September 2023 Weather in the PNW

[Phishy Wx]

dang its pouring and 48

[SilverFallsAndrew]

48 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

Not allowed to post SEA stats?   

You don't seem to have a problem with all the PDX and SLE stats posted here.  

I love the Seattle stats! 

[TT-SEA]

2 minutes ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

I love the Seattle stats! 

 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

12 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

 

Did you take that picture of me this morning?! 

[Port Angeles Foothiller]

0.17 since Saturday. 0.48 for the month. This place is going to enter extreme drought territory 

[TT-SEA]

3 minutes ago, Port Angeles Foothiller said:

0.17 since Saturday. 0.48 for the month. This place is going to enter extreme drought territory 

That really sucks.     Pretty sure there has been more than .17 here in just the last hour.   

[Rubus Leucodermis]

8 minutes ago, Port Angeles Foothiller said:

0.17 since Saturday. 0.48 for the month. This place is going to enter extreme drought territory 

Rain shadow + screw the north = parched.

At least I’m not in a rain shadow. The dregs of the recent storms have been enough to moisten things up here. Plus, it’s been cool enough that there hasn’t been a lot of evaporation.

[Front Ranger]

12 hours ago, RentonHill said:

Hey how’s Denver’s 2023 shaping up so far??

Mostly cooler than normal through July, last couple months have been warm. Very wet and stormy late spring/early summer.

Indian summer in full swing now...hopefully a return to fall-like weather at some point in early October.

[MossMan]

Nice morning. 

[Front Ranger]

4 hours ago, TT-SEA said:

SEA is now at 3 inches of rain for September with heavy rain moving in again.

3+ inches of rain at SEA in September is not too common... its happened 14 times since 1945.    It did not happen at all from 1982-1996 including 3 years in that period when September was almost totally dry (1990, 1991, 1993).    But has now happened 5 times just since 2010.    A wet September seems to be a little more common in our new climate regime (last year being a notable exception).

The all time record for September was set in 2013 with 6.17 inches at SEA.   Of course that was followed by an extremely dry October - December that year.

Yeah, regionally the only very dry and blowtorchy September the past 10 years was 2022. 2020 was very warm but ended up wetter than normal most places, and 2014 was also very warm but not that dry.

Far different story than July/August, and to a lesser extent June.

[Anti Marine Layer]

I guess Phil was right. No monsoon this year with the 4CH dead by early September. Better luck next year.

[ShawniganLake]

Long range GFS looks ridgy.  

[Skagit Weather]

4 hours ago, TT-SEA said:

SEA is now at 3 inches of rain for September with heavy rain moving in again.

3+ inches of rain at SEA in September is not too common... its happened 14 times since 1945.    It did not happen at all from 1982-1996 including 3 years in that period when September was almost totally dry (1990, 1991, 1993).    But has now happened 5 times just since 2010.    A wet September seems to be a little more common in our new climate regime (last year being a notable exception).

The all time record for September was set in 2013 with 6.17 inches at SEA.   Of course that was followed by an extremely dry October - December that year.

There are 16 years on record (including this year) with more than 3" at SEA.

There are 21 years on record with less than 0.85" (about 50% of average) at SEA.

4 of those years with less than 0.85" have occurred since 2010 so I'm not sure you could make a strong argument that wet Septembers are now more common than dry Septembers.

And if you wanted to reach back towards 2000 (instead of 2010), there have been 8 years with less than 0.85" (9 with less than 0.89") compared to only 6 with more than 3" at SEA.

But wait, you argue! This is an unfair comparison! Let's make it completely unbiased and select values based on percentiles.

So, if you select the wettest 10% of years and driest 10% of Septembers at SEA (~80 years of record so top 8 years), 2 years since 2000 make it into the wettest 10% and 2 years since 2000 make it into the driest 10%. If you select the upper and lower quartile (25% and 75% or the wettest 20 years and driest 20 years), 8 years since 2000 make it into the wettest quartile, and 7 years since 2000 make it into the driest quartile.

[Port Angeles Foothiller]

1 hour ago, Rubus Leucodermis said:

Rain shadow + screw the north = parched.

At least I’m not in a rain shadow. The dregs of the recent storms have been enough to moisten things up here. Plus, it’s been cool enough that there hasn’t been a lot of evaporation.

We average 31” a year here. Sitting at 7.4” YTD right now…

[Chewbacca Defense]

.03" so far today, and that was in the form of drizzle around daybreak.  The sun is out now, and its actually looking to be a pretty nice day.  The .03" brings me to 1.81" for the month, 16.3" for the year.

[Snownerd3000]

15 minutes ago, ShawniganLake said:

Long range GFS looks ridgy.  

What time frame? You talking hr 360 at the end of the 12z or further out?

[ShawniganLake]

12 minutes ago, Snownerd3000 said:

What time frame? You talking hr 360 at the end of the 12z or further out?

It’s basically dry and ridgy days 8-16. 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Another 1/2” overnight. 1.78” since Saturday. The land is green and lush again. 

[the_convergence_zone]

0.58" today brings me to 2.82" this week and 3.50" for the month. 

That's also a bit low -- I had my weather station logger plugged into the wrong side of the battery backup and lost about 30 minutes of data during moderate rain when power went out this morning. So I might have gotten close to 3 inches this week. 

[The Blob]

Been very windy here today.

[TT-SEA]

56 minutes ago, Skagit Weather said:

There are 16 years on record (including this year) with more than 3" at SEA.

There are 21 years on record with less than 0.85" (about 50% of average) at SEA.

4 of those years with less than 0.85" have occurred since 2010 so I'm not sure you could make a strong argument that wet Septembers are now more common than dry Septembers.

