The Seattle Times Says Washington State is in a Serious Drought. Is this True?
Cliff Mass Weather Blog
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2d ago
It is more than a little disturbing when a major regional newspaper (the Seattle Times) provides demonstrably inaccurate and deceptive weather and climate information. But yesterday, the infamous Seattle Times ClimateLab did it again. The first lines of the article describe the past year in apocalyptic terms: Virtually every aspect of life in Washington suffered during last year’s drought.  Groundwater wells ran dry, fields produced fewer crops, trees died in greater numbers, fish faced disease and famine And the next paragraph paints a very dark picture of our future: Now those sect ..read more
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Potential Aurora Over Washington State Tonight
Cliff Mass Weather Blog
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4d ago
Look to the north tonight, you might see an aurora! Skies are relatively clear outside, as shown by the visible satellite image around 6 PM A significant solar CME event has resulted in particles reaching the Earth's orbit today.  As shown by a NOAA Space Weather Center graphic, the Kp index has reached 8 and will be quite high tonight.  The figure below illustrates that auroral intensity and southward extent increase with Kp.  Once it gets to around 5, I start looking here in Puget Sound! In fact, tracking the ejection from the sun shows that the impulse will reach our orbi ..read more
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Space Weather: March is Aurora Season, Particularly This Year
Cliff Mass Weather Blog
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1w ago
We should not forget that the Earth's atmosphere can be seriously influenced by the "weather" on the sun! Auuoral displays are particularly frequent in March for reasons I will explain later. The sun's surface is not uniform over time, with varying sunspots and "solar storms", including solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CME), that send solar particles away from the sun and can greatly disturb the sun's magnetic fields.   Such solar disturbances can be associated with higher-latitude auroras and the disruption of  radio communication and electricity transmission. CMEs and ..read more
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Should I Let AI Write My Blogs?
Cliff Mass Weather Blog
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1w ago
I spend a lot of time thinking about and writing my blogs.   Could AI apps do the work for me?   Could any of you tell the difference? Well, let's give them a test! First I asked Google's Gemini to write a blog in my style on the subject of the Puget Sound Convergence Zone.  Here is its attempt: _________________________ Exploring the Mysteries of the Puget Sound Convergence Zone Welcome back, weather enthusiasts! Today, we delve into one of the most intriguing and mystifying phenomena that grace the skies of the Pacific Northwest: the Puget Sound Convergence Zone (P ..read more
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Most Northwest Heatwaves are Local
Cliff Mass Weather Blog
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1w ago
 Northwest heatwaves are funny things.   It is rare to have a heatwave over the entire region.   Instead, real warmth is generally restricted to a distinct subset of the region. Why is this the case, you ask?   Because of the complex regional terrain and land/water contrasts. Since the regional waters are cold, onshore flow is cool, but offshore flow (particularly during the warm portion of the year) is warm. Downslope warm is warm, since the air warms by compression as it sinks, and sinking kills clouds (and thus more sun).  Upslope flow is cooled by ..read more
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Huge Increase in Snowpack Since January 1
Cliff Mass Weather Blog
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1w ago
There has been a substantial amount of gnashing of teeth about the lower-than-average snowpack this winter, but the truth is that the situation has gotten immensely better. On January 1st, the situation seemed dire (below), with much of the region at less than 50% of normal snowpack.  The Olympics was at 19-22% and major sections of western Oregon were as low and lower. No wonder many in the media and elsewhere were talking about a snow apocalypse!  But such a snow end-times did not occur, with an immense amount of snow falling over the region during the past two months. Consider ..read more
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The Origin of Last Summer's Maui Wildfire
Cliff Mass Weather Blog
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2w ago
During the past six months, research scientist David Ovens and I have worked intensively on the meteorology of the August 2023 Maui wildfires and have completed a paper that was accepted in an American Meteorological Society journal with a few revisions. This blog will describe our results, some of which provide different conclusions than those discussed in many media accounts. The City of Lahaina with the West Maui Mountains to the east before the fire. To start, it is important to note that there were multiple fires on August 8-9, 2023 (see map below). On Maui, Lahaina was destroyed by one ..read more
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Spring Heatwave by Next Weekend
Cliff Mass Weather Blog
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2w ago
Finally.    After a cooler-than-normal second half of winter, we are about to get some serious warmth, with temperatures over the western lowlands zooming into the mid-60s. The figure below shows the actual highs and lows (blue bars) from January 1 to yesterday.  The brown shading shows the average (climatological) highs and lows and the red/blue colors indicate the record highs and lows. In general, the past 1-2 weeks have been below normal.     The sun is getting MUCH stronger now, making surges to warm temperatures possible, particularly when we get offsh ..read more
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El Nino's Collapse Has Begun
Cliff Mass Weather Blog
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2w ago
The entire character of this winter has been characterized by a strong El Nino.   El Nino impacts have included low snowpack over Washington State, huge snowpack and heavy precipitation over California, and warm temperatures over the Upper Plains states. However, El Nino's days are numbered and its decline is proceeding rapidly right now.  First, consider the critical measure of El Nino:  the sea surface temperatures in the central tropical Pacific (the Nino 3.4 area).  The warmth of this El Nino peaked in late November (about 2.1°C above normal) and is now declining f ..read more
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Another Deceptive Front-Page Climate Story in the Seattle Times
Cliff Mass Weather Blog
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3w ago
 The Seattle's Times ClimateLab writers have done it again. Another highly deceptive and error-filled climate story in the ST.  One predicting more than a doubling of wildfires over western Washington and Oregon by mid-century. The trouble is that this story is based on a highly problematic paper published in February in JGR Biogeosciences (see below).   A paper that is missing the key element of Westside wildfires and makes predictions that are unsupported and highly exaggerated. Before anyone suggests I should not comment on this work, let me note that I am doing re ..read more
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