Weather reports on whatever I decide to report on.
Friday brought Portland’s first afternoon with temperatures above 70°F (21°C) for 2024 with a high of 71°F (22°C) at Portland International Airport. Numerous other stations throughout lowland areas of Western Oregon and parts of Western Washington also achieved 70°, though the Puget Sound Region missed out. This comes as a ridge of high pressure builds […]
An uptick in earthquake activity is being observed along the Oregon-Nevada border between Lakeview and Steens Mountain. For the 30 day period ending 12:00 PDT March 12, 29 earthquakes were located in this area. The vast majority have been too small to be felt by humans but a M3.5 earthquake was observed on March 9 […]
Strong El Niño conditions were observed over the winter of 2023-24, leading to long lasting periods of split flow in the jet stream aimed at Western North America. This is a typical El Niño pattern, where the northern split persistently aims storms at southeast Alaska and the southern branch aims at California. Despite this, Oregon […]
A prolonged pattern of upper level troughing and repeated regional storm systems have added quite a bit of snow to mountains of the Pacific Northwest over the past week. As of the end of the day on March 4, the snow-water equivalent (SWE) value for the Northwest was 88% of the median for this time […]
The Sierra Nevada mountains of California and Nevada are experiencing a rare extreme blizzard this weekend with incredible amounts of snow and strong winds forecast through Sunday including major travel corridors like Interstate 80 over Donner Summit and the Lake Tahoe area. Storm total snowfall may approach 11 feet (3.4 m) in some spots and […]
From about November to February temperature inversions accompanied by low clouds and fog are a common weather feature in the Columbia Basin. These are not unique to the Columbia Basin with many valleys throughout the Western United States and the world also experiencing strong inversions, including the Salt Lake City area in Utah and Almaty, […]
Surface weather analysis charts are a treasure trove of information about regional and continent-scale weather patterns. They are full of a variety of symbols that can give a good at-a-glance view of what conditions are occuring. Some regional and continental forecasts are also displayed as analysis charts. There are multiple organizations that create surface weather […]
The medium-range global weather model run by the European Center for Medium-Range Forecasts (ECMWF) is slated to be upgraded to Cycle 48r1 late June 2023. Upgrades or replacements of weather models are common as improvements in computing power, observation data, and other tools are implimented. Cycle 48r1 is scheduled to replace Cycle 47r3 in late […]
Toward the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, catastrophic flooding surged down parts of the Columbia River watershed as natural dams creating large lakes failed. Some originated from Glacial Lake Missoula, which was created by a large dam of ice in Montana and Idaho that periodically failed. These, often termed Missoula Floods are probably the […]
Like many places in the Western United States during summer of 2022, Salt Lake City has been tying old records and setting new ones. Earlier this summer, Salt Lake City International Airport recorded a high of 107°F tying the old all-time record. All six of the first six days of September recorded highs at or […]