And if you wanted to reach back towards 2000 (instead of 2010), there have been 8 years with less than 0.85" (9 with less than 0.89") compared to only 6 with more than 3" at SEA.

But wait, you argue! This is an unfair comparison! Let's make it completely unbiased and select values based on percentiles.

So, if you select the wettest 10% of years and driest 10% of Septembers at SEA (~80 years of record so top 8 years), 2 years since 2000 make it into the wettest 10% and 2 years since 2000 make it into the driest 10%. If you select the upper and lower quartile (25% and 75% or the wettest 20 years and driest 20 years), 8 years since 2000 make it into the wettest quartile, and 7 years since 2000 make it into the driest quartile.

Must have missed one...its happened 15 times before this year.   

[Front Ranger]

39 minutes ago, ShawniganLake said:

It’s basically dry and ridgy days 8-16. 

Not much of a signal in the ensemble mean.

[the_convergence_zone]

26 minutes ago, Front Ranger said:

Not much of a signal in the ensemble mean.

It's averaging out two different pathways. I see it as a coin toss right now between a return to mild and dry or continued troughing. The trend has been more toward the warm/dry solution lately. 

[Snownerd3000]

1 hour ago, ShawniganLake said:

It’s basically dry and ridgy days 8-16. 

Good thing all we have to do is wait for the 18z to change its mind lol.  The 6z run looked way wetter than the 12z

[MossMan]

Looking like fall at Paine Field! 

[the_convergence_zone]

31 minutes ago, Snownerd3000 said:

Good thing all we have to do is wait for the 18z to change its mind lol.  The 6z run looked way wetter than the 12z

 

[Rubus Leucodermis]

2 hours ago, Port Angeles Foothiller said:

We average 31” a year here. Sitting at 7.4” YTD right now…

That is astoundingly dry. YVR is at 17.79" YTD.

[Phil]

 

4 hours ago, TT-SEA said:

Not allowed to post SEA stats?   

You don't seem to have a problem with all the PDX and SLE stats posted here.  

Andrew’s just jealous ur getting so much rain.

1 hour ago, Front Ranger said:

Not much of a signal in the ensemble mean.

There is a STJ/-EPO undercut signal there. Even with anomalies washed out you can see what the pattern is trying to do.

[the_convergence_zone]

Even with 3 inches of rain this week you can stick a shovel in the ground and find bone dry soil about 5 inches below the surface. It will eventually soak down a little more but the natural spring behind my house usually doesn't start running December. 

[Phishy Wx]

wee bit breezy out there

[iFred]

25 minutes ago, Phil said:

 

Andrew’s just jealous ur getting so much rain.

There is a STJ/-EPO undercut signal there. Even with anomalies washed out you can see what the pattern is trying to do.

Save the Tim snark for the first week of December when he is trying to tell us that the Belarusian 11z showing highs in the 80s for Seattle are in line with his Euro cloud maps.

[Skagit Weather]

43 minutes ago, Rubus Leucodermis said:

That is astoundingly dry. YVR is at 17.79" YTD.

BLI is still only at 9.45" on the year, although as mentioned before I think that number is pretty suspect.

[Phil]

3 minutes ago, Skagit Weather said:

BLI is still only at 9.45" on the year, although as mentioned before I think that number is pretty suspect.

That seems borderline impossible. Maybe during the last ice age.

[SouthHillFrosty]

.64 today alone. Nice active day. Feels like a late fall day.

[NorthBend RainEnthusiast]

15 minutes ago, Skagit Weather said:

BLI is still only at 9.45" on the year, although as mentioned before I think that number is pretty suspect.

Doesn't look that suspect to me, with respect to other stations west of I-5. In fact, there is a range from BLI (north) to Port Townsend (south) that all are around 5 to 10" for the year. This includes Stanwood (west of I-5), Camano Island, Sequim, Whidbey Island. Chuckanut Drive has a couple readings that are similar too (8.90" and 8.46")

11 minutes ago, Phil said:

That seems borderline impossible. Maybe during the last ice age.

Arrogant statement, given that it's literally what the data shows and your demonstrated poor understanding of PNW geography. 

1.21" today, 5.82" on the month, and still raining  

[TT-SEA]

33 minutes ago, iFred said:

Save the Tim snark for the first week of December when he is trying to tell us that the Belarusian 11z showing highs in the 80s for Seattle are in line with his Euro cloud maps.

Definitely!    

Maybe 10 years ago.   

[Rubus Leucodermis]

22 minutes ago, Phil said:

That seems borderline impossible. Maybe during the last ice age.

BLI airport gets 34.71"/year on average:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellingham,_Washington#Climate

The figure of 17.79" I gave was for YVR airport, which gets 46.81"/year on average:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver#Climate

In other words, BLI gets on average 74.15% as much rain as does YVR. 74.15% of 17.79 is 13.19". So yes, the reported figure is on the low side, though perhaps not so astoundingly so as one might expect. Remember, November and December are two of our wettest months.

[TT-SEA]

1 hour ago, the_convergence_zone said:

 

No ridgy signal on the 12Z EPS...

[TT-SEA]

7 minutes ago, Rubus Leucodermis said:

BLI airport gets 34.71"/year on average:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellingham,_Washington#Climate

The figure of 17.79" I gave was for YVR airport, which gets 46.81"/year on average:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver#Climate

In other words, BLI gets on average 74.15% as much rain as does YVR. 74.15% of 17.79 is 13.19". So yes, the reported figure is on the low side, though perhaps not so astoundingly so as one might expect. Remember, November and December are two of our wettest months.

I am sure its related to the same reason @Port Angeles Foothiller has received such little rain this year as well.  

[SouthHillFrosty]

Went into the office today for the first time in six months.... what a weird feeling.