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.
Rainfall will be modest from this system (see the totals through tomorrow morning). And much of that will be snow.
Thanks for the update. I wish the current administration was focused on Make American Weather Models Great Again!
ReplyDeleteFinally mass stirs the pot after the rest have been banging the lids all day bout the "storm"
ReplyDeleteJust read NOAA’s 8pm high wind warning update. They are going for gusts up to 60 mph still. With the event so close, what do you think about this warning (and model discrepancy?) I’m sure NOAA hypes events a little for the good of all but this is pretty wild.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this. I worked in the composing room of a Florida newspaper in the late 80s and early 90s and found the old adage of "If it bleeds, it leads" was far too true. I also found that in hurricane country, "If we can scare, they'll care" was equally true.
ReplyDeleteIn the internet age when anyone can create any content they want, I feel we even get more than I saw in my newspaper days.
I looked at the European model a couple hours ago and even for Seattle it didn't look nearly as bad as some TV and internet 'forecasts' were calling for.
"anyone can create any content they want"
DeleteEveryone loves Bill Gates for creating computers for every individual person on earth, but what that actually led to is a catastrophic mess.
Bill Gates certainly did not do what you’re claiming, unless this is some form of “alternative facts”. The computer era has also led to the most comfortable lifestyle humans (you and I included) have had so far. Not sure what point you’re getting at. Everything has positives and negatives.
DeleteReading comprehension? Well sure as long as we have "comfortable lifestyles" and have lots of money, that's the main thing.
DeleteWhat about the wind warning from nws? Asking for a friend in Bellingham
ReplyDeleteWe've only had one frost so far;.is it temperature gradients or pressure differences that cause wind storms...
ReplyDeleteTy for this. The weather grifters on X were getting seriously out of control lol. Even when some admitted that the Euro was objectively the best model with the best track record, even as an outlier, they still had to hype for clicks lol. So tiresome.
ReplyDeleteI hope it's much like you say as I'm planning on heading to Bainbridge Island for Christmas Eve with my sister and her husband, they have power outages more regularly than those of us in the big cities. We are planning on a one pot meal, just in case. I saw King 5 last evening on YT and even she was being cautious with the info as it was late afternoon.
ReplyDeleteI need to head to the store here shortly to one get vittles, maybe gas for the grill and if I see it, a canister of butane for my gas burner, not that I'm expecting lost power here at my house, but one never can tell.
I need gas for the vehicle as well so I have enough to drive up there and back. Heading up early for an early meal.
As we've seen already, weather here during the holidays can be quite interesting and/or dicey.
Thank you for adding some context about the variation. Can you recommend a source on a more in depth analysis for someone with an Atmo 101-103 background and some familiarity with Navier-Stokes aerodynamic modeling?
ReplyDeleteThank you sir! I always look forward to your posts—they are super informative and helpful. Merry Christmas!
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting this. Earlier this morning the default weather app on my phone had a HIGH WIND WARNING. As of a few moments ago, it's now a Wind Advisory. I completely agree with making the American weather modeling great again.
ReplyDeleteI agree with that sentiment as well. American weather modeling should be at least as good as European weather modeling, if not better.
Delete"amateur weather enthusiast sites" made me laugh out loud. Always appreciate the insight and the thought that goes into this. I rave about this blog to friends and family. Such a treasure.
ReplyDeleteHere in Portland, prediction has been messy. The euro model has shown the low off the coast in OR/CA border to move inland and W-E, while every other model seemed to bring the low S-N up past Astoria. Euro seems to do really well on larger scale events. NAM was screaming the whole time. I wonder how much vertical mixing came into play here. Strong inversion at PDX up to 850 mb.
ReplyDeleteThe Willamette Valley winds and the Columbia Gorge winds were supposed to duke it out, but the Valley Winds seemed a little more Jake Paul.
At our place on S whidbey We had no power from Tuesday at Midnight til Friday last at noon. Hence we are going to, perhaps, over prepare.
ReplyDeleteWhidbey really got hammered by last week's windstorm. Judging from PSE's outage map, it seemed as though the entire island, minus a few spots in and north of Oak Harbor, were without power during the height of the outages. It must be of particular relief to you and your fellow islanders that today's windstorm did not materalize.
DeleteThank you for blogging about this. Your weather updates are always appreciated, especially when holidays and uncertain forecasts collide as they've done here. Happy Holidays!
ReplyDeleteIs it fair to call this a classic busted forecast?
ReplyDeletePSE outage map 179 customers effected regionwide as of 1630 24 December 2025.
Outside, it is calm and clear. Was Breezy earlier. Had a 2 hour freak outage here locally. Snag fell over in a sub breeze. Before the time of the advisory.
Not complaining at all. Also....understanding that no one wanted to stake their rep on this little fart of low. If it blew up and did damage, no one wants to say they didn't warn anyone.
The uncertainty surrounding this windstorm was conveyed fairly well by some sources, including, shockingly, The Seattle Times. It doesn't feel like a true forecast bust in the way that the October 2016 storm that was predicted to rival the infamous Columbus Day windstorm of 1962 but didn't.
DeleteThank you Cliff for always giving it to us straight. I rely on this blog for most storms and you nailed this one (per usual). King5 and Komo both kept the high wind hype rolling as long as possible which is scary…who is our trusted weather source?!
ReplyDeleteLook at the bright side; PSE was ready for a large scale event and for those folks who DID have outages, it appears they got them fixed fast. I dont recall seeing on PSEs outage map having crews in site noted for almost all the outages at once!
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas and a Happy New year!