Pacific Windstorm Will Hit The Pacific Northwest Late Thursday and Friday

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.  

I could comment on issues with National Weather Service forecasts, but I will leave that to another time.

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Finally, someone emailed me about a good book on Northwest Weather.  Well, I do know one 😉

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