Weather Blog
Patricia Gordon captured this photo at sunset near Tulalip, Washington on Nov. 15th. But note the vertical stripe of light near the horizon? Here is the full version of the photo, also showing off the spectacular sky: 
Have they started ferry service in Bothell? Not exactly, but you could be forgiven if that thought popped in your head on Sunday.
I had a viewer who lives in Bothell write in that he could hear the fog horns from the Edmonds ferry on Sunday, and wondered how it was possible, what with the ferry roughly 11 miles away. Turns out, Sunday was a great day, atmospherically speaking, to listen in on distant events. There were two factors in play -- one, a fog layer hugging the Puget Sound shoreline, and second, a temperature inversion over the area. Read more » 
The Northern Lights are a rare treat around Seattle. But what about auroras on Saturn?
Scientists used to think, "no way," but the Cassini space probe just proved otherwise. The photo above is from the Cassini probe. Here's the description from NASA: "Energetic particles, crashing into the upper atmosphere cause the aurora, shown in blue, to glow brightly at 4 microns (six times the wavelength visible to the human eye). The image shows both a bright ring, as seen from Earth, as well as an example of bright auroral emission within the polar cap that had been undetected until the advent of Cassini. This aurora, which defies past predictions of what was expected, has been observed to grow even brighter than is shown here." You can read more at nasa.gov As for around here, the sun is in its minimum activity phase of its usual 11 year cycle of activity. It takes a really strong solar flare to see the Northern Lights this far south, so prospects of a light show here in Seattle anytime soon are pretty slim. But how about some stuff we do get to see around here on a frequent basis: Time lapses! Read more »
It's not quite the discovery of "E.T." but astronomers say they have the first actual photos of planets that exist outside of our solar system. Strangely enough, those planets have probably seen more of our own sun than we have lately.
Here is the full article from Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer: Read more » 
We all knew it was wet. Here are some rainfall totals from the November 12 flooding event to prove just how wet.
These are all from private weather spotters who phoned their totals into the National Weather Service. These are roughly storm totals, but some might be measured accumulations over a longer period than others.
And here is a graph of some of the main official airport totals: Read more » 
Here are some great links to keep you informed during stormy situations: Read more »
With heavy rain back in the forecast, this doesn't really qualify as a "weekly time waster" segment that I occasionally post in my blog to highlight great weather-related web sites since you won't be wasting time here as today, it carries important information.
This site from the USGS will give you real time flows for most, if not all Washington rivers. Once you select a river, it'll give you the current reading of the flow and river height, and tell you what the National Weather Service Flood Stage height is. You can also change the graph to add in more data, or show it in table-text format. You can also change the graph to add in more data, or show it in table-text format. NEW -- I just found this site from NOAA Tuesday afternoon. That has river forecasts and detailed information about which rivers are expected to flood the worst. It's a good site to compare to the National Weather Service flood warnings and statements. My favorite site for those is here: http://www.atmos.washington.edu/data/warning_report.WWA.html. This is a smorgasbord of all warnings and advisories issued for Western Washington, including such things as Small Craft Advisories and heavy surf warnings, so you might have to scroll down to find the latest flood statements. 
Here are some gorgeous time lapses, courtesy of Silverdale's Dr. Dale Ireland, to get you through the weekend:
November 4: Read more » 
What a difference a few miles makes. As of noon Friday in the heavy rain storm that hit the region this week, Bremerton had 5.34" of rain while Seattle (Sea-Tac Airport) was around 3" and just up the road a bit, Everett "only" had 1.33". How is that possible? You can thank the Olympic Mountains and their rain shadow. When moist air hits the southwest side of the Olympics, the air is forced upward where it condenses and the moisture gets squeezed out like a sponge. But on the flip side, when air sinks down the other side of the mountain, it dries out and loses some moisture. This is how Sequim ended up being the driest place in Western Washington, with just 18" of rain per year -- they are in the heart of where the rain shadow typically lives. Here's a chart of annual rainfall for Washington to show this effect: Read more »
With the heavy rain falling and the numbers adding up in the rain gauge, you might wonder what some of the rainfall records are around here.
The wettest day in Sea-Tac Airport's history was October 20, 2003, when an eye-popping 5.02" of rain fell. That was just about the "perfect storm", pardon the pun, because the rain started right around midnight and so the bulk of the storm almost fit perfectly between the midnights on the 20th. Second place is 3.41" set on Nov. 20, 1959 and third place was quite recent -- 3.29" on Nov. 6. 2006. Read more » 
OK, as much as I'd like to think our site is a one-stop shopping place for weather information, I realize people poke around other places.
Many, including me, read the National Weather Service office's forecast discussion, which they put out four times a day, to see what they're thinking. In this afternoon's take, they had this: "THE SOURCE OF SOME OF THE MOISTURE IS MADDEN-JULIAN OSCILLATION INDUCED TROPICAL CONVECTION OVER THE FAR WESTERN PACIFIC AND TROPICAL CONVECTION TO THE SOUTH OF THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS AS DEPICTED BY GLOBAL-COMPOSITE SATELLITE IMAGERY AND PRECIPITABLE WATER IMAGES FROM THE NOAA POLAR ORBITING SATELLITES. " While that sounds like perhaps the latest sports game on Playstation, the Madden-Julian oscillation is actually a pattern in the Pacific where you get really big blobs of tropical moisture followed by big areas where there's no tropical moisture, and this alternating pattern then moves around the globe. |
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Originally from Port Angeles, Scott graduated from the UW in 1994 with a degree in Atmospheric Sciences and has been producing weather reports for broadcast and on the Web ever since.
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