May Winter Continue 2022 PNW

[TT-SEA]

1 minute ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

A lot of transplants here who do not realize this is normal spring weather. 

But it's not.   It's been unusually cold since the end of March compared to climo.    And the rain has been much more persistent than climo.   And PDX had the wettest April ever and is already way ahead for May.   SEA is already wetter than normal for all of May.    Climo would be a significant improvement.   That is just a statistical fact.

[TT-SEA]

Last 3 12Z runs of the ECMWF for next Wednesday.    Need to kick that blocking high out of there.

[Cascadia_Wx]

5 minutes ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

A lot of transplants here who do not realize this is normal spring weather. 

It’s been on the cool and wet side but nowhere near as anomalous as the last ten or so warm seasons. 

[Cascadia_Wx]

1 hour ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

Don't worry, because 75% of people on this forum live within 30 minutes of Sea Tac, they will continue to discount our lived experience of last summer. 

The bulk of heat related deaths were in the Puget Sound region up through SW BC iirc 

[Phishy Wx]

why can't we get these persistent trough setups in January when it matters?

[TT-SEA]

Apparently because we had a 3-day extreme heat event last year... we should expect to be 10-15 degrees below normal with rain every day forever and that is just climo now.    Good luck with that.  

Something tells me that next spring the tables will be turned again.     We are likely through the worst part of this Nina payback.    The best of part of Nina years is July - September/October.    May is almost half over already.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

40 minutes ago, Cascadia_Wx said:

The bulk of heat related deaths were in the Puget Sound region up through SW BC iirc 

Yeah, but the Puget Sound was pretty much the one area of the PNW that did not have an all-time hot summer, and some on here like to dismiss how hot last summer was, outside of the freak June heat event. 

 

Look - Tim is doing it right now in the post directly above this one. 

Edited May 10, 2022 by SilverFallsAndrew

[SilverFallsAndrew]

46 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

But it's not.   It's been unusually cold since the end of March compared to climo.    And the rain has been much more persistent than climo.   And PDX had the wettest April ever and is already way ahead for May.   SEA is already wetter than normal for all of May.    Climo would be a significant improvement.   That is just a statistical fact.

Yes, it has been unusually cool and in many places wet. Maybe we end up having a top 20 cool spring regionally, though March was warm a lot of places, so even that is dubious. The mid-April cold snap was historic in spots, but not without precedent even in the past 15 years. PDX set a low hanging fruit wet record for April, SLE was 7th, which was more representative of NW Oregon. We will see where May ends up, I have my doubts it will be a top wet month most places, maybe top 10, unlikely to be top 5. So yes, anomalously cool and wet, but not extreme, if you look back through periods of record it's more a return to a more normal condition than anything else. 

I think some (many?) had just convinced themselves over the last few years that this kind of spring just wasn't going to happen anymore. But that kind of thinking is foolish and short sighted, don't be a prisoner of the moment, realize the wet/cool years will come, and the dry years will return. 

[TT-SEA]

11 minutes ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

Yes, it has been unusually cool and in many places wet. Maybe we end up having a top 20 cool spring regionally, though March was warm a lot of places, so even that is dubious. The mid-April cold snap was historic in spots, but not without precedent even in the past 15 years. PDX set a low hanging fruit wet record for April, SLE was 7th, which was more representative of NW Oregon. We will see where May ends up, I have my doubts it will be a top wet month most places, maybe top 10, unlikely to be top 5. So yes, anomalously cool and wet, but not extreme, if you look back through periods of record it's more a return to a more normal condition than anything else. 

I think some (many?) had just convinced themselves over the last few years that this kind of spring just wasn't going to happen anymore. But that kind of thinking is foolish and short sighted, don't be a prisoner of the moment, realize the wet/cool years will come, and the dry years will return. 

I think a few of you obsess over thinking that everyone was fooled.   Personally... I never doubted it would snap back.   There have been lots of record setting cold air masses over the last decade around the country and the world and its silly to think we are somehow immune from having a nasty spring or a wet, cool summer or arctic blasts.   Its all happened before and it will happen again.   

[Cascadia_Wx]

Classic anvil shaped thundercloud visible from Columbia Hills state Park this fine afternoon

[The Blob]

1 minute ago, Cascadia_Wx said:

Classic anvil shaped thundercloud visible from Columbia Hills state Park this fine afternoon

It looks really nice out there today.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

In the 2nd to last chapter of To A God Unknown, Joseph Wayne climbs atop a rock and essentially commits suicide to end a California mega drought. 

