joelgombiner

8 minutes ago, Gradient Keeper said:

Jeez! I just found out that butterlies also eat their own ! What the hell is this world coming to! Wait. Not just their own , but other animals too! That's like a double whammy of feces dining. WTF

00z GEM in 3 hours 55 minutes

Pretty sure eating our own $H!T (through composting and self-sustaining, organic gardening) is a good way to sequester CO2 and bring back winter. Colder runs ahead! 

Nice flurries this morning! 

Just now, Phishy Wx said:

lol

 

 

Lol. Will have zero effect on people who buy FA. I've talked to a surprising number of people who think it's a legitimate scientific forecast. 

Lots of ground stayed frozen throughout the day, despite air temps rising above freezing. Dry! 

2 hours ago, Omegaraptor said:

Is the drought classification in CA still necessary? Snowpack in the central and southern Sierra is over 200% of normal.

I admittedly don't have a clear understanding of how those maps are generated. They apparently have a conference about it coming up soon... I'm sure complex math and science goes into it. 

Widespread improvement in drought conditions compared to a year ago. 

2 minutes ago, Cascadia_Wx said:

Actually went for a nice backpacking trip in that area in September 2007. Over from the upper Cle Elum river up to Cathedral Pass, then down to Surprise Lakes which is right across the Foss River Valley Daniel/Hinman. Great winter for glacial growth followed.

Awesome area for backpacking. Lake Ivanhoe is one of my favorite places on earth. 

When I was teaching the lab for Glaciers and Global Change at UW, I designed an activity where we looked at climate model output and estimated future glacier changes for the Pacific Northwest. All models showed that Cascades and Coast Mountains glaciers would shrink due to increased summer melting and increasing fraction of winter precipitation falling as rain on glaciers, but many models showed that Rocky Mountain glaciers could stabilize or even grow due to increased winter precipitation, with temperatures remaining cold enough for all snow even under a much warmer climate. This was just an activity and not a formal study, so take it with a grain of salt. Formal studies for Rocky Mountain glaciers exist as well, e.g. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/53/2/131/254976  

This study (led by a UW professor) explicitly addressed the question of whether centennial glacier retreat is categorical evidence of global climate change, given that glaciers do fluctuate naturally. They found that mountain glacier retreat provide some of the strongest evidence that climate change is occurring. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2863

11 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

I'm just saying the climate has gone through ENORMOUS changes before man could have possibly had any effect.  Some catastrophic climate changes int he past have happened in a matter of decades.  The changes now are at a slow pace.  Why do people discount rebound from the little ice age so easily?  That could explain much of the current warming and glacial retreat.  We don't know enough about the Medieval Warm period to make a good judgment.

I assume you are referring to D-O events here?

The inference of catastrophic climate changes over decades is based on oxygen isotope ratios of water molecules in Greenland ice cores. Those records indicate that the oxygen isotope composition of the snow falling on Greenland changed within decades, but they don't tell you much about temperature in other locations, like the Pac NW. 

Beautiful morning. Dry, northerly flow in late January is hard to beat! Especially after the dismal grey we've been having.  

Just now, Terreboner2 said:

I like it when there are no expectations.  Probably means a huge, regionwide event will happen.

Anything's possible. 

10 minutes ago, Terreboner2 said:

Are we all in agreement that Winter 2023/24 is going to be a suckfest of epic proportions?

Seems inevitable that we get a big El Nino and the (globally) warmest year in recorded history soon. 

Current location of the Arctic front. 

Whenever I talk to visitors from really snowy climates like Alaska or South Dakota, the main point about the snow and cold is usually all of the problems it causes! Nice to have it every once in a while but not a constant. 

I think it's a bit of a new and unproven idea that dynamics in the polar stratosphere are an important driver of weather patterns? 

You would never know that winter is returning to the region based on the mood in here! lol 

SEA needs 2.9 inches of precip over the next 5 days to hit normal for the month, but we'll be lucky to get 0.2. It's been nice to dry out a bit after the drenching in December! 

Agreed! Looking forward to the next pattern. Interesting that this one produced a new record for 850 mb heights for UIL

AQI remaining moderate at 54 in Seattle... A good reminder that wildfire smoke is not the only source of PM 2.5. 

Air quality degrading to moderate with the lack of mixing. Made for a nice sunset this evening. 

Just now, SouthHillFrosty said:

Congrats on the PHD. That is a huge deal!

Appreciate it! Took forever to finish... Kept finding new, interesting things, and eventually had to just call it and put a lid on collecting new data. 

J.C. just threw in the towel. It's gonna happen now! 

32 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

The clear skies allowed for frost to form here... currently 31 degrees.    And the frost patterns on the car in the driveway are absolutely fascinating.    Like an art project.   No idea how this happens.   It was raining last night though so that probably contributed. 

That is super cool! I do not have an explanation but it would be cool to know the process behind that. Something to do with how the crystallization fronts are expanding across the liquid on the surface...