almost their entire forecast system, is inferior to the best (e.g., the European Center).   This event is a good illustration of that.

Many of the local forecasters in the Seattle NWS office are relatively new to the region and lack experience with the local meteorology and model performance.   They also depend too heavily on the NWS models and don't use ensembles sufficiently.  And this is not the only local forecast failure...the December ice storm a few years ago is another one--and there are several more.

A real warning sign is that objective verification of forecast quality has consistently shown that Seattle NWS forecasts  (NWS Digital Forecasts) are inferior to totally objective forecasts, such as those from the Weather Channel (see below).  

The National Weather Service needs serious reform and reorganization.  The American people deserve state-of-the-science weather prediction.  They are not getting it now, and last week was a good example of the persistent failure mode.

North Puget Sound Lowland Snow from the Other Type of Convergence Zone

 The first significant lowland snow over western Washington occurred last night, ranging from a trace to about an inch.

How it happened is quite interesting....let me explain. 

The snow started falling late yesterday evening and was associated with a narrow convergence band that was evident in the weather radar (see below).  The band stretched northwest to southeast and started near Sequim.

The band brought heavy precipitation in places and extended into the Cascades.

Why Sequim?  The driest location in western Washington!

As we will see, this precipitation band was associated with a convergence zone, in which low-level air streams came together, forcing upward motion and precipitation.

But it was different from the "classic" Puget Sound convergence zone we often talk about.

The figure below shows a schematic of the typical Puget Sound convergence zone. Northwesterly winds from off the Pacific are forced around the Olympics and then converge over Puget Sound, producing upward motion, clouds, and precipitation.   

Most of the time, this is the convergence zone we are talking about.

But there is another way to get low-level convergence over the western interior:   air moving southward down the Strait of Georgia can converge with air moving eastward in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, producing a band of clouds and precipitation.

Something like this occurred last night.  A strong, sharp upper trough moved through, causing the northerly winds in the Strait of Georgia to be particularly strong.   That air converged with air moving eastward down the Strait to create a low-level convergence zone that stretched from Sequim to north Everett.

Want the proof?  Here are the winds late last evening.  You can see the two air streams coming together.

The high-resolution UW WRF model predicted this situation (see the model forecast winds for yesterday evening below).  Shading is wind speed (in knots), and wind vectors are plotted.

You can see the converging airflows.

 

The precipitation band was narrow and well defined, as shown by the 24-h precipitation totals (below), with some locations in Snohomish County receiving over an inch of liquid precipitation.

The heaviest precipitation was associated with light snow (see totals below).

Why such modest snow?  

Because temperatures were very marginal (too warm) for snow.  Only in places with a lot of precipitation (and thus a lot of cooling from melting and evaporation) could the snow level be driven down to the surface.  Initially, precipitation fell as rain and then gradually evolved into snow and snow pellets.

Drought Deception

Northwest drought is being exaggerated by a group including publicly funded agencies, the media, local government, and climate activists.   

At its essence, it is ideological, anti-science, political, and self-serving.

This blog will go into the problem in greater depth than my analysis of last week.

The center of what might be called the Drought Exaggeration Industry is the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which is associated with the United States Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  

The most viewed product of this National Drought Center is the Drought Monitor graphic, the national view of which is shown below.

To see how nonsensical and anti-science this effort is, consider the latest drought map for Washington State (released yesterday, and shown below).    

Most of Washington State is "abnormally dry" or in drought, with severe or extreme drought over the eastern slopes of the Cascades and the far portion of the state (see below).  

As shown below, this is total nonsense and inconsistent with hard data.  

Precipitation has been above normal, soils are moist, rivers are above normal levels, reservoirs are above normal, and snowpack is in decent shape.

But this wacky website does not end there.  It claims that 2.4 million Washington residents are in drought:

It states that 1,778,920 King County residents, many of whom are dealing with flooded roads, failing levees, and sodden fields, are affected by drought.

But the national drought meisters don't stop there!   They inform us that in KING COUNTY, 3266 cattle and 755 sheep are in drought.   And that thousands of acres of King County hay are in drought.

Perhaps the national drought folks should speak to one of our local cows, many of which have been moved to escape flooding (see below)

It is easy to prove that the drought claims for Washington State are entirely baseless.

For the past 90 days, precipitation over Washington has been near normal (light green or yellow) or above normal (blue and purple).

