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I don't forsee this being a "build gently into winter" type year. I think its going to be a crash and blitz to the end. That's my opinion. I think we should enjoy the peace of September so far. I think this one will put the "fall" back in Autumn.

The weather is too pretty today. Lol. I've missed you all. Happy fall!

Caldor Fire(South of Lake Tahoe) is now 48% contained.

I'm back, ladies and gentlemen. The tired leaves slowly falling off the trees that were burned off in April. What a summer. I'm really sad it's over for personal reasons, but I never love the season. Lol. I hope all are well. I needed a break from some stuff anyway.

Tuesday night low temps forecasted to drop to 50 degrees. Whoa.

I’m seeing Texas temps begin to vary and roller coaster between 93 and 98 week to week in Sept. This is typical Texas seasonal change in September and very encouraging that we’ll have a more normal Fall. I still expect a polar vortex dive in late January or February like last year. I’m preparing for it now. We don’t trust Texas power grid yet. the article I posted in Climate recently may explain it better. https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/national-international/changing-climate/study-warmer-arctic-led-to-killer-cold-in-texas-much-of-us/2733607/

Looks like a dry week around here. Just what farmers need to get the drying process going for corn and soybeans. Also, I’m hoping the grass slows down. Mowed more this year than I can ever remember.

Euro seasonal is out. Doesn’t match what I’d expect from -QBO/Niña climo. Dry in the west, cold vortex in NE-Canada. In general it’s a Tim-friendly run.

There was 0.06" of rain fall both here at my house and officially at GRR. That brings the September total to 0.11" Going back to August 12 there has been just 0.19" of rain fall at GRR. Yesterdays official high at GRR was 81 and for the month we are just about average with a departure of -0.2° At this time it is clear here at my house and I have a temperature of 58.

I "accidentally" found a cold air sink last night/this morning; this time in a sink east of Twin Lakes in the Flat Tops Wilderness of Colorado. I set up the tent in the sink it case it got windy since there was only sparse tree cover around and the only other group at the lake took the campsite with tree shelter. The elevation of the campsite was ~11,030 feet. I took a recording min/max themometer. When I went to bed, it was 23F. By midnight it had dropped to 14F and the overnight low was 6F. That's pretty cold considering the temperature wasn't recorded during a cold snap and that it is early September. I wonder what the winter temperatures would be there?

Woo! 78* and a very nice rain! Makes you want to run nek-ked out in the back yard! But I don’t want to scare the golfers!

GFS is flashing pretty decent snow in Northern Ontario. Thought it was just a clown range thing, but it's showing it at Day 9 now. Always encouraging to see the first signs of a changing season, even if it's more gradual this year than it was last year.

Caldor Fire UPDATE EAST ZONE Situation Summary: Fire crews aggressively engaged in fire suppression actions today. At Upper and Lower Echo lakes, hand crews have completed containment line from Highway 50 west to Talking Mountain and structure protection surrounding cabins near these lakes have been reinforced. Along Pioneer Trail firefighters continue to mop up and secure fire lines to prevent any fire movement toward South Lake Tahoe neighborhoods. At the head of the fire near Trimmer Peak, hotshot crews have completed a containment line along the fire’s edge and are extinguishing hot spots to prevent any forward progression toward Stateline. In the Christmas Valley area, hand crews are constructing firelines to the east and west along the fire’s edge and extinguishing hot spots with the support of water drops. Near Caples Lake along SR 88 firefighters are securing and strengthening containment lines and using high elevation rock features to keep the fire from progressing further to the east.

Recent trends in the central/eastern equatorial Sub Surface PAC anomalies showing a stout cold pocket...

I wanted to share some of my current research - I think this work is particularly interesting for us here in the PNW. I am currently analyzing 500mb circulation fields for 1979-2019 across western N. America, using ECMWF's ERA5 reanalysis product. Looking at just JJA, I ran the sample set of 3,772 JJA days over the 41 year period through an artificial neural network algorithm called a Self-Organizing Map (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organizing_map). This is essentially a clustering mechanism that produces composites of "archetypal patterns" or "nodes" that represent every day in the sample. Each of the 3,772 days is binned into one of the 6 nodes that best represents it. Attached are two images: - The first one shows the 6 archetypal 500mb patterns for 1979-2019 summertime days. - The second image shows the 41-year time series for each of the 6 nodes. It's pretty neat how you can see the dramatic dropoff in nodes 1-4 since 2013, which are the nodes that don't feature widespread western US ridging. They have been appearing less often, with the exception of 2019 when the node 3 pattern returned in quantity. Node 1 in particular had a dramatic dropoff after 2011, reaching its lowest frequency in 2018. Also notice the high frequency of nodes 5 & 6 in recent years, and the relative absence of node 6 patterns in the 1980s.

