February 2024 Weather in the PNW

[Meatyorologist]

6 hours ago, Phishy Wx said:

that won't translate to the surface until early March

Right on time

[Meatyorologist]

2 hours ago, Phil said:

January was a bottom-up, reflective SSW. Almost no lag whatsoever.

You are correct that the “lag time” can vary wildly. It can be up to 2+ months in poorly coupled years!

On the other hand, there can be *negative* lags in hyper-extreme, stacked wave breaking regimes. Late Jan/early Feb 1989 is one example of that, where the tropospheric pattern actually led the stratosphere (that was the strongest SSW in history too). That was such an unbelievable pattern..one that probably won’t be replicated for a long time.

The more and more I learn about SSW's, the more I realize the warming and wind reversal are a small part of a much larger, more interconnected event. Hard to say whether the troposphere or the stratosphere guides it...a chicken and egg situation. Or perhaps those are two elements of a larger behavior which the atmosphere undergoes during the right circumstances.

I'm just an uninformed spitballer here. But I'd be shocked if the leading experts in the field even had a marginal grasp on how they work... And I'm guessing you share the same perspective as well, albeit with a few more acronyms and a couple years of grad school stuffed in your back pocket... 

[Cascadia_Wx]

Managed to fall to 39 by midnight here. 55/39 on the day.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Down to 36 at SLE. The nightmare begins to ebb. 

[snow_wizard]

9 minutes ago, ShawniganLake said:

You wouldn’t like it here.  I haven’t seen 2 strong thunderstorms in a decade.  And depending on your definition of “strong”, I could say I haven’t seen 2 strong thunderstorms in my life.  

We can get the spectacular high based thunderstorms like they see in the Desert SW from time to time.  I'll never forget the 18 hour marathon in July 2008.  Totally epic.  We then had a much shorter but dazzling display in August that same year.  I can remember most of the greats, because they don't happen very often.

Very oddly I remember a great one when me and my family were in Nanaimo way back in the late 70s or so.  Just a total coincidence we were in your neck of the woods and there was a big storm that night.

[snow_wizard]

1 minute ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

Down to 36 at SLE. The nightmare begins to ebb. 

It is getting better.

[ShawniganLake]

2 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

We can get the spectacular high based thunderstorms like they see in the Desert SW from time to time.  I'll never forget the 18 hour marathon in July 2008.  Totally epic.  We then had a much shorter but dazzling display in August that same year.  I can remember most of the greats, because they don't happen very often.

Very oddly I remember a great one when me and my family were in Nanaimo way back in the late 70s or so.  Just a total coincidence we were in your neck of the woods and there was a big storm that night.

Pretty good viewing if the storm is off to your east in the Nanaimo area. 

[snow_wizard]

9 minutes ago, Meatyorologist said:

The more and more I learn about SSW's, the more I realize the warming and wind reversal are a small part of a much larger, more interconnected event. Hard to say whether the troposphere or the stratosphere guides it...a chicken and egg situation. Or perhaps those are two elements of a larger behavior which the atmosphere undergoes during the right circumstances.

I'm just an uninformed spitballer here. But I'd be shocked if the leading experts in the field even had a marginal grasp on how they work... And I'm guessing you share the same perspective as well, albeit with a few more acronyms and a couple years of grad school stuffed in your back pocket... 

It is very interesting stuff.   It has been hard to not notice the connection this decade though.  It probably doesn't always work out so well for us, but it sure has lately.

[snow_wizard]

ECMWF control wanting to go somewhere again.  We have also had a couple of interesting CFS runs recently.

[Phil]

38 minutes ago, Meatyorologist said:

The more and more I learn about SSW's, the more I realize the warming and wind reversal are a small part of a much larger, more interconnected event. Hard to say whether the troposphere or the stratosphere guides it...a chicken and egg situation. Or perhaps those are two elements of a larger behavior which the atmosphere undergoes during the right circumstances.

