[Missing] March 2022 PNW Wx Discussion

[Timmy Supercell]

4 hours ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

We had 10.8" with that event. It's actually the latest significant snow event we've had since I've lived here. Don't really remember much about the setup, but it was a pretty nice event. I remember summer started around April 22nd that year, so a little later... Just kidding, but May was like a normal July that year, and then July was ridiculously warm, I think Salem had 18 90+ days that July. 

1.6" snow I logged 3/24/2018. That winter was lame, I had no 3.0+ inch events considering it being a La Nina.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

1 minute ago, Timmy_Supercell said:

1.6" snow I logged 3/24/2018. That winter was lame, I had no 3.0+ inch events considering it being a La Nina.

December was chilly, but we didn't really get any snow, though I know PDX north scored a white Christmas. January was a nightmare, but the back half of February was cold and had a lot of snow. We had a couple dustings in early April too I believe. 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

3 minutes ago, Timmy_Supercell said:

1.6" snow I logged 3/24/2018. That winter was lame, I had no 3.0+ inch events considering it being a La Nina.

Looks like we had measurable snow on 8 straight days from February 18-25th. 

[BLI snowman]

27 minutes ago, Omegaraptor said:

Roseburg 15 degrees warmer than Cottage Grove. Only 50 miles apart and at the same elevation. That doesn’t happen often.

Behold the power of Rice Hill!

[TT-SEA]

18Z GFS is the driest right over western WA where its the wettest.     I like it.

 

[Omegaraptor]

10 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

18Z GFS is the driest right over western WA where its the wettest.     I like it.

 

Finally some green in the NorCal interior.

[MossMan]

57 minutes ago, Timmy_Supercell said:

1.6" snow I logged 3/24/2018. That winter was lame, I had no 3.0+ inch events considering it being a La Nina.

Solid winter up here! A White Christmas, the massive dump and arctic chill in February, and the little bonus in March! 

[Phil]

2 hours ago, BLI snowman said:

The Mid Atlantic into the Northeast seems to be becoming increasingly influenced by the Gulf Stream of course, and increasingly subtropical as a result. That means warmer and wetter.

Central Park's data is telling because it's such a long and unbroken POR

https://wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/cliMAIN.pl?ny5801

Their annual precip has shifted considerably upward in the last few decades.  Far more really warm days in DJF now, as well.

Yeah, warm+wet has definitely been the theme here in recent decades. Especially in the summer months. July average precip increased by almost 1” in the new 1991-2020 climatology, which is pretty drastic.

Interestingly, while precipitation used to fall evenly throughout the year, we now have a significant seasonal component, with summer now clearly the “wet” season and winter the “dry” season.

[Omegaraptor]

22 minutes ago, Phil said:

Yeah, warm+wet has definitely been the theme here in recent decades. Especially in the summer months. July average precip increased by almost 1” in the new 1991-2020 climatology, which is pretty drastic.

Interestingly, while precipitation used to fall evenly throughout the year, we now have a significant seasonal component, with summer now clearly the “wet” season and winter the “dry” season.

Interesting. That’s how the precip pattern is in the Midwest I believe.

[Phil]

Problem in the West/PNW has been the decline in precipitation during the summer months, when evaporation potential is high. Really need JJA precipitation to increase.

I think a good portion of it can be explained via natural variability, but it’s no less problematic.

 

 

[Phil]

10 minutes ago, Omegaraptor said:

Interesting. That’s how the precip pattern is in the Midwest I believe.

Also interesting how the Midwest has cooled in F/M/A/M. It’s not insignificant, either.

[Phil]

Putting the SW US drought in context, as ugly as it’s been of late, it’s actually not unprecedented (even in the context of only the last 100 years, let alone the last 1000+).

This is significant variability, offering the possibility that these trends could reverse in the coming years/decades.

[Omegaraptor]

6 minutes ago, Phil said:

Also interesting how the Midwest has cooled in F/M/A/M. It’s not insignificant, either.

Was not expecting May to show a slight cooling trend in the SW.

[Omegaraptor]

12 minutes ago, Phil said:

Problem in the West/PNW has been the decline in precipitation during the summer months, when evaporation potential is high. Really need JJA precipitation to increase.

I think a good portion of it can be explained via natural variability, but it’s no less problematic.

 

 

To be fair in many spots the average July/August precip in northern and central CA as well as southern OR is so insanely low that a percent change that looks big might not be statistically significant. Anywhere more than 10 miles inland constant blue skies and zero rainfall is the norm in summer. Some places the Wikipedia climate box straight up shows 0.00” for July and/or August as an average.

