January Weather In The PNW 2024 (Part III) - The Warming Shot

[bainbridgekid]

Just now, MossMan said:

I had one in my truck this morning while in gridlock traffic trying to get to an appointment…Couldn’t get it though as it kept going down between the dash and windshield. I-5 southbound is shut down due to a fatality and I thought I would be smart by going through my old stomping grounds in Arlington to bypass but nope…Gridlock even on the out of the way roads. Finally gave up, cancelled my appointment and slowly made my way back north. 

I was skiing last Thursday at Stevens and there were some huge mayfly like bugs walking around on the snow. It was snowing pretty hard too. They had to have hatched way too early and been very confused.

[Phil]

15 minutes ago, Rubus Leucodermis said:

Gut feelings are a poor thing to base forecasts on.

They’ve led me astray many times.

Though enigmatically, there are infrequent occasions where I can look at a pattern and “see” where it’s going without knowing how/why. Key word is “infrequently” as it doesn’t happen often but it feels like some weird subconscious pattern recognition thing.

Problem is I have absolutely no idea how to access it, lol. It just turns on/off at will, without any input from my conscious mind. Which is why I’ve often distrusted and ignored it.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

8 hours ago, Cascadia_Wx said:

Has there been any sort of pushback, to restore the records to accuracy? Or are they just stuck that way forever now.

At least for now the original data still

exists in archived form. They’ve also erased the -12 at SLE and Eugene from 1972, or at least for a time they did. I talked to someone in the PDX nws office about it and they said they would try to address it, but it’s government so who knows what red tape they ran into. 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

16.92” of precip on the month. Should be able to hit 17”.

[MR.SNOWMIZER]

5 minutes ago, Cascadia_Wx said:

Bad snow pack years are a lot more common than they used to be. Then lately what snowpack we do have, even in a good year, has been getting quickly wiped out by our warm springs and summers. Not a great situation, but all of these things are symptomatic of the same overall issue, which is that the climate is warming.

Just in ten years i have seen several small lakes and large ponds dry up near my cabin. This is from low snowpack and warm springs for sure. Interesting to talk with the old timers up there, they say the top row of fencing was always buried back in the day and in the last 20 years that has stopped. This is just one area in  the state. What is sad is these small lakes in this area are home to 4 nesting pairs of loons and there is only 14 nesting pairs in eastern Washington. 

[Phil]

1 minute ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

At least for now the original data still

exists in archived form. They’ve also erased the -12 at SLE and Eugene from 1972, or at least for a time they did. I talked to someone in the PDX nws office about it and they said they would try to address it, but it’s government so who knows what red tape they ran into. 

Who makes the decision(s) to alter weather/climate records like that? You’d think there would at least be some reasoning that is explained to the public.

[Tyler Mode]

1 minute ago, Phil said:

Who makes the decision(s) to alter weather/climate records like that? You’d think there would at least be some reasoning that is explained to the public.

Maybe people trying to make it appear the climate ISN'T warming? 

[Phil]

6 minutes ago, MossMan said:

I had one in my truck this morning while in gridlock traffic trying to get to an appointment…Couldn’t get it though as it kept going down between the dash and windshield. I-5 southbound is shut down due to a fatality and I thought I would be smart by going through my old stomping grounds in Arlington to bypass but nope…Gridlock even on the out of the way roads. Finally gave up, cancelled my appointment and slowly made my way back north. 

Hoe often do you see skeeters in Jan? Earliest I’ve ever seen one previously is in March.

I hate that whiny buzzing noise they make next to my ears more than anything. It’s a stupid adaptation strategy too. Like, if you’re trying to go all dracula on me why alert me to your presence? Annoying little shits.

[Phil]

3 minutes ago, Tyler Mode said:

Maybe people trying to make it appear the climate ISN'T warming? 

Lol. Well I suppose it depends how long the period of record is.  

Kidding aside, absent an explanation I assume someone effed up or the data was lost somehow. But that’s just guess.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

6 minutes ago, Phil said:

Who makes the decision(s) to alter weather/climate records like that? You’d think there would at least be some reasoning that is explained to the public.