I'm just an uninformed spitballer here. But I'd be shocked if the leading experts in the field even had a marginal grasp on how they work... And I'm guessing you share the same perspective as well, albeit with a few more acronyms and a couple years of grad school stuffed in your back pocket... 

Best analogy I can think of is kicking a ball up a hill. If you don’t kick it hard enough, it will just roll back down the hill. But kick it hard enough, and it will reach the top of the hill and roll back down on the other side.

In this case, the kicking of the ball itself is wave driving from the troposphere. The process leading to a SSW always begins in the troposphere, in that sense.

Usually, this wave driving (kicking) isn’t strong enough to break the vortex, and it simply resists, and there is no additional effect on the troposphere (ball rolls back down the hill).

But when this wave driving (kick) is sufficiently strong, it deforms the vortex past a threshold at which it self-destructs and breaks apart. This thermomechanically projects into the troposphere with time, with prolonged impacts on worldwide weather patterns (ball reaches the top of the hill and rolls back down the other side).

So essentially, yes the process begins in the troposphere, but once the stratosphere is pushed beyond a certain point, this feeds back into troposphere with major effects over vast spatiotemporal scales. A SSW is actually a very violent, entropic process unlike anything else in the climate system.

[Meatyorologist]

39 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

We can get the spectacular high based thunderstorms like they see in the Desert SW from time to time.  I'll never forget the 18 hour marathon in July 2008.  Totally epic.  We then had a much shorter but dazzling display in August that same year.  I can remember most of the greats, because they don't happen very often.

Very oddly I remember a great one when me and my family were in Nanaimo way back in the late 70s or so.  Just a total coincidence we were in your neck of the woods and there was a big storm that night.

I might be wrong, but the July 2008 outbreak might be the very event which got me into the weather.

What I do know is that it was a thunderstorm during the summer when I was six or seven. The lightning was so close and so numerous, and during the afternoon too, with sheets of rain. At first I was scared, then quickly, well.... I'm here now.

I think it was inevitable. If it weren't that storm, it would've been the next. I was always fascinated with flowing water and the patterns in nature as a kid. Seeing its true power for the first time was an enthralling experience.

[Phil]

Wang et al 2020 is a great and informative read.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab98b5

Also, worth noting we had a SSW roughly 20 days ago, and low and behold, now have a strong phase-7 MJO ongoing.  

But the influence of the variability in the extratropical stratosphere on MJO is seldom reported. In this study, the influence of major, mid–winter NH stratospheric sudden warmings (SSWs) on the MJO is investigated using meteorological reanalysis datasets. Our analysis reveals that SSWs also exert considerable influence on tropical intraseasonal convection. The occurrences of MJO phases 6 and 7 significantly increase during around 20 d after the onset of SSWs, corresponding to enhanced convective activity over the equatorial Central and Western Pacific. Then in the following days, the coherent eastward propagation of tropical intraseasonal convection resembles the periodic variation in a typical MJO. These results suggest that the extratropical stratosphere affects the organized tropical intraseasonal convection, and variability of the tropical intraseasonal convection related to MJO can be better grasped by taking extratropical stratospheric variability into account. Considering the complex interaction between MJO and extratropical stratosphere, further work on comprehensive understanding of the relationship between SSWs and MJO is required in future studies.

[Meatyorologist]

15 minutes ago, Phil said:

Best analogy I can think of is kicking a ball up a hill. If you don’t kick it hard enough, it will just roll back down the hill. But kick it hard enough, and it will reach the top of the hill and roll back down on the other side.

In this case, the kicking of the ball itself is wave driving from the troposphere. The process leading to a SSW always begins in the troposphere, in that sense.

Usually, this wave driving (kicking) isn’t strong enough to break the vortex, and it simply resists, and there is no additional effect on the troposphere (ball rolls back down the hill).

But when this wave driving (kick) is sufficiently strong, it deforms the vortex past a threshold at which it self-destructs and breaks apart. This thermomechanically projects into the troposphere with time, with prolonged impacts on worldwide weather patterns (ball reaches the top of the hill and rolls back down the other side).