[Phil]

6 minutes ago, Omegaraptor said:

To be fair in many spots the average July/August precip in northern and central CA as well as southern OR is so insanely low that a percent change that looks big might not be statistically significant. Anywhere more than 10 miles inland constant blue skies and zero rainfall is the norm in summer. Some places the Wikipedia climate box straight up shows 0.00” for July and/or August as an average.

I believe the relative humidity increase in association with pattern(s) which produce summer rainfall is the more important factor in many areas.

More clouds/higher RH can go a long way in capping surface temperatures and preventing vegetation from drying out.

[The Blob]

The trees are beautiful this week. And for the old pet talk, my oldest cat turns 14 this month.

[TacomaWaWx]

56/38 today. 

[TT-SEA]

This was 20 feet from where I was getting gas in North Bend about 20 minutes ago.   I was the weirdo walking away from the pump while the car was filling up to take a picture of trees. 

[TT-SEA]

1 hour ago, Phil said:

Yeah, warm+wet has definitely been the theme here in recent decades. Especially in the summer months. July average precip increased by almost 1” in the new 1991-2020 climatology, which is pretty drastic.

Interestingly, while precipitation used to fall evenly throughout the year, we now have a significant seasonal component, with summer now clearly the “wet” season and winter the “dry” season.

Seattle had an annual average increase in rainfall of 1.85 inches with the 1991-2020 update.     

[MossMan]

1 hour ago, The Blob said:

The trees are beautiful this week. And for the old pet talk, my oldest cat turns 14 this month.

First we have sideways dogs, now we have sideways cats…What is this world coming to!

[The Blob]

49 minutes ago, MossMan said:

First we have sideways dogs, now we have sideways cats…What is this world coming to!

Someone needs to fix this.

[TT-SEA]

14 minutes ago, The Blob said:

Someone needs to fix this.

 

[FroYoBro]

[Dan the Weatherman]

14 hours ago, TacomaWaWx said:

Somethings definitely changed in Oregon in the last decade. Might just be the new normal in terms of climo. Went down there on a road trip in mid September all the way through central Oregon and back up I-5 through Eugene. Despite recent rainfall at the time there was pretty significant drought signs…especially in the central Oregon cascade crest. 

Something major IMO shifted around the 2011-12 or 2012-13 seasons that have led us into this terrible drought pattern here in California and much of the West in general including parts of Oregon. Whether it is the warming of the Arctic leading to the weakening of the polar jet, some shift in the Pacific Ocean circulation patterns, a flip in an unknown oscillation pattern that hasn't been identified yet, the AMO being in its positive phase for too long, or human induced climate change exacerbating the patterns that already cause dry conditions here, I know something happened in that time frame I mentioned above because it occurred almost like a flip of a switch!

[TigerWoodsLibido]

6 hours ago, Omegaraptor said:

Roseburg 15 degrees warmer than Cottage Grove. Only 50 miles apart and at the same elevation. That doesn’t happen often.

The Kalapuya Pass can be a weird dividing line that does a decent job at creating strong temp gradients at times. Even Cottage Grove to Drain is a noticeable change with the Umpqua being directly connected to the ocean.

[Jbolin]

59 minutes ago, FroYoBro said:

Gotta get that salt,

 

As Steve the monkey once said....Liiick, Liiick, Liiick.

[Skagit Weather]

4 hours ago, Phil said:

I believe the relative humidity increase in association with pattern(s) which produce summer rainfall is the more important factor in many areas.

More clouds/higher RH can go a long way in capping surface temperatures and preventing vegetation from drying out.

I have no idea how to look at the evolution of RH in the last couple decades, but in the last few summers it definitely feels like the dew point has been higher than previously. Probably one of the easier ways we could start to disentangle it would be to look at the evolution of summer low temperatures. Even if you'd expect summer temperatures (high and/or average) to be warming, you wouldn't exactly expect low temperatures to be warming if there was a drop in RH. That's not true. We see a relatively profound increase in low temperatures throughout the Western US (I only made graphs for stations in W. WA because I was lazy, but there's a clear trend in every station I checked from Vancouver, BC to Shasta, CA). Of course you could make an argument that a simple linear regression model based off individual years is not the best way to investigate this trend (which I agree with), but it is the easiest.

And you could argue some (if not a lot) of this is from UHI, but even the holy grail station of Olympia has seen significant summer low temp warming.