Soil moisture is above normal over much of the state and MUCH above normal over the eastern Cascades slopes, where the drought monitor graphic has moderate to severe drought.  Go figure.

Our rivers are mostly running above normal levels, some at near record levels (black dots, particularly east of the Cascades):

Reservoirs are way above normal.   The critical Yakima storage system....the fixation of the drought folks for a long time.... is not only above normal, but at levels commonly found at the end of winter.

Seattle's reservoirs are way above normal (see below) as are most of the others in the region.

What about snowpack, another fixation of the drought folks?   Good news, there has been lots of recent snow in the mountains, and most ski areas are open for Christmas. 

 Below are the latest numbers, which show a stunning recovery from a few weeks ago.  The snowpack feeding the Columbia River is now ABOVE NORMAL, and the snowpack for most of the western Cascades is 75% of normal.  More snow is expected during the next few days.

By any rational analysis, there is no drought going on.  

There will be plenty of water for all uses.  Furthermore, this is a La Niña year, which is usually good for water resources.

The unsupportable and unscientific drought talk is very destructive and counterproductive.   

It induces fear and worry in the population, particularly the most psychologically vulnerable.  It results in poor decision-making.    

Who are some folks doing this?   

Some are doing it to promote their politics and ideology.  Others to push a climate change agenda, which they either believe in or profit from.  Media, such as the Seattle Times Climate Lab, do so for clicks and financial support from activist groups.  YouTube and social media channels do it for clicks and advertising revenue.

But whatever their reasons, I hope that the current administration takes a deep look at this drought-pushing enterprise and reforms the government-supported side of the advocacy campaign.  

Wishing all of you a good holiday.

Crying wolf is a bad idea

A Christmas Eve Windstorm?

Some of the media are talking about a big wind event tomorrow over western Washington, and some of the amateur weather enthusiast sites have been going a bit over the top.

The truth is a bit less exciting:  the winds will get gusty tomorrow afternoon, and some people may lose power, but this is not going to be a major windstorm.  Gusts to 30-45 mph.

This was a difficult event to forecast earlier, with a great deal of uncertainty until today.  

Why?  Because we had a very small system moving directly up the coast, far harder to predict than a large cyclone moving off the Pacific.   I have seen this situation many times and have learned to be careful.

The modeling systems predicted the uncertainty, something expressed by very different forecasts of the members of our ensemble forecast systems, in which we run the models many times with small differences in their initial state or model physics.

Want some inner weather "baseball"?   

Yesterday, the highly skillful European Center and UKMET office models were going for much weaker winds.

The American GFS and NAM models were doing for a crazy strong event.  But these are generally far less skillful for systems over the eastern Pacific.  Pretty embarrassing that the U.S. models are generally inferior.  Make American Weather Models Great Again!

The latest UW forecast takes a modest low-pressure system to Vancouver Island tomorrow at 4 PM (see below).   

This graphic shows the sea level pressure analysis and there are a lot of pressure changes to the south of the low.  That means strong winds.

How strong?  Below is the forecast of maximum gusts at 4 PM tomorrow.  Up to around 35 knots over northern Puget Sound, with higher gusts in Northwest Washington.

Rainfall will be modest from this system (see the totals through tomorrow morning).  And much of that will be snow.  

How Unusual Were the Recent Floods? Did Global Warming Play a Significant Role?

There is a lot of incorrect information and false claims regarding the recent heavy rain and flooding in the Pacific Northwest.

Claims that the recent heavy rain events were unprecedented or that global warming (climate change from human emissions of greenhouse gases) was a major contributor.

The truth is that there is a long history of similar and larger events.

The truth, supported by extensive evidence,  is that global warming played a very minor role, if any.

False

False

Major Flooding Events Often Occur in the Northwest

Heavy rain and massive flooding are frequent visitors to our region, and THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT MAJOR EVENTS ARE INCREASING in intensity or frequency.

For example, in February 1996, major flooding in Oregon and Washington resulted in over a billion dollars of loss.

The Willamette Valley flooded in 1996

The 2006 flood event destroyed many roads and bridges in Mount Rainier Park, with massive damage along the Skagit and Cowletz rivers. 

Mt. Rainier Park, 2006

If global warming were a significant contributor to Northwest flooding, then flooding events would become more frequent or intense.

This is not happening.

