TT-SEA

Yeah... that is not a great pattern for lowland snow. But a pattern that can bury Andrew and sometimes even my area in snow with cold onshore flow.

Still cloudy. Satellite shows it should clear up fairly soon though.

I am never at SEA even when I am home. But I still track what is happening there. The internet is pretty cool.

Clouds held up the temps around Seattle last night and now its sunny this morning. Only 55 at SEA for a low.

68/51 at SEA today... perfectly normal. Clouds are holding up temps at night.

It changed. Could change again I suppose. And of course its 3 days later so the 11-15 day period now is not exactly the same time frame.

On the edge of the cloud shield here... clouds to the east and sun to the west. You can see the fire damage on the other side of the river now as the sun has come around. Definitely spotty... not as bad as it could have been for sure.

Wow... the 12Z ECMWF is completely different than the 00Z run late next week.

You can definitely see smoke nestled in the hills over there.

The view from our room is spectacular...

Sun is coming out in Stevenson... looks much more socked in towards Portland though.

The biggest snowstorm I ever experienced in Minnesota started on Halloween in 1991. That was an incredible event. How rare is it to have the biggest snowstorm ever in a fairly snowy climate start in October? The event continued into November so the the storm total was split between two months. Ended up with close to 40 inches of snow over 3 days at our house... and then it turned really cold. I remember cars putting flags on their antennas so they could be seen better coming around corners with the massive snowbanks.

Looks like a sunny morning around the Seattle area and at home. Low clouds here.

Looking out at the Gorge from Skamania Lodge this morning and it looks like the Oregon side is still smoldering. Hard to tell for sure with the low clouds but pretty sure its still smoky over there.

But it is the ECMWF.

Yes... its fall.

00Z ECMWF sure has different ideas in the 8-10 day period.

Through day 6:

Came through Stevenson tonight... looks like a really nice town even in the dark. We went around through Yakima to avoid traffic. We left home in the sun and drove into rain on the east side of the mountains. And then had rain from Goldendale to Lyle and drove out of it going west. Backwards!

00Z GFS is mostly dry for the next 17 days except for a few showers now and then. Some dry weather will be greatly appreciated after all this rain for the last 5 days. It will be nice to enjoy the best part of fall without worrying about smoke ruining the views or it being too dry.

Clearing has reached Seattle:

Last year at this time in the middle to end of September... all of the alders around here were already bare. They just gave up. And our big-leaf maple was dropping leaves fast. The cottonwoods were all yellow and losing leaves as well. It was actually worse last year than in 2015 and that was pretty bad. This summer had a much more impressive dry, warm streak than last year and yet the trees look really good. It has to be related to the insanely wet spring. The alders are still completely green... same with the big-leaf maple and cottonwoods. I am hopeful for good fall color this year around here now that everything has been thoroughly soaked again. That should extend the fall colors.

I know its perfectly normal to get copious rain here. And its likely been much wetter than the last 2 years if you go back hundreds and thousands of years. That is why I enjoy the nice weather periods so much. I would definitely enjoy just a normal rain total this winter instead of breaking more records going back to the 1800s. Or maybe a drier than normal winter for a change? On average it is dry here on about 32% of the days from November through March. It rained on over 90% of the days in the winter of 2015-16. Last winter was definitely better but that was soured by getting rain on over 95% of the days from February through the middle of May. Give me periods of offshore flow and sunny days between the rain (which is perfectly normal) and I am good. Offshore flow was almost completely absent in 2015-16. That was pretty unusual.

I have noticed it many times as well.

I fixed the ECWMF images above. They will stay the same in the future now. Side note... I am forced to host WB images like the EPS map above and they have always been locked in.