Northwest Snow Gods Are Kind and Cruel

Reputed to live high in the Olympic Mountains, our regional snow gods are playing games with us.

After a winter with marginal snow, the gods unleashed 1-2 feet above 4,000 feet in our mountains, as illustrated by the snow accumulations at Stevens Pass and Mt.Baker (see below)

With this additional snow, Stevens and Mt. Baker reopened for a few days.  You really have to respect the unflagging determination of the folks that operate the Mt. Baker and Stevens ski areas....they have been relentless in trying to give local skiers a chance on the slopes.

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 Today, the NW Avalanche Center produced the latest summary of the current state of the snowpack at local ski areas (see below).  The situation is a bit better than a month ago, with Hurricane Ridge at 14% of normal and Stevens at 33%.    The higher Paradise and Timberline sites are around 50% of normal.  Not great, but at least there is something up there again.

Why did we get some snow?   Because for practically the first time in the winter we have had some colder than normal air over us, associated with westerly winds pushing off of the Pacific (see upper level map for last Saturday when a lot of the snow fell).. But that is about to change as we switch to a

much warmer pattern, as a high-amplitude ridge builds up this weekend (see below).  Yes, the persistent West Coast ridge is back...and it should be around for a while.

The National Weather Service and Weather Channel forecasts for Seattle  (see below) shows temperatures rising into the 70s on Sunday through Tuesday.  Great for outdoor activities, but bad for snow...I suspect that will close out the ski season this winter.

With a persistent ridge in the West and trough in the east, the NOAA Climate Prediction Center is going for a familiar 6-10 day temperature forecast, with warm air in the west and colder temperatures in the east.  So if you want to go skiing here in the Northwest...better get up there tomorrow.

Media Miscommunication about the Blob

One of the most depressing things for scientists is to see the media misinform the public about an important issue.

During the past few days, an unfortunate example occurred regarding the warm water pool that formed over a year ago in the middle of the north Pacific, a.k.a., the blob.  Let me show how this communication failure occurred, with various media outlets messed things up in various ways.

The stimulant for the nationwide coverage of the Blob was a very nice paper published by Nick Bond (UW scientist and State Climatologist), Meghan Cronin, Howard Freeland, and Nathan Mantua in Geophysical Research Letters.

This publication described the origin of the Blob, showing that it was the result of persistent ridging (high pressure) over the Pacific.  The high pressure, and associated light winds, resulted in less vertical mixing of the upper layer of the ocean; with less mixing  of subsurface cold water to the surface.  Furthermore, the high pressure reduced horizontal movement of colder water from the north. Straightforward and convincing work.

The UW News and Information Office decided to spotlight this work in a press release, one that also
talked about a paper by Professor Dennis Hartmann: Pacific sea surface temperature and the 
winter of 2014.   This is another excellent paper and makes a convincing case that anomalous high 
pressure in the eastern Pacific and low pressure (troughing) in the eastern U.S. (which brought cold air to the eastern U.S.) was the result of warm, water in the subtropics (NOT THE BLOB).

Unfortunately, the UW press release misrepresented the facts. Clearly, the writer did not appreciate that the two papers were discussing two different areas of warm water (the blob in the midlatitudes and a second pool of high surface temperatures in the subtropics).    The title of the release was unclear (did linked  indicated a cause or just a correlation?)  and the first few paragraphs were explicitly wrong, suggesting that the "warm blob" was causing "weird" weather across the U.S.  

Let me be explicit what these papers DID say.  Dennis Hartmann's paper uses models to indicate that persistent warm water in the subtropics caused an anomalous "wave train" that altered the circulation over the eastern Pacific and North America, with high pressure over the eastern Pacific and troughing over the eastern U.S.   The Bond et al. paper showed how the anomalous high pressure produced the midlatitude warm water blob. 

The inaccurate press release then led to a media frenzy, with the story going viral.  And unfortunately, many of the media got it wrong.   

There were two failure modes.  In one, the headline was wrong, but the internal story was correct. Such a failure was found in the Seattle Times article (see below).    The text was written by Sandi Doughton, an excellent and careful science writer, while the headline was written by Seattle Times editorial staff.   Inaccurate, hyped headlines are common in the Seattle Times.  I can't tell you how many times exasperated reporters have complained to me about it.

In the second failure mode, the story itself was essentially flawed, with most claiming that the Blob off of western North America was the cause of the anomalous circulation (big ridge over West Coast, trough over the eastern U.S.).   (The truth:  the Blob was the RESULT of the anomalous circulations.)   That the Blob CAUSED the California drought or the cold wave in the eastern U.S. These deceptive stories were found in major outlets around the country, including the Washington Post, NBC News, and others.

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Take a look at a Weather Channel "science" page found here  Its lead sentence say is all wrong:

Scientists say a mass of warm water off the U.S. West Coast is to blame for the bizarre weather affecting the country. 

I could give you two dozen examples of essentially wrong stories about the Blob in major American news outlets during the past few days.  And this is only one story...many other stories are similarly confused or hyped.


What can scientists do to get the straight story to the public?   One approach is to go direct though blogs, web pages, or direct interviews.   Another is to insist that they get to review all press releases from their organizations.  You can surely think of others.  But the problem is a serious one, with the public being given, and often believing, inaccurate information.