All Activity

Beautiful day up here in Bellingham, it did cloud up at one point and rain a little, but not even enough to get the pavement went. Started the yard project, hopefully I can get it done before the rains hit Friday afternoon.

My wife used to be a coordinator for an educational services company that would provide seminars for middle school aged kids. They targeted at risk kids, and the Navajo tribe was a big customer. The craziest though was the annual trip to a Native Amiercan school in the base of the Grand Canyon. Travel involved flying to a nearby airport, driving the the Grand Canyon, catching a helicopter down the the base of the canyon, then a donkey ride from the helipad to the school. She said that was always a fun one to set up.

Going to Shoshone geyser basin is one of the things on my Yellowstone bucket list. Last time I was there (2016) was October, and it was still surprisingly busy for so late in the season. I do not think I would want to go there in the height of summer.

Coolish first day of May with partly to mostly cloudy skies. 58/42 spread here. There were some neat looking clouds around this evening as the next system began to move in.

"Israel War Room" Random swastika drawn by anyone. Checks out! /s

Yellowstone was an absolute sh1tshow from the 60s to the late 80s, the park tried to crack down on the bear feeding in the early 80s but it continued for another decade, because the bears were already used to begging for food and the tourists kept feeding them, so there was no reason for them to stop. I worked and lived in Yellowstone in 3 different summers back when I was a young lad, got to witness dumb tourists in all of their glory. But once you get a mile away from the road, 100% of the idiots and 99+% of the crowds vanish, and you get to see the most beautiful parts of the park, the incredible mountains, lakes, canyons, waterfalls, valleys, and forests. Unfortunately, almost all of the Geyser basins are easily accessible so there's really no way to avoid the crowds to see those, there is only 1 geyser basin (Shoshone lake geyser basin), and 1 geyser (lone star geyser) that is not easily accessible. A good way to see the easily accessible geyser basins without any crowds is going to them in the middle of the night under a full moon, plenty of lighting but rarely will you see another person.

We have had 59 days 90+F that had a low below freezing since we moved here in 2016. Most impressive days we've had is a 94/25 day and a 101/31 day. Keep in mind my property has a lack of trees compared to most of the neighborhood (although we still have plenty), which makes our highs a warm outlier and lows a cold outlier.

38.5/59.7˚F for the day. Balance of the morels I found Monday has been dried for long-term storage.

If you want a spectacular drive in Navajo country, try Utah Route 261 between Monument Valley and Natural Bridges.

I’m older than most here and my first visit to Yellowstone was in the late 1960’s. There were plenty of idiots trying to hand-feed the bears. Got to see more than a few. (There were enough idiots hand-feeding bears out of their car windows that the bears learned to associate roads with food, and would hang out along them awaiting handouts. The practice only stopped when the Park Service killed all the habituated bears and cracked down hard on visitors feeding bears. I think this happened circa 1980. Here’s one photo I trolled up from a quick web search. Looks very familiar. And it is easy to find hundreds of such photos.

Currently 54F and sunny with a comfortable breeze.

Here we go again.

Next week could be another big event. Looking at the ensembles and other signals looks like May is going to be very active

Crazy how you can keep racking in the teens in May. All you need is a clear sky and an airmass that isn't completely torching. Have you ever had a day that reached 90F after bottoming out below freezing?

I'm expecting 1-4" of snow tonight and tommorow morning, I'm on the southern edge of the precip so this will be borderline, but cold air will not be an issue. Also expecting another couple inches of snow this weekend. 45 currently, 52/19 day.

Beautiful day today, great backcountry skiing! Didn't snap any of my own pics, so here's the Mt bachelor webcam this morning vs now. Looks a little less snowy now but still great.

Absolutely beautiful in the Tri Cities. Best time of year to be here. Was pretty hungry as i walked by these goslings, and was tempted after i saw that woodland park bear snacking on some ducklings…but i let them be. IMG_7362.mov

Took a long time to get rid of the garbage today, but now it's mostly sunny. With a weak inversion it wasn't particularly gloomy at any time.

Low was 44F this morning with patchy dense fog. Less windy today and warmer

You have the time to type a widely debunked conspiracy theory but no time to back it up with evidence. How fitting. Since you love giving my posts "weenies" with nothing resembling a substantive rebuttal, I think I will return the favor. Enjoy your hard earned "weenie". Don't waste your time typing nonsense.

Only partial clearing

With the MJO transiting the W-Hem (and a *very* modest niño-lean still remaining in the system state), I’m optimistic we could pull off a couple weeks of western ridge/eastern trough (+TNH and/or +PNA) centered in the middle of the month. Though previous attempts at this have always wound up being cut short in some way or another, so my expectations are low. Still, it’s the same reason I was optimistic about a cooler/wetter pattern a few weeks ago, which did come to fruition. The intraseasonal (MJO/CCKW) component of tropical forcing is operating cleanly and dominant over the (now collapsing) background state. I don’t think there will be any niño elements remaining during the next MJO transit in June, though. Impressive to see it maintained so well on the EPS weeklies over a month out, regardless.

We had a nice little thunderstorm last night too. Nothing violent but some decent lightning strikes and cracking thunder. Not nearly enough rain, though.

And there it is!