the_convergence_zone

The wind knocked over my mini greenhouse with all of my vegetable and flower starts. I salvaged as many as I could but it was a pretty big disaster from my perspective.

Cloud seeding is a form of public relations to say “at least we’re trying” to end droughts. Throwing some silver iodide in a cloud isn’t going to do anything to a storm that is large enough to produce appreciable precipitation. It might cause a few sprinkles from a cumulus cloud that otherwise wouldn’t have rained. There are also legal ramifications since it had been argued that cloud seeding is a form of theft — you are stealing the water from areas downstream of where you seeded. The ironic thing is that project Stormfury got axed in the late 60s after they seeded a hurricane and it happened to make a left turn to the Eastern seaboard shortly thereafter. It would be funny if this makes them think twice about seeding in the UAE, although it’s a bummer that they didn’t seed this storm (or at least they claim to have not seeded it LOL).

Better than nothing, as long as these 0.2 storms don’t turn into 0.02 as they have been lately.

They are useful for communicating warming to the public. The 2 meter temp in urbanized areas is what the majority of people experience. Obviously scientists have to be careful to make the distinction of local vs. global climate change and sometimes they are not as careful as they should be. My personal weather station tracks closely with Sea-Tac airport so I think it is fine enough as a representative site for Seattle. What bothers me more is that like all surface obs these ASOS stations are prone to sensor drift and bias but they don’t seem to have good QC measures in place to catch that early and it’s often the general public alerting the NWS to an issue.

35.6 with light frost here. Impressive for mid April. I bet the recent dry weather helped with that. September and early October are an awesome time in the mountains here with all of the high elevation terrain snow free and showing fall color. Most of my favorite days in the mountains have been around that time of year. As Cascadia says, need a decent rain to knock down the smoke most years. But even last year I had two days up around Mt Baker in mid-September that were fabulous since we were in an onshore flow regime.

I wish my grandfather was still alive to see EVs. He had a depression era mindset and was obsessed with gas prices. When his old beater car broke he got a Prius and loved the gas mileage of that thing. I guarantee he would have a Model 3 right now and would have figured out where all of the free level 2 charging stations are located.

0.02” of rain today bringing my to 0.32” for the month. So about as wet as the average July. Temps are like 2F above normal, but corrected for climate change that is pretty much normal now.

I like my Model Y. I’ve had it for 4 months. I’ve never used the Tesla charging stations so can’t comment on those. They are starting to install chargers on residential streets in Seattle attached to the power poles, those are going to be on every block eventually. Would never buy that monstrosity that is a Cybertruck. It’s too bad that Tesla is headed to the toilet after so much promise. The smaller Rivian that looks like a Subaru is going to fly off the shelves when it is released. Hopefully BYD starts selling cars in North America soon as well.

I can barely even remember the details of May-June 2022 except that it was extremely wet. I just remember how green my garden was in late June of that year.

One decent storm cycle can cut those deficits in half or more. The problem is that the clock is ticking…if the wetter period for the end of April doesn’t verify, then we might be out of luck for a regional soaker.

I only have EVs and recently had to fill up a gas tank on a trip. It felt so archaic. Like going to a Blockbuster or something.

Tiger mountain this morning. There are foxgloves growing everywhere in that clear cut, it’s going to look awesome in amount a month.

So I’m still thinking about this…we’re starting with a homogeneous parcel but once the bumping starts, the molecules on the edge of the parcel that bump into another molecule will slow down (i.e. cooled) so then you would sort-of be in the situation you describe where there are faster and slower ones. And in that case the faster ones would then be more likely to do the bumping as the parcel expands. But this just shows why parcel theory is mathematically convenient but not at all a reflection of what actually goes on in the real world. Because the second you let a real parcel go in the environment it would immediately start mixing with the surrounding air.

This is a great question. So, if you’re using parcel theory, then you’re assuming an adiabatic process when lifting the parcel. Which means no heat transferred between the parcel and the environment. So no conduction. What is actually assumed to be happening is that the molecules in the parcel are doing work on the molecules in the surrounding air — they are literally bumping into them and pushing them out of the way because the parcel is expanding as it rises. So that cools the temperature of the parcel because of the energy conversion (work being done). But no net heat loss to the environment! dq=0 Another assumption of parcel theory is homogeneity, so there are no faster or slower molecules; they are all the same. If you throw parcel theory out the window and think about the real world, then you would have some conduction, but air is a poor conductor…if you think about a double paned window in the winter. for instance, very little of the heat from your house is getting out through that window because of the air gap. The main failure mode of parcel theory in the atmosphere is mixing. Anyway, hope that helps!

Sign me up for a 2022 repeat…just not the part at the end of summer.

Another thing is that if you're going to show up to do an interview about the upcoming wildfire season, the first question is always going to be a request for a forecast. And saying the correct-ish answer of "there are too many unknown factors to say" isn't going to cut it. Listing the reasons for/against is definitely the way to go.

That's a bummer that some on this forum would resort to mocking. I'm inclined to value the opinion of a leading expert in PNW wildfire meteorology. I recommend watching the first half of the video to get the answer. He goes into the various arguments in favor vs. against an active wildfire season. A nuanced take. He seems to have looked at seasonal predictions that show average to above-average precipitation in June and July to counter the lack of snowpack and warm spring (due to the trend toward -ENSO). If those forecasts fail, that would change his outlook, although many on this forum seem to agree that this could be a cooler and wetter summer than some of our recent ones. He's expecting a warm and dry May. However, he notes that the dry conditions in spring will likely reduce the risk of grass fires this year, although the dry fuel from recent wet springs means that the grass fire risk is still somewhat elevated. He also expresses confidence in their improved ability to put out fire starts before they spread -- so the forecast does include a bit of faith in the firefighting operations that he is partially responsible for.

WA DNR lead meteorologist predicts an average fire season in Washington: https://tvw.org/video/the-impact-2024-wildfire-outlook-dnr-lead-meteorologist-2024041114/?eventID=2024041114

https://cw3e.ucsd.edu/the-atmospheric-rivers-of-water-year-2024-april-summary/ Oregon wins the 2023-24 atmospheric river count with 46. (Yes, they designate literally every storm as an atmospheric river)

Tell @Port Angeles Foothiller to take his rain shadow back!

0.05” from this event, 0.23” on the month so far. The rain shadow needs to go somewhere else for a storm or two.

Today was the worst weather day of the spring for sure. Cloudy and 47/42 with a trace of rain. At least give me a half inch of rain if it’s going to be that cold in April. Pack today up and send it to January where it belongs.

Gotta get acclimated for our usual upper-80s heat wave in May.

I think we can score an 80 burger in the next heat wave at KSEA. We’ve gotten one (or more) in 5 of the last 10 Aprils.

Where did that chart come from? It looks low but not 6 sigma low...https://zacklabe.com/antarctic-sea-ice-extentconcentration/