“I should have known,” he whispered. “I am the rain.” And yet he looked dully down the mountains of his body where the hills fell to an abyss. He felt the driving rain, and heard it whipping down, pattering on the ground. He saw his hills grow dark with moisture. Then a lancing pain shot through the heart of the world. “I am the land,” he said, “and I am the rain. The grass will grow out of me in a little while.”
And the storm thickened, and covered the world with darkness, and with the rush of waters.”
― John Steinbeck, To a God Unknown

[TacomaWaWx]

56 here another pretty nice day. 

[Phil]

 

[Kayla]

1 hour ago, TT-SEA said:

It would be nice for winter to end at least.    Something a little closer to normal.

 It has been nothing like winter there for the past 4 weeks. SEA hasn't had a high below 50 degrees in over 4 weeks and the last freeze was April 13th. You're just getting some cool wet Spring weather now.

[TT-SEA]

Just now, 1000'NorthBend said:

It is normal to have days/months with temps/precip above or below normal (long-term average). Temps above/below normal are 'climo', they're just not the exact average. Precip above/below normal are 'climo', they're just not the exact average. It is also normal to have days/months with temps/precip far above or below normal, they are just far less likely to occur.

Apologies for stating the obvious, but it seems like it is often ignored in the arguments here. 

Totally agree.   It also ebbs and flows in a fairly predictable way.    Nina springs are notoriously wet and cold.    This Nina spring is over in 3 weeks either way.    Paid our dues.   Doubt next year is a stong Nina again.  

[TT-SEA]

7 minutes ago, Kayla said:

 It has been nothing like winter there for the past 4 weeks. SEA hasn't had a high below 50 degrees in over 4 weeks and the last freeze was April 13th. Your are just getting some cool wet weather now.

You have snow on the ground!  

And it has been winter-like for sure.   Obviously statistically different than winter.    But it has rained on more days since late March than it does on average during the winter months... by a long shot.   That is part of the tangible experience... rain almost every day.    It happens at times and its been noticeable.    And its been cold.   With temps in the 40s for a good part of each day and at times during the middle of the day during heavy precip... and there was significant snow in April on several different days.    Pretty crazy.   Nina spring sure delivered this year.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

2 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

You have snow on the ground!  

And it has been winter-like for sure.   Obviously statistically different than winter.    But it has rained on more days since late March than it does on average during the winter months... by a long shot.   That is part of tangible experience... rain almost every day.    It happens at times and its been noticeable.    And its been cold.   With temps in the 40s for a good part of each day and at times during the middle of the day during heavy precip... and there was significant lowland snow in April on several different days.    Pretty crazy for sure.  

That's probably the downside of working from home. If you went to work 4-5 days a week, what it was doing in your specific rainy location, would be less relevant and less annoying. 

[Kayla]

1 minute ago, TT-SEA said:

You have snow on the ground!  

And it has been winter-like for sure.   Obviously statistically different than winter.    But it has rained on more days since late March than it does on average during the winter months... by a long shot.   That is part of tangible experience... rain almost every day.    It happens at times and its been noticeable.    And its been cold.   With temps in the 40s for a good part of each day and at times during the middle of the day during heavy precip... and there was significant lowland snow in April on several different days.    Pretty crazy for sure.  

I mean even here snow is also a very normal occurrence in the Spring but I was speaking of the SEA area when I mentioned SEA.

I think your issue is that you see rain as winter like because most of your rain comes in the Nov-Mar period. It's very SoCal like of you.

[Phil]

Still interested in the late May/early June time period, when the CCKW orbits back to the low pass in the IO and AAM snaps back.

I think there could be a significant western cold shot as a result. At which point there should be a renewed round of E-IO/Indo-Pacific constructive interference.

[TT-SEA]

1 minute ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

That's probably the downside of working from home. If you went to work 4-5 days a week, what it was doing in your specific rainy location, would be less relevant and less annoying. 

Doesn't matter.   I am comparing normal stats for my area to the actual weather.   

SEA also had rain on 24 days in April... OLM had rain on 27 days.     You can't argue that the rain has not been unusually persistent compared to climo.   We were due and its a Nina spring.    And it happened.   

 

[TT-SEA]

1 minute ago, Kayla said:

I mean even here snow is also a very normal occurrence in the Spring but I was speaking of the SEA area when I mentioned SEA.

I think your issue is that you see rain as winter like because most of your rain comes in the Nov-Mar period. It's very SoCal like of you.

