Autumn began yesterday at 5 PM and the atmosphere has taken notice.
A significant midlatitude cyclone will cross the northern Oregon coast late Thursday and Friday morning, bringing strong winds and localized power outages.
Consider the UW WRF model forecast for Friday morning at 5 AM (sea level pressure and maximum wind gusts are shown below).
Wow. A very intense, but small, low-pressure center will make landfall on the northern Oregon Coast, with gusts up to 70 knots.
Plotting the maximum wind gusts over time for this event (below) indicates the northern Oregon Coast will get a direct hit with winds reaching 50 knots.
This early in the season, this means power outages.
Other weather prediction systems are doing the same thing. The excellent European Center model has a similar maximum wind swath. (The graphic below is in mph). Seattle only gets some modest gusts.
The simulated satellite imagery for Thursday evening indicates an impressive system (the arrow points to the low center). Looks like midwinter!
Precipitation totals from this system will be substantial, with the mountains and the coast getting several inches (see below). Even eastern Washington gets substantial rain.
All good for terminating the wildfire season and providing agriculture with a nice wetting rain. Reservoirs will gain valuable water.
I am concerned about the lack of coastal wind warnings by the National Weather Service offices in Seattle and Portland (see their latest forecast graphics below).
They really need to have some kind of warning out for the northern Oregon coast.
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Finally, someone emailed me about a good book on Northwest Weather. Well, I do know one 😉
Thanks for the heads up!
ReplyDeleteI've lived on southern Vancouver Island since 1970 and many's the time an "equinoctial storm" delivered more wind than was expected.
ReplyDeleteNWS not unlike the Seattle Times Climate Lab is more interested in promulgating NOAA's climate change mandate than actionable weather forecasts. Folks need a heads up to take the winds out of their big firs and cedars by thinning the branches to let the air out of the sails..
ReplyDeleteOn reduction of windsail, do include our native Black cottonwoods that cause much injury and mayhem. The tree fall in Roy last Oct that killed one person and injured many as one example. Another example is the woman nearly killed on I-5 southbound a few years ago just north of the Fife curve. Both cottonwoods were fully leafed at the time they fell. https://komonews.com/news/local/woman-nearly-killed-by-tree-on-i-5-god-was-with-me-for-sure
Delete"Windsailing" is far from a proven practice to reduce tree failures. In fact, it can stress trees by removing substantial food production (leaves) leaving them susceptible to various other pathogens or insects.
Deletehttps://dnrtreelink.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/windsail-reduction-a-northwest-controversy/
any bets on "drought.gov" 1 week from now? Today they claim 94% of state is dry or in drought; I'm betting even King county will be in drought next week, despite the obvious soil moisture, precip, rivers, etc being back to normal. We need a parallel agency called swamp.gov or something!
ReplyDeleteBought that book. Read it. Passed it to a friend. :)
ReplyDeleteHere in the north Sound, once again I'm disappointed. The much-celebrated convergence zone fell down on the job again! I got only about a tenth on an inch of rain overnight (some models predicted close to an inch) and not much wind. Comments?
ReplyDeleteCliff: How are the wind fields around low centers (strength and extent) on these and other graphics calculated? I assume that buoys deployed in the Pacific are too sparse for accurate and granular measurements? And satellites can only tell you so much.
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