They claimed it was a quality control algorithm. It flags and erases data outside a reasonable standard deviation from climate history. Which makes no sense because it’s always cold records, I challenged this person at NWS to give me an example of one record high this had happened to and they couldn’t. It’s also ridiculous because both EUG and SLE have multiple sub zero lows in their climate history. I’m waiting for them to erase the June 2021 data…

[Rubus Leucodermis]

Sitting at 12.20" for the month here. Was expecting more, to be honest, given how the maps were showing the atmospheric rivers would track.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Just now, SilverFallsAndrew said:

They claimed it was a quality control algorithm. It flags and erases data outside a reasonable standard deviation from climate history. Which makes no sense because it’s always cold records, I challenged this person at NWS to give me an example of one record high this had happened to and they couldn’t. It’s also ridiculous because both EUG and SLE have multiple sub zero lows in their climate history. I’m waiting for them to erase the June 2021 data…

In these cases the data isn’t changed like the example of the high of 4 at BLI being changed to 40 it’s just listed as missing. I’ve seen it at too many stations to count. Sometimes the data is truly missing. There is missing data from December 1919 at Salem. That shows up in the original dataset. But a lot of the records around 1972 have been messed with at multiple stations.

[TacomaWx]

23 minutes ago, Cascadia_Wx said:

Bad snow pack years are a lot more common than they used to be. Then lately what snowpack we do have, even in a good year, has been getting quickly wiped out by our warm springs and summers. Not a great situation, but all of these things are symptomatic of the same overall issue, which is that the climate is warming.

No denying the earth is warming. Although to a few people that’s a controversial opinion

[TT-SEA]

15 minutes ago, MR.SNOWMIZER said:

Just in ten years i have seen several small lakes and large ponds dry up near my cabin. This is from low snowpack and warm springs for sure. Interesting to talk with the old timers up there, they say the top row of fencing was always buried back in the day and in the last 20 years that has stopped. This is just one area in  the state. What is sad is these small lakes in this area are home to 4 nesting pairs of loons and there is only 14 nesting pairs in eastern Washington. 

Anecdotal.   Actual data doesn't show much change over the last few decades.   But the bad Nino years stand out.  And that is not saying the climate is not warming overall.  

 

[TacomaWx]

32 minutes ago, Rubus Leucodermis said:

Gut feelings are a poor thing to base forecasts on.

More than a gut feeling…also El Niño climo which is giving me the gut feeling. Also just the incredible February run has to end eventually. 

[Phil]

25 minutes ago, Cascadia_Wx said:

Crazy, I was sure we were the only spot in the world that was torching.

Scandinavia isn’t torching! Their trough has been the most persistent feature in the entire NH this winter.

Which sucks for us here in North America. It’s a big player in these cycles of incessant, continent-wide blowtorches.

[Phil]

22 minutes ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

They claimed it was a quality control algorithm. It flags and erases data outside a reasonable standard deviation from climate history. Which makes no sense because it’s always cold records, I challenged this person at NWS to give me an example of one record high this had happened to and they couldn’t. It’s also ridiculous because both EUG and SLE have multiple sub zero lows in their climate history. I’m waiting for them to erase the June 2021 data…

If that is true, it is incompetence if not straight up negligence. You cannot run a “quality control algorithm” for 2m temps based on sigma levels alone. What kind of ridiculousness is this?

[MR.SNOWMIZER]

9 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

Anecdotal.   Actual data doesn't show much change over the last few decades.   But the bad Nino years stand out.  And that is not saying the climate is not warming overall.  

 

This has nothing to do with what i just said, The climate at crystal mountain and paradise has nothing to do with the area i am speaking off. I have seen drastic changes with my own eyes in ten years. we are talking small lakes you could row a boat in that are gone. 

[Phil]

13 minutes ago, TacomaWx said:

No denying the earth is warming. Although to a few people that’s a controversial opinion

Who here thinks that is a controversial opinion?

That’s like saying the fact water is wet is controversial.  

[Phil]

4 minutes ago, MR.SNOWMIZER said:

This has nothing to do with what i just said, The climate at crystal mountain and paradise has nothing to do with the area i am speaking off. I have seen drastic changes with my own eyes in ten years. we are talking small lakes you could row a boat in that are gone. 

There could be a number of reasons for that other than snowpack/snowmelt, though.

[Cascadia_Wx]

2 minutes ago, Phil said:

Who here thinks that is a controversial opinion?

That’s like saying the fact water is wet is controversial.  

There used to be this poster named StampedePhil who had some pretty strong opinions about it. 

[TT-SEA]

6 minutes ago, MR.SNOWMIZER said:

This has nothing to do with what i just said, The climate at crystal mountain and paradise has nothing to do with the area i am speaking off. I have seen drastic changes with my own eyes in ten years. we are talking small lakes you could row a boat in that are gone. 

