TT-SEA

ECMWF and EPS definitely still drier than normal. Lots of sunny days on the ECMWF.

Had to stop on way home from Bellevue. We were rushing because it's so nice out.

Costco Issaquah parking lot... no snow piles to report.

Rain both days next weekend. Previous runs were dry. I was only talking about next weekend.

12Z GFS is very wet next weekend down there. Totally different than previous runs.

Looks like an area that is supposed to burn naturally... and frequently.

No... but good question. My son does and he might go to Charleston for work. I am tagging along with my wife for a conference.

Live view this morning from a hotel in Bellevue... we had to use free points that were about to expire so did dinner and bowling night with the kids. Heading to Charleston in a few days so stayed very local this time. Unlike all you rich 1% people traveling all over the country on your own dime for a 4-minute eclipse... Charleston is an annual tag long business trip at no expense to us.

I do that all the time... just looking for strong signals either way. Take it as it comes Andrew. We are only here for a short while.

Pretty strong troughy signal on the 00Z EPS towards the end of the run.

00Z ECMWF looks much less troughy later in the run than it's 12Z run. Nice when things trend the good way. Monday is solidly cloudy and chilly... Tuesday ends up quite sunny but still chilly. Then looks like a pretty nice run of sunny, pleasant weather.

Interesting. Maybe colder nights out there? This was 4 days ago in North Bend. Quite a bit farther along now.

Global warming has stopped! Or maybe slowed down. Either way today was huge win.

A little warmer out here away from the water and protected from the north wind.

Landscape starting to take on the summer look. Just drove from North Bend to Bellevue and the trees are uniformly at about the same stage on that drive... about the same in NB as in Bellevue.

Recent years in arbitrary of course. 2015 and 2016 were crazy warm Nino springs. Since then there has not been much of trend at all.

I would not say Nina has been persistent since 2017. The Nina effect was in full gear in 2022 and 2023 and those Aprils did end up colder and much wetter than normal.

So focusing on just April... since 2017 Portland has averaged 3.26 inches of rain in April compared to the long term average of 2.53 inches. Significantly wetter than average. Also in Portland since 2017... April has averaged 52.8 degrees compared to normal of 52.8 degrees. Exactly normal overall in recent years. In addition... the last 2 years April was colder and much wetter than normal. I think its more of the usual irrational doom and gloom to say April is becoming more of a summer month in recent years. Its been normal in terms of temps and quite a bit wetter than normal in terms of precip. Those are just straight statistics. Not much room for debate there.

12Z EPS was actually sort of ridgy at day 10 and more so than its 00Z run... in contrast to the ECMWF that showed a trough moving through at that time. And it shows a really strong signal for drier than normal over the next 2 weeks.

Sounds like normal to me. I like the fact that it shows it being mostly sunny for most of the next 8 days (Monday being the exception).

Another interesting stat... for the 3 most recent years (2021, 2022, and 2023) Portland was slightly wetter than normal overall with 111.36 inches of rain in that period compared to normal of 110.70 inches. And PDX is running over 3 inches wetter than normal for 2024 so far. Makes a drier than normal April seem less like the end of the world.

So lets use Portland... April was wetter than normal in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, and 2023. And 2022 and 2023 were extremely wet with more than 200% of normal rainfall. A drier than normal April this year probably makes sense.

Meanwhile... down in CA where mid-April is usually the start of the reliably dry season people are wondering why its still winter. Reservoirs are full and its dumping rain... all despite global warming.

Seems like only one person here has not accepted that the climate is warming. Constantly expressing shock and awe over temperatures at an airport in Portland like every day is a brand new revelation that the climate is warming.

Good point... this April is definitely a little different than recent years which have often been wet.