Drone Weather Cams: The New Frontier

Weather cams are extraordinarily useful tools for monitoring the changing skies, and I have shown their images and video many times on this blog.

But nearly all of them are earthbound and fixed, showing one section of the sky.  They also have blockage problems from houses, trees, and other objects.

We need a weather cam that avoids all these problems.    The closest thing we have right now is the SpaceNeedle  pano cam, which is wonderful (see below).  But what about other locations?

Well, the weather cam master of the Northwest, Greg Johnson of Skunk Bay Weather, has come up with a solution:  a weather cam drone.  And he has put this cutting edge tool to the test with spectacular results...let me show you.

Here is the video from a flight this morning (Tuesday).  Just glorious, with fog over the Hood Canal pushing over the northern Kitsap Peninsula.  Snow-covered Olympics, Mt. Rainier, Puget Sound...it is all there.   Like a high definition version?  Check this out.



How about a close up of cold, dense foggy air running down a coastal slope and heading out over the Sound?



Want more?  I don't blame you.  Here is one on a cloudy day with showers.



Or how about a day with low-level snow?


This is cutting edge stuff.... I suggested to Greg that he run a thin power cord up to the drone and see how long it can stay aloft.  Or add some weather sensors, to get a vertical temperature/humidity sounding.  Drones clearly have value for meteorologists--perhaps we can convince Amazon to include weather sensors and cams on their delivery drones.  But until that time Greg Johnson is giving us a fascinating view from northern Kitsap.
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Announcement

The Northwest Weather Workshop, the largest gathering of the NW Weather Community, will take place on April 27-28th at the NOAA facility in Seattle.   This year the theme of the Friday session will be on Northwest wildfires, but sessions will include all aspects of NW meteorology.  More information, including registration sign-up, is found at the website noted below. If you would like to give a presentation, please supply an abstract and title to me by March 25th.  The gathering is open to anyone interested in the weather of the region..

https://atmos.washington.edu/pnww/index2016.php?page=main

Substantial Improvements in Western U.S. Snowpack and Water Resources

Some folks call it a March miracle...while others call it a La Nina winter....but in any case there has been large amount of new snow in the mountains from California's Sierra Nevada to the Oregon Cascades, which has greatly improved the snowpack situation.

First, compare the snowpack of March 4th against January 6th.   Washington is all green (near normal, 90-109%) or better, Oregon has gone from red (<50%) to orange (50-79%), as has much of northern California (click to enlarge). Northeast Washington, northern Idaho, and much of Montana are well above normal. 

Substantial parts of the Sierra Nevada have gotten 6-8 feet of new snow this week.

Reservoirs are in good shape.   Here is Washington, the Yakima River Reservoir system is hugely above normal (see plot), in fact, as full as would be normal on May 1. 

In California, the reservoirs are all at or above normal, except for the damaged Oroville reservoir that is being kept partially filled.

West Coast precipitation is not finished with us, and the next week or so should bring plenty more.  The total precipitation forecast for the next 11 days (shown below) from the NOAA/NWS GFS model indicates plenty of precipitation ahead, with 5-10 inches of liquid water in terrain from the Sierra Nevada to SE British Columbia. 

The pattern that has kept us wet has been persistent troughing over the West Coast, with high-pressure offshore. Here is an map showing the differences of 500 hPa (around 18,000 ft) heights from normal for the last week. Purple and blue over the west coast (a trough or low pressure), but red/orange (high pressure) offshore.

The trough should move westward, resulting in moist, southwesterly from CA to BC ) see forecast map for Monday, March 13 at 5 PM below).  That is why the northern half of the West Coast will be wet.

 The bottom line of all this is that water supplies from central CA to southern BC look good, and we should be in good shape for the upcoming summer.