Probably the result of warmer/drier warm seasons.   Actual winter snowfall in the mountains is not really dropping overall.  

[Phil]

1 minute ago, Cascadia_Wx said:

There used to be this poster named StampedePhil who had some pretty strong opinions about it. 

He might’ve been a controversial guy, but even he never suggested the planet wasn’t warming.

Anyone else?

[TacomaWx]

3 minutes ago, Phil said:

He might’ve been a controversial guy, but even he never suggested the planet wasn’t warming.

Anyone else?

I think the more controversial part isn’t the fact that the planet is warming…but how much of an impact humans are having on it. It seems pretty undeniable that the planet is warming.  

[MossMan]

35 minutes ago, Phil said:

Hoe often do you see skeeters in Jan? Earliest I’ve ever seen one previously is in March.

I hate that whiny buzzing noise they make next to my ears more than anything. It’s a stupid adaptation strategy too. Like, if you’re trying to go all dracula on me why alert me to your presence? Annoying little shits.

Don’t remember ever seeing them in January. 

[Phil]

1 hour ago, Cascadia_Wx said:

Bad snow pack years are a lot more common than they used to be. Then lately what snowpack we do have, even in a good year, has been getting quickly wiped out by our warm springs and summers. Not a great situation, but all of these things are symptomatic of the same overall issue, which is that the climate is warming.

Part of it is overall warming. But interdecadal variability has significantly augmented the warming/drying trend in the West, particularly since the turn of the century.

The 97/98 super niño (and the heavy 4 year niña regime that followed) was reflective of a broader interdecadal shift (inversion of LF tendency in the Walker/Hadley intensity ratio and seasonality of AMs) that has held to this day.

I don’t know when or how the climate system will reverse course, or even what to look for in advance, but when it does happen we probably won’t realize it until after the fact.

[T-Town]

31 minutes ago, TacomaWx said:

More than a gut feeling…also El Niño climo which is giving me the gut feeling. Also just the incredible February run has to end eventually. 

We’re due for a dud winter. We’ve been on a roll that last five or so years. I suppose the blast a couple weeks ago means we’re still due for a dud, but at my house at least Im sitting with a trace of snow this winter so kind of a dud in my book. 

[Rubus Leucodermis]

11 minutes ago, MossMan said:

Don’t remember ever seeing them in January. 

I remember hearing them on Bainbridge Island in 2017 before the big snows hit that February. Given the first snowfall was fairly early in the month, pretty sure that means I was hearing them in late January.

[TT-SEA]

Total snow over the next 10 days is pretty pathetic on the 12Z GFS and 12Z GEM even though the torching is about to end.    And I assume the GFS is probably being too optimistic as usual.    These could be 6-hour snowfall maps earlier this month but now its a 10-day total map.

[TacomaWx]

14 minutes ago, T-Town said:

We’re due for a dud winter. We’ve been on a roll that last five or so years. I suppose the blast a couple weeks ago means we’re still due for a dud, but at my house at least Im sitting with a trace of snow this winter so kind of a dud in my book. 

Yeah…unless we get something in the next few weeks the snowless part feels like a dud. I think the Arctic blast will be more appreciated in the future even by Puget sounders. The details just didn’t work out for us…but many people in the region besides us did pretty well with the blast. It was extremely top tier even without the snow. It’s definitely the best Arctic blast I’ve seen in my lifetime not even close really. 

[BLI snowman]

10 hours ago, Cascadia_Wx said:

Has there been any sort of pushback, to restore the records to accuracy? Or are they just stuck that way forever now.

I'm not aware of any, though I know they made an extensive QC effort a few years back which saw many of the older temperature records flagged. Some of the other examples around the region were McMinnville's -24 in December 1919, Longview's -20 in January 1930, and Moscow's -42 in December 1968. The Dalles had a number of their old records scrubbed, like -30 in 1919, -25 in 1930, and -21 in 1950. The Dalles one from 1950 is especially silly because you have Dallesport right across the river at -25 to corroborate it, but for whatever reason NOAA disagreed and just wiped them both off.

In some of these cases the thermometers were likely not placed correctly/overexposed and were reading a little too low, but some of the other examples such as The Dalles ones just seem like straight up negligence with any and all of the most extreme records getting scrubbed. I know Salem had the same issue with the -12 in December 1972, and it seems like QC recently restored that one back to its former glory and added it back into the record, so I know they do go back and peer review these flagged records.