Awesome work. That flip to persistent summer ridging correlates nicely to the reversal in the PMM/AMM ratio and associated Hadley/Walker intensities in 2013. The tendency towards +NAO on the low pass also derived from that flip. Hard to imagine it lasting much longer, though. It almost has to change over these next few years. Has already backed off somewhat, though the underlying low pass signal is still present (at a lower frequency than before, but it’s still definitely there).

9/5/21 10:39 PM Oregon/Washington Large Fires Overview UPDATED Source: NWCC(Northwest Interagency Coordination Center), InciWeb) ____________________________________________________ * NEW FIRE ** UPDATED INFORMATION (Cause, Estimated Containment Date) ____________________________________________________ Oregon fires [6] - BULL COMPLEX (Location: 12 miles NE of Detroit, OR) Acres: 15,804 (1,204) - Cause: Under Investigation - Percent Contained: 7% - Estimated Containment Date: 2021-10-30 - DEVIL'S KNOB COMPLEX (Location: 30 miles SE of Roseburg, OR) Acres: 46,596 (2,766) - Cause: Under Investigation - Percent Contained: 35% (6%) - Estimated Containment Date: 2021-10-15 - GREEN RIDGE (Location: 30 miles E of Walla Walla, WA) Acres: 40,529 - Cause: Lightning - Percent Contained: 40% - Estimated Containment Date: 2021-10-01 - JACK (Location: 20 miles E of Glide, OR) Acres: 23,987 - Cause: Human - Percent Contained: 55% - Estimated Containment Date: 2021-10-31 - MIDDLE FORK COMPLEX (Location: 9 miles N of Oakridge, OR) Acres: 23,729 (1,550) - Cause: Under Investigation - Percent Contained: 20% (1%) - Estimated Containment Date: 2021-10-15 - ROUGH PATCH COMPLEX (Location: 26 miles SE of Cottage Grove) Acres: 40,082 (2,577) - Cause: Under Investigation - Percent Contained: 26% - Estimated Containment Date: 2021-10-31 Washington fires [11] - BULLDOG MOUNTAIN (Location: 20 miles N of Kettle Falls, WA) Acres: 5,490 - Cause: Under Investigation - Percent Contained: 53% - Estimated Containment Date: 2021-10-01 - CEDAR CREEK (Location: 4 miles WSW of Mazama, WA) Acres: 55,187 - Cause: Lightning - Percent Contained: 87% - Estimated Containment Date: 2021-10-31 - CHICKADEE CREEK (Location: 15 miles W of Tonasket, WA) Acres: 5,847 - Cause: Under Investigation - Percent Contained: 55% (5%) - Estimated Containment Date: 2021-10-15 - CUB CREEK 2 (Location: 5 miles N of Winthrop, WA) Acres: 70,186 - Cause: Under Investigation - Percent Contained: 70% - Estimated Containment Date: 2021-10-01 - DELANCY (Location: 4 miles W of Mazama, WA) Acres: 223 - Cause: Under Investigation - Percent Contained: 95% - Estimated Containment Date: 2021-08-31 - MACK MOUNTAIN (Location: 15 miles N of Kettle Falls, WA) Acres: 1,233 - Cause: Under Investigation - Percent Contained: 30% - Estimated Containment Date: 2021-10-01 - MUCKAMUCK (Location: 3 miles NE of Conconully, WA) Acres: 13,314 - Cause: Lightning - Percent Contained: 74% - Estimated Containment Date: 2021-10-15 - SCHNEIDER SPRINGS (Location: 20 miles NW of Naches, WA) Acres: 89,879 (7,932) - Cause: Lightning - Percent Contained: 14% (4%) - Estimated Containment Date: 2021-10-01 - SUMMIT TRAIL (Location: 17 miles W of Inchelium, WA) Acres: 46,750 (196) - Cause: Lightning - Percent Contained: 58% (3%) - Estimated Containment Date: 2021-10-31 - TWENTYFIVE MILE (Location: 12 miles NW of Chelan, WA) Acres: 16,060 (93) - Cause: Under Investigation - Percent Contained: 40% (3%) - Estimated Containment Date: 2021-10-30 - WALKER CREEK (Location: 1.5 miles SE of Bonaparte Lake, WA) Acres: 23,377 - Cause: Under Investigation - Percent Contained: 65% (5%) - Estimated Containment Date: 2021-11-15