Meatyorologist

Thunderstorm heading into Olympia!

Glad you have a game plan moving forward at least. Only route is upwards. Good luck Chris.

Lots of spread dependent on how harshly the GOA trough cuts off in the midrange. Most solutions are less aggressive and sweep it into the area cleanly from the NW... Others go a little cookier in the Pacific and pop up a ridge of varying degrees right overhead. It also seems that the ridger solutions stay warm for longer or maybe even potentiate further amplification of the ridge in the longer range, while the cleaner NWly solutions generally continue the NW flow.

Nice cell to the west of Eugene.

That's intense for a lee cyclone... Tight gradients all across the central US and into the intermountain west. Technically out to sea too given the intense anticyclone offshore from California, if you wish to partially attribute that to the cyclone as well.

Sometime back in Summer 2011 we had a surprise morning midlevel thunderstorm above the marine layer. I was in summer camp at the time. We were walking our way to John Rodgers elementary, when just as we were approaching the building we started getting dry air bolts of lightning, no more than a mile away. It was crazy since there was literally zero rain, and the sun, while blocked behind the stratus, was out of the way of the midlevel clouds, so it still looked like a perfectly normal Summer morning. Just a brief lightning barrage then back to our regularly scheduled programming. Wethre is weerd sometimes

Back in August 2018 I was on a Mississippi River cruise in New Orleans when a band of thunderstorms stalled over the city. One lightning bolt struck the front face of the levee exactly where I was looking. That thunder shook my chest... Amazing stuff. That storm ended up making for the worst flood in DT New Orleans since Katrina. Drove back to my cousin's house through streets flooded with 1-2 feet of water. The parking garage we parked in echoed the constant CG barrage that was occurring right overhead, and the manholes on the street had geysers due to the water overload.

Got a little band of weak early Springtime convection heading into Seattle. Should be a quick spurt of heavy rain and a 5F temp drop, maybe some wind. Starting to get the kind of sun angles now that bring in convective prospects under BSF.

eeewwwwwwwwww!!

Love cool Aprils. Usually sunny and Spring-y with lots of fun convection. Speaking of, the next couple weeks would be a killer thunderstorm setup for the PNW in July, specifically given the pattern over western North America.

I'm feeling cool April vibes this year. They usually come in chunks w/ -PDO regimes like the one we're in. Chances are next Spring will also be cool w/ this impending Niña potentially still breathing by then. After that it could be another 2-3 in the next half decade or so before April troughing goes into remission once more.

18z GFS is the most neutral possible solution for Seattle. A balanced mix of warm, cool, sun, clouds, rain, and wind. Spring climo.

I'm not supposing that the means by which precipitation occurs matters. My point is that the association between petrichor and convection in the PNW makes some sense since our most memorable storms tend to occur during the dry season, when there is an abundance of petrichor-causing chemicals laying about. Also, our lightning storms often occur on the back end of heat waves, after multiple days of dry, warm weather, so they're often by their own nature primed to be aromatic.

Petrichor is most often a convective phenomena here as the only time it rains after a long stretch of dry weather is during the Summer and early Fall, when our big thunderstorms usually show up.

I'll say! How does this happen? Mixing in the lee of the Appalacians?

k

Wild spread.

Sort of my perspective too. I've found that community and things to do are what really drive happiness. Our climate is comically pleasant to live in, though I will say the 35-45F temps with drizzle kind of sucks. Just commit to freezing temps and snow already. Or resign to something warmer. Ah well.... I was only born here, gotta figure out a way to love it all. Storm King will happen again. It's pretty much inevitable.

"Third favorite snowstorm" this is why I'm rooting for La Niña

Amazing. Couldn't imagine 34" of snow in a day. What a ride that would be. And I'm assuming the snowfall rates weren't a uniform 1.5"/hr or whatever... What did they peak at?

2009-10 to them is their 1968-69. 2014-15 was also a banger, especially in February. They have a handful of great winters since the beginning of the century amidst a sea of nonexistent ones. At least we've only had a couple bonafide torches during DJF during that stretch, albeit no all time cold/snowy ones either.

I support the southeast China-fication of the eastern seaboard.

Let's recap why Phil wants us to root against La Niña: -La Niña will prevent La Niña from happening again, so in order to get La Niña we have to root against La Niña. So we can have more La Niña in the future. Makes sense. -La Niña is actually an endothermic process which burns the Earth. I mean the effects of this warming aren't noticeable for centuries but think of how hard he just OWNED you with the Thermodynamics 101 lesson. But don't worry about CO2 emissions, we don't really understand that or something lmao -If next winter is a La Niña he might CRY and that would make us feel bad

Still in the denial phase...

The Magnolia in my front yard is undergoing a major bloomout today. It's getting increasingly colorful outside by the hour as the plants wake up. Tomorrow and Sunday will be spectacular and I can't wait. My SAD is improving already. Also loving how hard this is gonna crash next week. More of a typical 'false Spring' situation compared to the initiation of our annual death ridge. That'll have to wait til April!