Precipitation is not increasing

Most of the arguments for a global warming origin of heavy rain depend on arguments about the atmosphere "holding" more water as temperatures increase.

The problem with this claim is that many other factors modulate the location, intensity, and longevity of atmospheric rivers and their ability to produce heavy precipitation.

Let's evaluate these claims by looking at the ACTUAL changes in precipitation over our region.

Below is the wet season (November through February) annual precipitation over Washington State for 1895-2024 (below).

There is NO UPWARD trend, even as the planet warms.

Is the number of days with heavy rain increasing in our region?  

The data says no.   

To illustrate, this figure shows the number of days with heavy (2 inches or more) precipitation at Stampede Pass in the central WA Cascades.    NO UPWARD trend in apparent.  If anything, it is going down.

I have looked at many other stations...same story...no increase.

Not convinced yet?    

Let me show you something only my research group has at this time: high-resolution regional climate simulations in which greenhouse gases are increasing substantially (the RCP4.5 scenario).

This figure shows the change in the annual highest 5 days of precipitation between 2070-2100 and 1970-2000.

Very little change over WA State, but drier in CA.

The bottom line of all this is that both historical data and state-of-science climate simulations do NOT suggest an uptick in heavy precipitation from global warming forced by mankind.

Finally, there is ANOTHER major error regarding global warming and flooding in the claims noted above....in this case, dealing with snow.

Their argument is that warming causes less snow, and snow "soaks up" the precipitation, thus lessening flooding.

Wrong.    As noted by distinguished regional hydrometeorological expert Professor Dennis Lettenmaier, less snow meant LESS SNOWMELT, which REDUCES the amount of water for flooding.

In short, there are a lot of false claims about the relationship between global warming and local flooding.

The truth:

Northwest flooding is not increasing in frequency.

Northwest flooding is not getting worse.

There is little change in precipitation amounts or intensity during the past decades over the region as the Earth has slowly warmed.

Truth does matter.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Must be Saved

Foolish and counterproductive are two words that come to mind regarding the Administration's plan to break up the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado.

NCAR is the crown jewel of atmospheric research in the nation, with an unparalleled global reputation.  

Its research covers an immense scientific range, including the development of new weather and climate models, essential research into atmospheric processes, technological innovations to deal with weather threats (such as aircraft turbulence and severe weather), and the use of supercomputers for environmental research and prediction, to name only a few.

NCAR is a primary site for disciplinary meetings and has played an important role in training generation after generation of future atmospheric students.  

My career began at NCAR.

Thus, it is more than disturbing when the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russel Vought, put out a message stating the NCAR would be broken up due to its "climate alarmism".

Breaking up NCAR would dramatically hurt U.S. science capability and profoundly undermine the ability of the U.S. to predict both weather and climate.

This in turn would put Americans at increased risk of severe weather, costing both lives and property.   

Yes, there are a few NCAR scientists who have been vocal regarding climate change, but that is certainly their right as American citizens. Their statements do not represent the organization, which is based on scientific excellence.

I hope that this counterproductive and profoundly damaging plan is shelved. 

U.S. weather prediction capabilities do need to be greatly improved.  

Doing so requires a strengthening of NCAR and building a joint effort with NOAA that would create the best weather simulation and forecasting capabilities in the world.

The American Meteorological Society (of which I am a Councilor), just put out a statement on the situation.

A Guaranteed White Christmas (In the Mountains)

For lovers of Northwest snow, I have good news.  

Bountiful mountain snow is GUARANTEED before Christmas.

Yes, this means you will be able to hit the slopes on some of the higher elevation regional ski areas.

Consider the latest 120h forecast for accumulated snowfall from the UW weather prediction system (below).

A big snow dump in the mountains, with over 3 feet of snow at some locations.  

What about the highly skillful European Center model snow forecast for the same period? (see below)

Same story!  Lots of mountain snow.

I know what you are thinking.  

Can we trust these snowy predictions?

Good question.  To evaluate their reliability, let's look at the NOAA ensemble of many forecasts for snow at Stampede Pass in the central WA Cascades (at about 4000 ft).

The individual forecasts are shown by the gray lines and their mean by the black line (below).

All the forecasts have lots of snow, with a mean of about 40 inches by Christmas.

You can see why I offer a guarantee.   Lots of snow is a sure thing.

So get your skis and snowshoes out.  There will be plenty of snow at the high-elevation ski areas.

Guaranteed.