So essentially, yes the process begins in the troposphere, but once the stratosphere is pushed beyond a certain point, this feeds back into troposphere with major effects over vast spatiotemporal scales. A SSW is actually a very violent, entropic process unlike anything else in the climate system.

Fascinating. I'm assuming such a delicate balance like that can only happen when the stratosphere and the troposphere are separated into their own closed systems. I can see how deeper connections between the two can be made during boreal winter when the thermodynamic profile at the poles becomes more or less vertically isothermal, muddying the transition between the two layers, or even bringing the stratosphere down to the surface.

[TigerWoodsLibido]

2 hours ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

Is it one of those things where it's so fucki*g boring you have to drink or is that like the thing to do at these events? Bed bugs are tuff. Your mother in law must have cats. 

We are all allergic to cats so I'm not really sure where the bugs came from. It seemed like they started on some of the kiddo's clothes but they were in a pile in my mother in law's room.

It's not boring, just definitely one of the things that a lot of the parents will do, especially since, for most of them, the hotel is right next door and they don't have to drive.

[Meatyorologist]

7 minutes ago, Phil said:

Wang et al 2020 is a great and informative read.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab98b5

Also, worth noting we had a SSW roughly 20 days ago, and low and behold, now have a strong phase-7 MJO ongoing.  

But the influence of the variability in the extratropical stratosphere on MJO is seldom reported. In this study, the influence of major, mid–winter NH stratospheric sudden warmings (SSWs) on the MJO is investigated using meteorological reanalysis datasets. Our analysis reveals that SSWs also exert considerable influence on tropical intraseasonal convection. The occurrences of MJO phases 6 and 7 significantly increase during around 20 d after the onset of SSWs, corresponding to enhanced convective activity over the equatorial Central and Western Pacific. Then in the following days, the coherent eastward propagation of tropical intraseasonal convection resembles the periodic variation in a typical MJO. These results suggest that the extratropical stratosphere affects the organized tropical intraseasonal convection, and variability of the tropical intraseasonal convection related to MJO can be better grasped by taking extratropical stratospheric variability into account. Considering the complex interaction between MJO and extratropical stratosphere, further work on comprehensive understanding of the relationship between SSWs and MJO is required in future studies.

Wow. It's absolutely incredible how a midlatitude ridge can inadvertently lead to enhanced thunderstorm activity in the tropics many months later, via insane and unintuitive thermodynamic and mechanical processes. Hell, tropical convection itself can lead to midlatitude ridging, so it's all a big crazy cycle.

It's so fuckking connected. I love this planet

[Phil]

@Meatyorologist I was so excited when I first caught the connection between SSWEs and the MJO. It was January 2013 and I was curious why the MJO (which was dead all of that winter prior) suddenly roared to life in phase 7.

I did some research and figured out the intensification of the MJO seemed to occur while the tropical tropopause layer cooled and raised in altitude. And that could only be forced by changes in the mass circulation/BDC, which became invigorated during and after the SSW.

I remember excitedly bloviating about it here in those subsequent months and subsequent winters. There was essentially no literature on it yet, so it was pretty much an unexplored topic (and still is today in some ways, though at least it is being talked about now).

[Meatyorologist]

5 minutes ago, Phil said:

@Meatyorologist I was so excited when I first caught the connection between SSWEs and the MJO. It was January 2013 and I was curious why the MJO (which was dead all of that winter prior) suddenly roared to life in phase 7.

I did some research and figured out the intensification of the MJO seemed to occur while the tropical tropopause layer cooled and raised in altitude. And that could only be forced by changes in the mass circulation/BDC, which became invigorated during and after the SSW.

I remember excitedly bloviating about it here in those subsequent months and subsequent winters. There was essentially no literature on it yet, so it was pretty much an unexplored topic (and still is today in some ways, though at least it is being talked about now).

I feel like some of us on here also posess unexplored insight, just on our local climatology. It's such a satisfying feeling being the only one to get it right, especially when your predictions were correct and you knew why it worked out that way.

