wx_statman

-PDO is fun. But, weaker cold airmasses will still be trying to advect over mountains that have stayed the same height. I'm pretty sure the lack of cold maximums on the coast has more to do with that in the long run...

Yeah, wow. Looks like the only comparable stretch was from Dec 1998 to Jan 2004. The maximum gaps were 1-2 years through most of the 20th century.

Felt like an especially bad swing and miss... even Troutdale couldn't get freezing rain. Just not cold enough.

Totally random, but that cold airmass in BC during mid January was pretty freaking impressive. Just checking some numbers up there. -48F in Prince George was their coldest since Jan 9, 1991 (-51F). It's too bad Portland couldn't squeeze out anything meaningful last January...

Yeah, that's the problem with Matlab. You have to be in academia, otherwise it's not really relevant (or accessible).

You nailed it, Matplotlib + Basemap for those maps. I ran the SOMs algorithm in MATLAB and then exported the data to Python for analysis and plotting. The time series chart was actually done in Seaborn. I would do everything in Python if it were up to me, but I have to jump to closed source platforms once in a while.

Hey, I'm using the 'somtoolbox' in MATLAB to create these. As far as I understand, this is still the canonical choice which most published papers have used for their SOMs analysis. There are also implementations in Python and R that users have contributed, but I don't think any of them are as stable or trusted as the MATLAB implementation.

That's a great observation about 1985. Our heat that summer had very different dynamics from the recent massive ridge-dominated summers. Also speaks to the fickle nature of trying to project how heat extremes might change along the immediate west coast in the future, places west of the Cascades and west of the Coast Range in California. So much depends on the right longwave patterns recurring, as opposed to actual warming in the means.

Yeah, we saw both ends of the spectrum last decade. We've talked a lot about how 2010 and 2011 were a throwback to the old days, and this confirms it at a larger scale.

I wanted to share some of my current research - I think this work is particularly interesting for us here in the PNW. I am currently analyzing 500mb circulation fields for 1979-2019 across western N. America, using ECMWF's ERA5 reanalysis product. Looking at just JJA, I ran the sample set of 3,772 JJA days over the 41 year period through an artificial neural network algorithm called a Self-Organizing Map (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organizing_map). This is essentially a clustering mechanism that produces composites of "archetypal patterns" or "nodes" that represent every day in the s

Hi guys, I hope everyone is doing well. Wanted to share with you all my first published paper, out this month in AMS Journal of Climate. I looked at 30 years of lightning data for the western US and associated it with driving weather patterns/meteorological variables (large scale stuff anyway, not derived parameters like CAPE or lifted index or whatnot). Give it a glance if you want! https://twitter.com/wx_statman/status/1256296265907728385

What an interesting pattern. At one point yesterday, Redding had snow with south winds gusting to 49 mph. Don't see that very often.

Austin Airport at -16, at least that's what the ASOS reported. Not 100% sure it was valid. Three other official stations reported -10 last month (Sunnyside - Lund 31S, Wild Horse Reservoir, and McDermitt). -10 is the listed state record at Mountain City Ranger Station in October 1970.

To be fair, this station has only existed since 1989 and January has been a stinker in the current era. This station hit -50 on 12/22/1990 - I am sure January has seen -50 at that location in past decades...

Apparently, the COOP at Daniel Fish Hatchery in Wyoming hit -34. This would be the new official state record for WY for October. Any thoughts on this reading, Chris or Scott? It seems probable. This station averages a minimum of -4 in January so it is a very cold location.