September 2024 PNW Weather Discussion

[TacomaWx]

1 minute ago, Rubus Leucodermis said:

General storminess explains a lot of that. The outer coast gets many more high wind events per winter. That, and rail access. The railroads arrived in Portland and Seattle first. At that point, they started booming because they had both rail access and a deep-water port. By the time the railroads made it to the outer coast, it was too late: the dominant position of both Seattle and Portland was already assured.

Port Townsend was supposed to be a big town too…but just never happened. Just too far away from Seattle. The problem nowadays too is the floating bridge is unreliable to commute to the kitsap peninsula during big wind events. It also closes whenever the nuclear submarines or big ships go through. 

[Rubus Leucodermis]

Just now, TacomaWx said:

Port Townsend was supposed to be a big town too…but just never happened. Just too far away from Seattle. The problem nowadays too is the floating bridge is unreliable to commute to the kitsap peninsula during big wind events. It also closes whenever the nuclear submarines or big ships go through. 

PT never got rail access. That killed its dreams of being a major city.

[Phishy Wx]

3 hours ago, Tyler Mode said:

Great news for western Montana and Idaho with this system.  Most areas receiving a good soaking.

we got SKUNKED hardcore.  oof

[jcmcgaffey]

30 minutes ago, BLI snowman said:

Yeah, and no coincidence that the areas with the best access to waterways are also some of the crappiest for snow. The rain shadows also help, and probably helps explain why Portland and Seattle exploded while Astoria and Aberdeen did not. 

Ah ya waterway access is a good point. That’s probably the real answer. I was always interested in how they ended up picking some of the calmest weather locations in the Northwest and if there was any weather knowledge they developed to make that decision.  

[Tyler Mode]

26 minutes ago, Phishy Wx said:

we got SKUNKED hardcore.  oof

Not Pullman!  0.99"

[Sunriver Snow Zone]

6 hours ago, LowerGarfield said:

Please keep us posted. Glad they made some progress last night.  How are you doing with the winds today? Hoping the GFS helps you. 

Yeah I'll keep posting updates on the forum

Today the winds are unfortunately overperforming a bit, currently gusting in the teens and earlier it was in the 20s. Despite that, today the fire has only made about a half mile of progress this way via the hotspot map, but that means the containment in that section of the fire hasn't been a complete success.

Saturday should be equally or more windy than today, with worse conditions, so I assume the fire will spread up to a couple more miles that day, but even then it'll still be maybe 2-3 miles away from here. Models are flip flopping on Sunday, there is a chance we stay dry and just get wind, that would be very bad and allow it to get close to here.. This is all under the assumption they can't contain it, so this is a worst case scenario.

 

[SnowWillarrive]

4 hours ago, BLI snowman said:

Honestly Portland and Seattle have pretty near identical climates (other than summer high temps) and both basically suck most of the time if you're looking for big action. Portland does have more elevation in its hills I guess, so if you can afford to live off Skyline you're doing alright.

If you're looking for a fun lowish elevation climate that's relatively close then Hood River/White Salmon is where it's at. Basically westside flora with eastside cold/snow.

 

How do higher areas of Washogal and Camas do in winter? 

[Tyler Mode]

1 minute ago, SnowWillarrive said:

How do higher areas of Washogal and Camas do in winter? 

Pretty well, especially with the east wind.  My buddy lives around 1,000' and they have had some amazing snow/ice.

[Jbolin]

I'm glad Jesse is finally banned for good. After having to see and endure his narcissistic rage baiting, negative demeanor and personal attacks going back almost seventeen years, it was time for him to go.

There were several times he PM'ed me, calling me various derogatory names and slurs (for whatever reason) and one time, in the lead up to Dec 2008, doubled down on his closeted racism and called me a slur I won't use here. 

He is a Jekyll & Hyde in disguise. His disdain for anyone that didn't align with his skewed personality or had any sort of differing opinion on the board was one thing but behind "closed doors", his true colors became very apparent and its why I've had him blocked and muted since 2014. 

Good riddance 

[Anti Marine Layer]

2 minutes ago, Jbolin said:

I'm glad Jesse is finally banned for good. After having to see his narcissistic rage baiting, negative demeanor and personal attacks going back almost seventeen years, it was time for him to go.

There were several times he PM'ed me calling me various derogatory names and slurs (for whatever reason) and one time, in the lead up to Dec 2008, doubled down on his closeted racism and called me a slur I won't use here. 

He is a Jekyll & Hyde in disguise. His disdain for anyone that didn't align with his skewed personality or had any sort of differing opinion on the board was one thing but behind "closed doors", his true colors became very apparent and its why I've had him blocked and muted since 2014. 

Good riddance 

What if he makes another account?

[Timmy]

19 minutes ago, Sunriver Snow Zone said:

Yeah I'll keep posting updates on the forum

Today the winds are unfortunately overperforming a bit, currently gusting in the teens and earlier it was in the 20s. Despite that, today the fire has only made about a half mile of progress this way via the hotspot map, but that means the containment in that section of the fire hasn't been a complete success.