That is a definitely an interesting aspect to this climate.   When it rains on 42 out of 45 days and its mostly cold... it seems like winter.    But even that would be an impressive stretch for winter.  

[SilverFallsAndrew]

1 minute ago, TT-SEA said:

Doesn't matter.   I am comparing normal stats for my area to the actual weather.   

SEA also had rain on 24 days in April... OLM had rain on 27 days.     You can't argue that the rain has not been unusually persistent compared to climo.   We were due and its a Nina spring.    And it happened.   

 

No one is saying it isn't rainy. 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Just now, TT-SEA said:

That is a definitely an interesting aspect to this climate.   When it rains on 42 out of 45 days and its mostly cold... it seems like winter.    But even that would be an impressive stretch for winter.  

Troughy patterns in spring are probably more likely to produce days with measurable rain due to the higher instances of convective precip in spring. 

[TT-SEA]

2 minutes ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

Troughy patterns in spring are probably more likely to produce days with measurable rain due to the higher instances of convective precip in spring. 

Climo is climo.   Its all built in.

The number of days with rain since late March has been way higher than normal for almost every location.    Its just statistics.    Nina payback.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

In the 40 day period beginning December 1st: 36/40 days had measurable precip, 22.75" precip. 31.1" snow

April 1- May 10th: 31/40 days had measurable precip. 16.43" precip. 18" snow. 

January 10-March 31st: 40/81 days had precip. 14.37: precip. 3.5: snow

 

Since December 1st:  107/161 days have had precip. 53.55" precip 52.6" snow

 

Edited May 10, 2022 by SilverFallsAndrew

[Meatyorologist]

47 minutes ago, Cascadia_Wx said:

Classic anvil shaped thundercloud visible from Columbia Hills state Park this fine afternoon

That is superb.

[TigerWoodsLibido]

EUG finishes the last 3 days at

-7.2F

-9.9F

-9.5F

Love it!! Hope the cool and wet conditions keep it going regionally!!!

[Meatyorologist]

Paying our dues?? Paying our dues??!!

If we were really “paying our dues”, Tim would throw himself out of a tenth story window.

Think a decade of the coldest summers ever recorded at Seattle. Think of 1954, where we topped out at 80°F flat twice and nothing more, where we only had a handful of days in the 70s, and then take that down a level further. A few lows in the 30s, several highs in the 50s. Then do that for around a decade. Then, one Winter following one of these Juneau transplant summers, drop an unthinkable airmass from the north, with four days in the single digits and lows nearing -5°F.

Then, follow it up with a couple decades of persistent cold-ish weather. Like a 1950s-70s repeat.

That would be paying our dues.

[Anti Marine Layer]

People with eczema probably prefer it to be cool and rainy 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

[TT-SEA]

13 minutes ago, Meatyorologist said:

Paying our dues?? Paying our dues??!!

If we were really “paying our dues”, Tim would throw himself out of a tenth story window.

Think a decade of the coldest summers ever recorded at Seattle. Think of 1954, where we topped out at 80°F flat twice and nothing more, where we only had a handful of days in the 70s, and then take that down a level further. A few lows in the 30s, several highs in the 50s. Then do that for around a decade. Then, one Winter following one of these Juneau transplant summers, drop an unthinkable airmass from the north, with four days in the single digits and lows nearing -5°F.

Then, follow it up with a couple decades of persistent cold-ish weather. Like a 1950s-70s repeat.

That would be paying our dues.

Dude... climate regime changes happen all the time.    Maybe the 1950s-1970s regime won't happen again for a hundred years.    Maybe we will go back to being tropical...or buried under thousand of feet in ice.   Whatever.    We can't see long term changes as they are happening... only in hindsight.

There is little doubt that this persistently rainy period will be offset because that is how patterns ebb and flow.   My entire point is that this Nina spring is almost over.    For better or worse... it will end in 3 weeks.  No arguing that fact.   And getting it out of the way feels good.  

I would prefer it not rain on 95% of the days.   Climo says it won't last.   

[SilverFallsAndrew]

NE Oklahoma has a week in the 90s coming up. Started early this year. Could be some record highs. 

My eldest kids are coming out for the summer this year. Wonder how they will respond to rain and highs in the 50s. 

