December 2023 Weather in the PNW

[Anti Marine Layer]

Christmas sorta rhymes with sickness.

[Anti Marine Layer]

Fire is sorta good for nature

https://phys.org/news/2023-12-twenty-year-california-forests-healthier-thinned.html

[Anti Marine Layer]

20 minutes ago, Deweydog said:

Shoulda got the jab…

Not much worse than an annoying cold 

 

 

[Anti Marine Layer]

I think Phil got it really bad. Not sure if he had the jab or not.

[Phishy Wx]

<<<<<<<<<-----------  Have never had Covid (or the flu for that matter)  got all the jabs

[Slushy Inch]

Deep trough getting close. And it fades.

[TT-SEA]

52 minutes ago, Anti Marine Layer said:

Fire is sorta good for nature

https://phys.org/news/2023-12-twenty-year-california-forests-healthier-thinned.html

Indeed... that is the double-edged sword of over-controlling.    Losing a forested area to fire is just part of nature's way of making a healthier forest. The forest is not actually destroyed even though we mourn it as destroyed because we view things through the lens of our short time here.  

[Anti Marine Layer]

20 minutes ago, Slushy Inch said:

Deep trough getting close. And it fades.

Christmas colors

[FroYoBro]

1 hour ago, Slushy Inch said:

PTO today and tomorrow. So I’ll be able to fully obsess over the models, especially the weeklies.

Too bad there is nothing interesting to track still…

[SilverFallsAndrew]

2 hours ago, Kayla said:

Going to take a Christmas miracle to avoid seeing the least snowiest Nov-Dec on record here. Bozeman has only seen a whopping 2.2" snowfall (with 0.71" of precip) since Nov 1st. Just last year we had 54" in the same period. 

All-time record warm December also looks to be a lock along with the Nov-Dec period. I knew this winter was going to be bad but this has been downright ugly. We'll be right back into a severe drought soon if things do not turn around soon.

Time for us all to go to Anchorage. 

[Slushy Inch]

1 minute ago, FroYoBro said:

Too bad there is nothing interesting to track still…

Yeah nothing interesting in non clown range. Mountain snow though.

[Rubus Leucodermis]

Looking very mild for Christmas Day in much of Oregon.

[Rubus Leucodermis]

One year ago today:

[TT-SEA]

5 minutes ago, Rubus Leucodermis said:

One year ago today:

One year ago today here...

[Anti Marine Layer]

1 hour ago, Phishy Wx said:

<<<<<<<<<-----------  Have never had Covid (or the flu for that matter)  got all the jabs

----------->>>>>>>>>> That @Phil

Are you also Phil?

[Slushy Inch]

Ugliest attempt at a retrogression and cold pattern I’ve ever seen.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Can we please not have a horrible pattern. 

[Front Ranger]

40 minutes ago, Rubus Leucodermis said:

Looking very mild for Christmas Day in much of Oregon.

I'll be right near that 57!

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Just now, Front Ranger said:

I'll be right near that 57!

Eugenio?!

[Omegaraptor]

 

Timberline Lodge right now. Pretty sad for the winter solstice.

[Rubus Leucodermis]

Hmmm, possibilities?

Quite marginal based on modelled temperatures, though. And it won’t last.

 

[Front Ranger]

4 minutes ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

Eugenio?!

Just outside of it. My brother bought a new place there this year and is hosting everyone.

[Front Ranger]

Euro shows a much colder and stormier pattern for the lower 48 by end of the year. Canada continues to roast.

[Rubus Leucodermis]

1 minute ago, Front Ranger said:

Euro shows a much colder and stormier pattern for the lower 48 by end of the year. Canada continues to roast.

Looks very Niño-ish to me, at least in the West.

[BLI snowman]

1 minute ago, Omegaraptor said:

 

Timberline Lodge right now. Pretty sad for the winter solstice.

The last act of The Shining would have been a little less climactic if they had filmed it this winter.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Just now, Front Ranger said:

Euro shows a much colder and stormier pattern for the lower 48 by end of the year. Canada continues to roast.

Looks pretty meh here. 

[Phil]

2 hours ago, Anti Marine Layer said:

I think Phil got it really bad. Not sure if he had the jab or not.

Mild case.

[Phil]

20 minutes ago, Rubus Leucodermis said:

Looks very Niño-ish to me, at least in the West.

Yep. Mediocre mid-latitude cool anomalies with STJ + no arctic source is the epitome of El Niño.

[T-Town]

28 minutes ago, BLI snowman said:

The last act of The Shining would have been a little less climactic if they had filmed it this winter.

Jack chases Danny through the maze as a light rain gently falls on the greenery. Danny escapes and Jack gives up and dies of sadness. 
 

Yep, not as good. 

[Deweydog]

Forty years ago (yikes!) RIGHT NOW the mother of all -EPO’s was taking hold! In keeping with the recent animal motif, I remember riding with my dad on a snowy/windy 24th to Olney to pick up a kitten for my sister for Xmas. The cat, Noel, ended up living until New Year’s Day 2000, which a few days earlier was modeled to be VERY cold!

Extra points for anyone here whose actually been to Olney.