Saturday should be equally or more windy than today, with worse conditions, so I assume the fire will spread up to a couple more miles that day, but even then it'll still be maybe 2-3 miles away from here. Models are flip flopping on Sunday, there is a chance we stay dry and just get wind, that would be very bad and allow it to get close to here.. This is all under the assumption they can't contain it, so this is a worst case scenario.

 

Looks like they have good lines on the ene side of it, that is where the thickest forest. The advancing on the se side should be much easier to contain as it is basically all logged to the east of there.

[Anti Marine Layer]

@CascadiaWx @Jesse @Cascadia

[Omegaraptor]

8 hours ago, MossMan said:

He hated me even more because I was a native that enjoys sunny warm days in the summer. He couldn’t comprehend that concept.
 

I sure hope this was more of an online character of his instead of how he is in real life because if this is truly him he is going to have a rough go in life. 
I wish him well but I’m glad he is no longer here. 

If it was just an online persona, it’s one hell of a persona…

If he’s like this in real life too, as much as I don’t want to jump to conclusions or act like an expert on this, I think he could have a legit personality disorder of some kind.

[snow_wizard]

1 hour ago, jcmcgaffey said:

Goes to show how smart early settlers were when deciding places to settle in this area. 

I think the terrain pretty much led them to the most habitable places.

[snow_wizard]

12 minutes ago, Omegaraptor said:

If it was just an online persona, it’s one hell of a persona…

If he’s like this in real life too, as much as I don’t want to jump to conclusions or act like an expert on this, I think he could have a legit personality disorder of some kind.

I actually pointed that out to him and he jumped down my throat.  Many of us on here own up to our issues, but he didn't seem to want to do that.

[snow_wizard]

21 minutes ago, Anti Marine Layer said:

What if he makes another account?

Fred has a way of knowing if he does that.

[snow_wizard]

1 hour ago, Port Angeles Foothiller said:

Today’s harvest. Tomatoes and peppers should really get rolling soon. 

With the price of groceries this is the way to go.  When I was a kid, we had enough of a garden to really make a difference.  We froze a lot of stuff, and my dad had reasonable success hunting deer and elk.  I feel thankful to have caught the tail end of that era of self-sufficiency.

[snow_wizard]

1 hour ago, iFred said:

There are near-Cascade suburbs and small towns like Cashmere, Cle Elum, and and on the other side of the Sound you have the typical snow traps.

Truth be told though, you'd be better set on finding ways to embrace the local climate or you're going to find yourself crying at your keyboard watching a stream of Jim Cantore trudging through waste high snow on  an abandoned Lake Shore Drive while looking out the window to 57ª and drizzle.

So true.  I have gone through much agony over this.  I so wish I had moved where I really wanted a long time ago.  It gets harder as you get older.  At least there are still periods that are pretty decent to be thankful for.

[T-Town]

Sunset. 

[the_convergence_zone]

3 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

I think the terrain pretty much led them to the most habitable places.

They still made some mistakes, for instance Seattle was initially settled on Alki beach but they got out of there after realizing it was a miserable place to be in the winter. 

The big cities could have been one of numerous settlements along the Sound, they were all competing for commerce because the winners would make a fortune on their land claims. A big reason Seattle won out was that Doc Maynard gave away chunks of his land claim for free to any settler who provided a useful skill to the town. I think many thought Olympia was going to be the big city but I can’t remember the details of how that didn’t work out.

[iFred]

31 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

So true.  I have gone through much agony over this.  I so wish I had moved where I really wanted a long time ago.  It gets harder as you get older.  At least there are still periods that are pretty decent to be thankful for.

People shouldn’t knock a winter time camping trip or cheap cabin in January.

[iFred]

Recovered the western weather forum database and a script to scrape pages into MySQL is working. We might finally… after 10 years… have most of the old stuff.

[T-Town]

One more. 

[TigerWoodsLibido]

Pour one out or have a drink for Jesse.

[TigerWoodsLibido]

1 hour ago, Anti Marine Layer said:

What if he makes another account?

Then wait for someone to start overly weenie-ing my posts and that'll probly be him...just like last time.

[Phil]

6 hours ago, snow_wizard said:

This is kind of pissing me off now.  This cycle was not supposed to do this.  Interesting it hasn't had any effect on deamplifying the global pattern.

Too early in the season for polar stratospheric-tropospheric coupling. That part of the equation will become more evident sometime in November.

[Phil]

2 hours ago, Tenochtitlan said:

Lol that’s true. For now, I’m still living on the high of last month’s thunderstorm. Also, if it snows even an inch this winter I’ll be content. And if not I’m sure I’ll manage anyway! 

I wouldn’t be. I’d be downright apoplectic.

[TigerWoodsLibido]

3 minutes ago, Phil said:

I wouldn’t be. I’d be downright apoplectic.