[Phil]

9 minutes ago, Meatyorologist said:

I feel like some of us on here also posess unexplored insight, just on our local climatology. It's such a satisfying feeling being the only one to get it right, especially when your predictions were correct and you knew why it worked out that way.

Oh I’m sure many if not most of you do. One of the many reasons I love posting here.

[Phil]

Tahoe raking it in. I thought @AlTahoe said this was going to be a 1-2” slopfest?

[The Blob]

38 here in Troutdale.

[AlTahoe]

14 hours ago, Deweydog said:

Jelly!!!

We were toying with the idea of going to that since we’re going to a Knights game on the 20th but it couldn’t be made to work.  They’ve always eluded me over the years and I’ve still never seen them live.

I just saw them in Nampa Idaho in Oct. I highly recommend seeing a Puscifer show as well.

[AlTahoe]

Our first real storm of winter! Bring it!

 

WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 10 PM THIS EVENING TO
10 AM PST MONDAY...

* WHAT...Heavy snow. Snow accumulations 1 to 3 feet below 7000 feet,
  except 1 to 4 inches for areas below 5500 feet in Mono County.
  Snow accumulations 3 to 5 feet above 7000 feet along the Sierra
  crest. Winds gusting as high as 85 mph along Sierra ridges, with
  gusts in valleys 30 to 45 mph. Winds gusting as high as 55 mph
  along wind prone areas of US-395 in Mono County.

* WHERE...Greater Lake Tahoe Area, and Mono County.

* WHEN...From 10 PM this evening to 10 AM PST Monday.

* IMPACTS...Travel could become difficult to impossible with
  snowfall rates of up to 3 inches per hour possible at times.
  Roads, and especially bridges and overpasses, will likely become
  slick and hazardous. Whiteout conditions are expected and will
  make travel treacherous and potentially life-threatening. The
  hazardous conditions could impact the Monday morning commute. Very
  strong winds could cause extensive damage to trees and power lines

[AlTahoe]

Current snow depth in my yard is about half an inch. Will post a follow up on Monday after the storm

[Chewbacca Defense]

6 hours ago, ShawniganLake said:

You wouldn’t like it here.  I haven’t seen 2 strong thunderstorms in a decade.  And depending on your definition of “strong”, I could say I haven’t seen 2 strong thunderstorms in my life.  

Last strong thunderstorm I saw out here was September 2019 when I was down in Bellevue for my graduation, and ironically enough, I think the storms were actually.....for once....stronger up here in Bellingham than down south.

Beyond that we get storms that pop off 2-3 flashes of lightning and that's it.

Of course the best/easiest recipe for prolific thunderstorm activity is heat and humidity, so you kind of have to pick your poison. 

[Chewbacca Defense]

On 2/1/2024 at 9:12 PM, iFred said:

Any appetite in a North Sound meetup over the next week?

 

Also looking at a Portland meet up later this month if there is any interest.

My schedule is kinda wonky right now but if I didn't have anything going on I would be down for this.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Well good to see. 

[Doinko]

It was clear at home, now here in Hillsboro with very dense freezing fog

[Slushy Inch]

Cansips looks great for next winter 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

15 minutes ago, Slushy Inch said:

Cansips looks great for next winter 

Holy cow

[Anti Marine Layer]

16 minutes ago, Slushy Inch said:

Cansips looks great for next winter 

Amazing they go so far out.

[TacomaWx]

Got down to 33 this morning and saw some frost on the rooftops. Winter is BACK! 

[TT-SEA]

1 minute ago, TacomaWx said:

Got down to 33 this morning and saw some frost on the rooftops. Winter is BACK! 

43 out here and was raining a little while ago.  

[TacomaWx]

3 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

43 out here and was raining a little while ago.  

I’m sure it’s MUCH colder in Covington this morning. 

[Randyc321]

10 hours ago, Phil said:

Yeah your temps plunge immediately after sunset. Like the flip of a switch. The diurnal swings I experienced in Leavenworth back in 2018 were the largest I’ve *ever* experienced in the summer, dropped 40+ degrees over 8 hours (upper 90s to upper 50s). I was so fascinated by that.