[TT-SEA]

Took this pic coming back home from NB.  Driveways really look like it just rained despite being totally sunny for two days now.   Low sun angle and lack of east wind.   Roads are dry due to traffic but it is interesting how damp it stays at this time of year in the absence of any wind.  Also the grass is really green for late December.   Just barely touched the freezing point only a couple times this month.

[Slushy Inch]

Little bit cooler weeklies. Will be our best chance for snow for the winter. Control run brings a couple windstorms. At the least the weather could be active. 

[Slushy Inch]

Trend visualized, certainly looks better. Next few days could see more cold members.

[Anti Marine Layer]

58 minutes ago, Phil said:

Mild case.

I though you got a really bad sore throat

[Front Ranger]

1 hour ago, Rubus Leucodermis said:

Looks very Niño-ish to me, at least in the West.

Yep, looks like a decent STJ finally kicking in.

[Brian_in_Leavenworth]

2 hours ago, TT-SEA said:

Indeed... that is the double-edged sword of over-controlling.    Losing a forested area to fire is just part of nature's way of making a healthier forest. The forest is not actually destroyed even though we mourn it as destroyed because we view things through the lens of our short time here.  

In Leavenworth there is a display Downtown about forest fires.  It mentions how the early settlers easily traversed through the forests because the trees were more spread apart and there wasn't a lot of dense underbrush.

Then came decades of putting out every fire.  In 1994, there was several major fires around Leavenworth, the entire town was evacuated, and fire crews from all around the nation came to help, thousands of firefighters. 

When it was done, they found a tree that had burned, and the tree rings showed that it had survived fires about every 10 years, until the late 1800's, then there was no fire for over 100 years until 1994. By then there were so many trees and dense underbrush that the fire was extremely hot, and it could not survive.

The fires that it had survived previously were less intensive, encountered fewer trees and less underbrush, and the tree easily survived.  The fire effectively reduced the underbrush and got rid of dead and dying trees.  That is what a healthy forest us supposed to look like.

[TT-SEA]

6 minutes ago, Brian_in_Leavenworth said:

In Leavenworth there is a display Downtown about forest fires.  It mentions how the early settlers easily traversed through the forests because the trees were more spread apart and there wasn't a lot of dense underbrush.

Then came decades of putting out every fire.  In 1994, there was several major fires around Leavenworth, the entire town was evacuated, and fire crews from all around the nation came to help, thousands of firefighters. 

When it was done, they found a tree that had burned, and the tree rings showed that it had survived fires about every 10 years, until the late 1800's, then there was no fire for over 100 years until 1994. By then there were so many trees and dense underbrush that the fire was extremely hot, and it could not survive.

The fires that it had survived previously were less intensive, encountered fewer trees and less underbrush, and the tree easily survived.  The fire effectively reduced the underbrush and got rid of dead and dying trees.  That is what a healthy forest us supposed to look like.

Very interesting.   

I remember reading about the 1994 fire when we were in Leavenworth on one of those informational displays and then looked it up online.

[Front Ranger]

1 hour ago, Deweydog said:

Forty years ago (yikes!) RIGHT NOW the mother of all -EPO’s was taking hold! In keeping with the recent animal motif, I remember riding with my dad on a snowy/windy 24th to Olney to pick up a kitten for my sister for Xmas. The cat, Noel, ended up living until New Year’s Day 2000, which a few days earlier was modeled to be VERY cold!

Extra points for anyone here whose actually been to Olney.

Given I was a baby, I remember nothing of this event.

However, it was probably the most impressive Arctic event in Denver history. Four straight days with highs below zero, including a high of -8 on the day referenced above. 

That month was just insanely, record cold for much of the nation. Sioux Falls, SD (I believe our poster @hawkstwelve lives there now) had a monthly high temp of just 27 degrees, and an average temp of 2.1 degrees, over 17 degrees below normal.

[Poulsbo Snowman]

1 hour ago, Deweydog said:

Forty years ago (yikes!) RIGHT NOW the mother of all -EPO’s was taking hold! In keeping with the recent animal motif, I remember riding with my dad on a snowy/windy 24th to Olney to pick up a kitten for my sister for Xmas. The cat, Noel, ended up living until New Year’s Day 2000, which a few days earlier was modeled to be VERY cold!

Extra points for anyone here whose actually been to Olney.

I fondly remember this.  I was in Boise with single digit day time highs, and negative below zero temps, with more than a foot of the hardest snow you will ever see on the ground.  It lasted, I believe until around just after New Years.   As the warm air approached, it snowed huge flakes--bigger than I have ever seen for about 2 hours--then transitioned to heavy rain.  My parents basement was flooded with more than a foot of water from the melting snow and rain.   They moved out of the house 2 years later.

[Deweydog]

23 minutes ago, Front Ranger said:

Given I was a baby, I remember nothing of this event.

However, it was probably the most impressive Arctic event in Denver history. Four straight days with highs below zero, including a high of -8 on the day referenced above. 

That month was just insanely, record cold for much of the nation. Sioux Falls, SD (I believe our poster @hawkstwelve lives there now) had a monthly high temp of just 27 degrees, and an average temp of 2.1 degrees, over 17 degrees below normal.

Could be argued that the event underperformed out here given how ridiculous the longwave pattern was. The transition event was close to being something truly epic, just a teency bit too much in the way of westward digging. I believe the forecast was pretty ominous up until a day or so out.