Wouldn't recommend moving here. We've had more ice than snow since Dec 2021.

[Front Ranger]

2 hours ago, Rubus Leucodermis said:

General storminess explains a lot of that. The outer coast gets many more high wind events per winter. That, and rail access. The railroads arrived in Portland and Seattle first. At that point, they started booming because they had both rail access and a deep-water port. By the time the railroads made it to the outer coast, it was too late: the dominant position of both Seattle and Portland was already assured.

Yeah, and the I-5 corridor is just the simplest north/south route through the region. Portland makes a lot of sense as, like many cities, it's at the confluence of major regional rivers - which used to be pretty important for trade/transportation.

[BLI snowman]

1 hour ago, SnowWillarrive said:

How do higher areas of Washogal and Camas do in winter? 

Prune Hill in Camas is a major neighborhood there that gets to 765' and does pretty well, but then the hilly areas just to the north of the towns do even better. Sometimes the east wind is a little too drying right near the river during the big outflow events, but the less windy areas above town usually don't have much of an issue.

[Front Ranger]

1 hour ago, the_convergence_zone said:

They still made some mistakes, for instance Seattle was initially settled on Alki beach but they got out of there after realizing it was a miserable place to be in the winter. 

The big cities could have been one of numerous settlements along the Sound, they were all competing for commerce because the winners would make a fortune on their land claims. A big reason Seattle won out was that Doc Maynard gave away chunks of his land claim for free to any settler who provided a useful skill to the town. I think many thought Olympia was going to be the big city but I can’t remember the details of how that didn’t work out.

I'd guess part of it was Seattle was more centrally located on the Sound. And maybe the fact that it has several large lakes around it, too. Also a basically straight shot west from the easiest route through the WA Cascades.

[Tenochtitlan]

6 hours ago, snow_wizard said:

I think I read somewhere that Naselle radar station hit 150 or some ridiculous thing.  That's at 2000 feet or so though.  The site was run by the Air Force at the time so they probably had good equipment.  

The interesting thing is, there is absolutely no reason a repeat of that event couldn't happen again.  I don't think climate change precludes that at all.

Yeah, I don’t see why it couldn’t happen again. I wonder what the return rate on a storm like that is. Once in five hundred years? Two hundred? I guess we can’t really know, other than that it’s happened once in the 160 or so years that white settlers have lived around here. 

[Snownerd3000]

Remind me who was Jesse? 

[the_convergence_zone]

4 minutes ago, Front Ranger said:

I'd guess part of it was Seattle was more centrally located on the Sound. And maybe the fact that it has several large lakes around it, too. Also a basically straight shot west from the easiest route through the WA Cascades.

I think Seattle was willed into existence by ambitious citizens. They didn’t even with the railroad sweepstakes. It took a ton of engineering to make the city functional. Downtown Seattle is a steep hill and there used to be even steeper hills until they chopped them down and used the dirt to fill in the tidal flats and raise Pioneer Square by 10 feet. Lake Washington wasn’t very useful until they built the ship canal which was a huge undertaking that failed the first time. 

[TigerWoodsLibido]

4 minutes ago, Snownerd3000 said:

Remind me who was Jesse? 

 

[Tenochtitlan]

7 minutes ago, TigerWoodsLibido said:

 

Don’t besmirch Chappell Roan’s name like that!

[Front Ranger]

Snowing in Yellowstone currently.

[Sunriver Snow Zone]

2 hours ago, Timmy said:

Looks like they have good lines on the ene side of it, that is where the thickest forest. The advancing on the se side should be much easier to contain as it is basically all logged to the east of there.

Yeah NE side of the fire is probably done progressing, and it should be pretty hard for the current active area to get very far, but with a strong wind it will be able to.

Most of it looks something like this but a little more dead by now, this photo is from Google Street view from just a month ago. No photos of the area in my camera roll recently so Google will have to do lol.

[lowlandsnow]

43 minutes ago, Tenochtitlan said:

Yeah, I don’t see why it couldn’t happen again. I wonder what the return rate on a storm like that is. Once in five hundred years? Two hundred? I guess we can’t really know, other than that it’s happened once in the 160 or so years that white settlers have lived around here. 

The great blowdown of 1880 was comparable also 1921 was pretty strong

[Front Ranger]

8 hours ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

Currently 66 at PDX, SLE, and EUG. 

SLE running a +5.5F departure on the month. 

I know we were hopeful that SLE had addressed their warm outlier sensor issue or whatever last month, but the early returns this month still show it "leading the way".

SLE: +5.5

PDX: +5.2

Downtown: +3.8

Vancouver: +4.9

MMV: +3.7

EUG: +4.5

As a reminder, as recently as May SLE and MMV were consistently running very similar monthly departures. And it's not just a warm season thing...last summer they were very similar as well. Then something went haywire starting in June at SLE and they've been the most anomalously warm station in the region since.