[Meatyorologist]

Nighttime anafrontal snow event for Eugene in the LR. Would be something if anything like this came to pass

[Meatyorologist]

44 minutes ago, Skagit Weather said:

I have no idea how to look at the evolution of RH in the last couple decades, but in the last few summers it definitely feels like the dew point has been higher than previously. Probably one of the easier ways we could start to disentangle it would be to look at the evolution of summer low temperatures. Even if you'd expect summer temperatures (high and/or average) to be warming, you wouldn't exactly expect low temperatures to be warming if there was a drop in RH. That's not true. We see a relatively profound increase in low temperatures throughout the Western US (I only made graphs for stations in W. WA because I was lazy, but there's a clear trend in every station I checked from Vancouver, BC to Shasta, CA). Of course you could make an argument that a simple linear regression model based off individual years is not the best way to investigate this trend (which I agree with), but it is the easiest.

And you could argue some (if not a lot) of this is from UHI, but even the holy grail station of Olympia has seen significant summer low temp warming.

This is great

[AlTahoe]

Driest 1/1/22 - 3/23/22 ever recorded is actually covering a very large area of the west. Pretty impressive. 

[Timmy Supercell]

14 hours ago, Phil said:

Problem in the West/PNW has been the decline in precipitation during the summer months, when evaporation potential is high. Really need JJA precipitation to increase.

I think a good portion of it can be explained via natural variability, but it’s no less problematic.

 

 

Come to think of it, I guess there was only a few really good ones for summer precip. Despite 2011 having a pretty cool (or mild?) Summer, that one was dry as hell and didn't more than sprinkle when we had convection between June and October. lol 

2013, 2014, 2015 and 2017 were the wetter summers. 2011, and 2018 were equally as bad, even tho those were complete opposite type seasons. The former had no smoke, and the latter had lots of it. 

Edit - I also recall some frontal style rainfall in Junes of 2012/2013. That kind of precip stopped happening in the Basin after about May in that sort of fashion. The 'gloom' that isn't necessarily triggered by something stronger.

[MossMan]

Raining. 

[TacomaWaWx]

1 minute ago, MossMan said:

Raining. 

We managed to sneak in a decent sunrise down south here this morning. Got down to 41. 

[TT-SEA]

22 minutes ago, TacomaWaWx said:

We managed to sneak in a decent sunrise down south here this morning. Got down to 41. 

The sunrise was beautiful here!   Its a mild morning with a decent amount of sun now.    Looks like most of the rain will stay to the north and west of my area through the weekend now.  

I swear I see a tinge of green on the cottonwood trees behind our house this morning.    This pattern is just perfect for advancing the vegetation fairly quickly.    

[TT-SEA]

Our magnolia tree flowers are emerging this morning.   

[Phil]

10 hours ago, Skagit Weather said:

I have no idea how to look at the evolution of RH in the last couple decades, but in the last few summers it definitely feels like the dew point has been higher than previously. Probably one of the easier ways we could start to disentangle it would be to look at the evolution of summer low temperatures. Even if you'd expect summer temperatures (high and/or average) to be warming, you wouldn't exactly expect low temperatures to be warming if there was a drop in RH. That's not true. We see a relatively profound increase in low temperatures throughout the Western US (I only made graphs for stations in W. WA because I was lazy, but there's a clear trend in every station I checked from Vancouver, BC to Shasta, CA). Of course you could make an argument that a simple linear regression model based off individual years is not the best way to investigate this trend (which I agree with), but it is the easiest.

And you could argue some (if not a lot) of this is from UHI, but even the holy grail station of Olympia has seen significant summer low temp warming.

But low temperatures can absolutely increase with a drop in RH..especially if boundary layer mixing is increased (which is one way both UHI and GHG forcing keep surface temperatures higher at night).

And even if there is no change in RH, the relationship between evaporation and temperature/humidity is not linear..warming temps with no change in RH% will still accelerate evaporation.

And then there’s the question of cloud cover/insolation.

You’re probably thinking of specific humidity in your initial assumption, which I’d tend to agree with insofar as the boundary layer is concerned, but even that is dependent on a number of external variables.

[Phil]

There’s a reason summer 2019 saw a reduction in wildfire activity. It wasn’t some fluke.

Warm season precipitation/cloud cover/RH matters. The evidence is incontrovertible.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Long range GFS continues to be decent. 

[bainbridgekid]

17 minutes ago, Phil said:

There’s a reason summer 2019 saw a reduction in wildfire activity. It wasn’t some fluke.

Warm season precipitation/cloud cover/RH matters. The evidence is incontrovertible.

Is there anyone in the world who would dispute that? Dry, sunny, high fire danger weather increases the risk of fires. Not exactly controversial.

[Joshua Lake Oswego]

29 minutes ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

Long range GFS continues to be decent. 

<300 hours out continues to be sh*t