Edited May 10, 2022 by SilverFallsAndrew

[Skagit Weather]

We can also look at anomalies numerically. Since we're talking about Puget Sound, we'll use the typical stand-in of SEA and look at the factors that most effect whether people think it's been a "bad spring," which are high temperature, total precipitation, and number of days of precipitation. This is for SEA from March 1st to May 9th showing 1980 to 2022 and the black line is a 30 year rolling average. None of these variables appear particularly extraordinary for any of the years recently, cold or hot and wet or dry.

Looking at each variable, the most anomalous years in the past decade were 2017 with almost 20 days more precipitation than usual, 2014 with more than twice as much precipitation as usual, and 2016 with high temperatures more than 6 degrees above average. Having 3 dry years in a row (2019-2021) I guess is also pretty unusual, but the departure in precipitation has happened frequently on the wet side as well.

Obviously this doesn't stand true for every station in the PNW and we can revisit it by the end of spring, but clearly this spring (and most of the other recent ones) have fallen within the normal weather variation of the climate. And yes, I looked at April 1st until today and the story was similar with only slightly larger anomalies for this year.

[TT-SEA]

We looked at 1999, 2008, and 2011 as recent analogs to this year.   Maybe another nasty Nina spring like this one is 2 or 3 years away... or 20 years away.    But its no longer due.   

[TT-SEA]

8 minutes ago, Skagit Weather said:

We can also look at anomalies numerically. Since we're talking about Puget Sound, we'll use the typical stand-in of SEA and look at the factors that most effect whether people think it's been a "bad spring," which are high temperature, total precipitation, and number of days of precipitation. This is for SEA from March 1st to May 9th showing 1980 to 2022 and the black line is a 30 year rolling average. None of these variables appear particularly extraordinary for any of the years recently, cold or hot and wet or dry.

Looking at each variable, the most anomalous years in the past decade were 2017 with almost 20 days more precipitation than usual, 2014 with more than twice as much precipitation as usual, and 2016 with high temperatures more than 6 degrees above average. Having 3 dry years in a row (2019-2021) I guess is also pretty unusual, but the departure in precipitation has happened frequently on the wet side as well.

Obviously this doesn't stand true for every station in the PNW and we can revisit it by the end of spring, but clearly this spring (and most of the other recent ones) have fallen within the normal weather variation of the climate. And yes, I looked at April 1st until today and the story was similar with only slightly larger anomalies for this year.

Good analysis.   We have had some wet springs for sure.  But even those wet years had some decent dry periods.   This year has been particularly bad in that regard.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Sea Tac only had measurable precip on 20 days in April. 

[BLI snowman]

I think we all sensed that "stoic" Tim would disappear pretty quickly at the earliest hint of the post-2013 warm season climate regime eroding somewhat....

[TT-SEA]

14 minutes ago, BLI snowman said:

I think we all sensed that "stoic" Tim would disappear pretty quickly at the earliest hint of the post-2013 warm season climate regime eroding somewhat....

Being stoic does not mean having no preferences.   I prefer nicer weather... but totally accept that this was due.    Not much else to say.     And there are many pre-2013 summers that I would prefer compared to what we have seen recently.   I am not a fan of extreme heat or smoke.     My preferences are much more nuanced than you like to pretend. 

[Phil]

1 hour ago, TT-SEA said:

Dude... climate regime changes happen all the time.    Maybe the 1950s-1970s regime won't happen again for a hundred years.    Maybe we will go back to being tropical...or buried under thousand of feet in ice.   Whatever.    We can't see long term changes as they are happening... only in hindsight.

There is little doubt that this persistently rainy period will be offset because that is how patterns ebb and flow.   My entire point is that this Nina spring is almost over.    For better or worse... it will end in 3 weeks.  No arguing that fact.   And getting it out of the way feels good.  

I would prefer it not rain on 95% of the days.   Climo says it won't last.   

What should be “offset” is the last decade of obscenely ridgy springs/summers. This pattern being the norm for the next 5+ summers would do the trick.

Thing is, these patterns don’t just happen randomly on a whim. There’s a definitive reason for the cool/troughy pattern this spring, and it looks to stick around awhile.

[TT-SEA]

Just now, Phil said:

What should be “offset” is the last decade of obscenely ridgy springs/summers.

Thing is, these patterns don’t just happen randomly on a whim. There’s a definitive reason for the cool/troughy pattern this spring, and it looks to stick around awhile.

I am not talking about the last decade.    And there are many pre-2013 summers that were preferable to the last decade.    No idea what nature plans to do.     But within a year... even the coldest Nina years... the patterns ebb and flow and there are nice periods.     We probably have that coming up... maybe July-Sept.