The Bellingham number from 1950 is just comedy at this point because it's so clearly a ginormous error.  I am tempted to email them about it. ncei.redr.info@noaa.gov seems like the best point of contact to start out and hopefully they can get in touch with the QC division.

Edited January 30 by BLI snowman

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Btw I heard frogs when I returned home last night. 

[bainbridgekid]

At 11 PM last night, Everett was 61 degrees and gusting to 40 mph. Explains all the branches I saw down this morning.

[BLI snowman]

2 hours ago, Front Ranger said:

What about the days following, are those accurate? I see Clearbrook was not quite as cold on the 13th (high of 8), but then colder than what the records show for BLI for a few days after. 

The low on the 14th is marked as missing from BLI's dataset (looks like the low was 3) but everything else looks accurate.

Wunderground went to hell in a handbasket but you can still at least check the historical temp observations if you look up a specific date.

https://www.wunderground.com/history/daily/us/wa/bellingham/KBLI/date/1950-1-13

Side note, I also forgot about this nice archive of clippings that UW saved from the Bellingham Herald that month. Fun to look through if you have time.

https://atmos.uw.edu/marka/bham_herald_jan50.cgi

 

[bainbridgekid]

I can't square these two things in my mind. 

Special Weather Statement
National Weather Service Seattle WA
401 PM PST Mon Jan 29 2024

...HEAVY RAINFALL OVER THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS WILL LEAD TO AN
INCREASED THREAT OF LANDSLIDES IN WESTERN WASHINGTON...

Rainfall of one to five inches over the past three days has
increased soil moisture to high levels across western Washington.
Heavy rainfall of one to three inches is expected over the next
several days.

This amount of rain will put extra pressure on soil instability,
leading to an increased threat of landslides.

 

[Port Angeles Foothiller]

3 minutes ago, bainbridgekid said:

I can't square these two things in my mind. 

Special Weather Statement
National Weather Service Seattle WA
401 PM PST Mon Jan 29 2024

...HEAVY RAINFALL OVER THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS WILL LEAD TO AN
INCREASED THREAT OF LANDSLIDES IN WESTERN WASHINGTON...

Rainfall of one to five inches over the past three days has
increased soil moisture to high levels across western Washington.
Heavy rainfall of one to three inches is expected over the next
several days.

This amount of rain will put extra pressure on soil instability,
leading to an increased threat of landslides.

 

It feels like this is based on runs from a week ago. Really odd

[RentonHill]

1 hour ago, TT-SEA said:

Probably the result of warmer/drier warm seasons.   Actual winter snowfall in the mountains is not really dropping overall.  

Timing could play a role too. It probably only takes a couple of warm and dry super duds to permanently erase certain features, like ponds, etc., unless there's a proportionate flip back. Spring 2021 saw super low precip followed by a 2015 equivalent summer. Overall snowfall may not be changed but snow depth, when it matters, could be lower due to more ARs etc. Unfortunately, it seems like good snow depth measurements are hard to come by for non-mountain peak areas and on the east side. Summers are warmer and last longer as we don't seem to be getting any cool/wet late summers that were more frequent during the 50s-80s. 

No spring snow from 2019-2022

Obvious floor in temps for Aug/Sep months since 1990 or so.

Three dust bowl hot summers in a row with low spring precip. 

 

 

[ShawniganLake]

3 hours ago, MR.SNOWMIZER said:

Just in ten years i have seen several small lakes and large ponds dry up near my cabin. This is from low snowpack and warm springs for sure. Interesting to talk with the old timers up there, they say the top row of fencing was always buried back in the day and in the last 20 years that has stopped. This is just one area in  the state. What is sad is these small lakes in this area are home to 4 nesting pairs of loons and there is only 14 nesting pairs in eastern Washington. 

Bare ground right now near our Cabin at Watch Lake BC. 3500ft in the south Cariboo region.  We have a lot of loons up there.  My kids like trying to call them, sometimes it almost seems like they do call back.  They are incredible swimmers underwater, we often see them swim under our dock and they will pop up a few hundred feet away a minute or so later.  
 

[ShawniganLake]

Incredible warmth on the Canadian Prairies. 66F at Maple Creek Saskatchewan.  That’s up 111F from their low in mid January.  

[bainbridgekid]

8 minutes ago, ShawniganLake said:

Incredible warmth on the Canadian Prairies. 66F at Maple Creek Saskatchewan.  That’s up 111F from their low in mid January.  

850mb temps are +18 right now 100's of miles North of the Montana/Saskatchewan border.