But the air was also so dry you didn’t feel it quite as much. The cabin we stayed at had no A/C but we just opened the windows after sunset and it was instantly comfortable and smelled good too.

Such a different vibe than here, where the A/C is still working hard in the middle of the night, and even briefly opening the windows lets in a disgusting wetness that turns to condensation on many surfaces. Not to mention mosquitoes and dozens of other insects. Blech.

You guys that are bagging on our climate need to reread this.  We have some of the best weather in the country.  Also in a great place for future global warming.   Many places are already almost non-livable.

If you are honestly hating on the climate where you live, you need to move.  Life is pretty short and to dislike where you live makes it pretty shltty.  I loved growing up ion SoCal.  Great waves, punk rock clubs, Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm, and SOO many tourist girls.  I wouldn't change it for the world, but after I quit surfing it lost something.  Then it got more overcrowded, and hotter.  I bailed.  I love it here.  Been here since 2005 and won't ever move.  The farthest I would go would be the coast.

You cannot be happy if you don't like where you live. 

But, I think a couple of you are just basically unhappy people and that wouldn't change even if you moved.

 

[MossMan]

Had a low in the 30’s!!! 
And here is the MossMans specialized Fuzzy PNA Forecast! I will have a slightly white deck at the first arrow, and a very snowy deck at the second arrow around the 25th! 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Frosty morning here. 

Wednesday into Thursday looks cold enough for some light snow down to fairly low elevations. 

[Phil]

14 minutes ago, Randyc321 said:

You guys that are bagging on our climate need to reread this.  We have some of the best weather in the country.  Also in a great place for future global warming.   Many places are already almost non-livable.

If you are honestly hating on the climate where you live, you need to move.  Life is pretty short and to dislike where you live makes it pretty shltty.  I loved growing up ion SoCal.  Great waves, punk rock clubs, Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm, and SOO many tourist girls.  I wouldn't change it for the world, but after I quit surfing it lost something.  Then it got more overcrowded, and hotter.  I bailed.  I love it here.  Been here since 2005 and won't ever move.  The farthest I would go would be the coast.

You cannot be happy if you don't like where you live. 

But, I think a couple of you are just basically unhappy people and that wouldn't change even if you moved.

 

Yep, I’m already looking for work in various locations around the country. Been talking with my gf about possibly moving later this year, and I think I’m making progress on that front.  

My dream would be Colorado, or maybe New England if that doesn’t pan out. But ultimately it’s still TBD, don’t want to get ahead of myself.

[Randyc321]

This is freaking insane.  Bad stuff is gonna happen there.  The Infrastructure cannot get rid of that much water that fast.

Quote:  Ryan Kittell, another meteorologist at the agency, said a "rare amount of rain" is forecast to hit the region, most falling in a 24-hour period. From Sunday to Tuesday, more than 5 inches are expected in downtown Los Angeles, more than 7 in Pasadena, 9 in Ojai and 6 in Westlake.

Article:https://www.yahoo.com/news/prepare-now-historic-rains-californias-195233586.html

 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Just now, Randyc321 said:

This is freaking insane.  Bad stuff is gonna happen there.  The Infrastructure cannot get rid of that much water that fast.

Quote:  Ryan Kittell, another meteorologist at the agency, said a "rare amount of rain" is forecast to hit the region, most falling in a 24-hour period. From Sunday to Tuesday, more than 5 inches are expected in downtown Los Angeles, more than 7 in Pasadena, 9 in Ojai and 6 in Westlake.

Article:https://www.yahoo.com/news/prepare-now-historic-rains-californias-195233586.html

 

Can't wait!

[MR.SNOWMIZER]

10 hours ago, snow_wizard said:

I just want consistently cold with snow on the ground.  Hard to beat Montana for that.  I loath humid summers BTW.

Out of the town near west yellowstone is awesome.  150-200 inches a year, world class recreation outdoors and nice summers. Also very cold. Awesome area.