Meatyorologist

It actually says more about how old I am, Jesse (22). Unfortunatley I can't share your memories of being serenaded with blessings in May 1998! edit: my main point was about green grass those two years were pretty green through mid July here, 2022 especially. Definitely not the norm of the last decade or so

I really hope May and June are a soaker. That usually keeps things lush into the early Summer. Already starting to see some brown in the backyard. Running out of time to save it before our wet season is used up. Nothing is worse than entering ASO browntown three months ahead of schedule and staying that way. The majority of 2014-18 were tinder dry and sickly colored. Hoping we go the route of 2019, or especially 2022.

It was absolutely stellar. Taking out the trash at work was a treat.

I got a nice little weekend off coming up for me. Warm and breezy Friday, a bipolar Saturday with a warm morning crashing to onshore flow and drizzle by dinnertime, and a fairly cool Sunday. Might even nab one of those sub 50F highs which are rapidly becoming harder and harder to get.

Today's thermal profile is pretty much dry adiabatic all the way up to 700mb, thanks to some descending easterlies above 5000'. We worked extra hard to reach the 60s today, despite the chilly air aloft. Side note...Unless they knicked it just after 5pm, it looks like KSEA avoided the 60F mark by a hair. No matter what though the dry air is making it feel much cooler. And as an ode to how deeply mixed today was, despite dewpoints in the mid 20s, there were still some tufts of cumulus about this afternoon; way up high of course at the very top of the boundary layer where the particularly precocious lifted parcels nudged just barely high enough to saturate, probably around 7000'+.

The Euro has a beast of a trough for Maine late next week with highs in the 20s all the way down to the coast.

Starting to get to that time of year where we look out for warm core convection. Next week looks like our classic mid-Spring +ENSO cutoff bonanza with lots of potential outcomes, including negtaively tilted troughing. Could be something to grab onto. Haven't had a really good thunderstorm setup since May 2020.

In a few ways!

It's absolutely embarrassing how delayed the Euro is on Tropical Tidbits. It's also very low in resolution and has limited filters. No other weather model site has any of those issues with the Euro, not anymore at least, not since the ECMWF eased back on their premiums in 2022. I wouldn't even mind the limited filters if it weren't for the three hour offset.

These are the posts I can appreciate.

It's on my top four, but not top three.

Quite the escalation there!

Seattle's done that

Thursday-Saturday will feature similar setups with clear skies and low DP's at night, but with the air aloft steadily moderating Wednesday morning will be the only shot at the freezing mark. There's only so much you can do with clear skies halfay through April, you need that extra upper level support to take the load off.

Wednesday's record low is 33F from 1964. With heights increasing, offshore winds, and 1000-500mb thickness less than 528dm I think we could pull off a freeze under clear skies, if we're lucky. Kind of a long shot. But KSEA has thrown some surprises when nighttime inversions grow deep enough.

Given that the Euro is buying it and the GFS has been consistent, I'd say it's probably coming. EPS is overwhelmingly on board. The 18z is probably just some typical midrange GFS flailing.

Eugene got over half an inch of rain today. Solid.

Salem should be grateful.

Buddy and I went on a walk to enjoy the catastrophe today. Saw some cumulus shrouding Mt. Rainier, lots of high clouds, sunny, mild weather. Him and I are both science nerds so we got to talking about adiabatic cooling and how it works... Neither of us really knew the exact answer, and none of the information we read online felt comprehensive or satisfying. After some shared thought my buddy tossed me a theory that I think makes the most sense. As he guessed, as a parcel rises, and the volume of that parcel increases, the fastest moving ("hottest") molecules in that parcel travel outwards towards the edge first, since they are faster. Those "hot" molecules, being the first of the parcel to make direct contact with the environent surrounding it, transfer their heat out via conduction. It's essentially a molecule sorting process, where the hottest molecules are most likely to conduct their thermal energy to the surroundings, since they are faster than the rest of the molecules, and fill in the expanding parcel first. As you can imagine, transferring heat out of the parcel via the warmest particales preferentially will cool off the parcel, and at a fixed, predictable rate, too. Any seasoned mets want to pitch in? Are we onto something or shooting blanks? Don't know where else to ask. Maybe Reid Wolcott knows.

#neverstopchasing

Not if I pour ice water on KPDX's thermometer every hour for the next five months.

It would be totally on theme to run a -4F at KPDX this August after all this talk.

Never thought about the inception of our annual warm season in that way. Good insight.

At its core, it's a 4CH issue. Something about the decaying Niño and the wonderful state the current western US snowpack situation is in gives me some hope we might be able to avoid a bloated western ridge via thermal heating runaway. 2019 would have been a cool summer if it weren't for the ridge that popped overhead mid July-September. It was a wasted opportunity, the only other opportunity we've had since 2012.

I don't want to pour gasoline on the fire, but you are pretty conveniently cutting off April 2016 and it's juicy 90-burger. Just peep at that spike, yowzers! But looking at the graph again, you can see we're simply making up for the dip during the 2000s, amidst an overall warming trend since records began. We're probably just oscillating back into a slightly shallower low point than the 2000s dip. April might be a little cooler for the next decade. Or probably not. Who knows.