Weather Blog

Originally from Port Angeles and an Alum of Astoria High School, Scott graduated from the University of Washington 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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Dude! The sunrise this morning was totally tubular!

Those of you out and about early Monday morning might have been treated to a spectacular sunrise that featured a nice optical display of a sun pillar.

The pillars are caused when the sunlight reflects off ice crystals from clouds high up in the atmosphere. Sure enough, we had some thin cirrostratus and altostratus clouds that had plenty of ice crystals to make this radically awesome effect.

Thanks to Tina Starck for sending in the photo.

Snow cap disappearing from Mount Kilimanjaro
WASHINGTON (AP) - The snows of Kilimanjaro may soon be gone.

The African mountain's white peak - made famous by writer Ernest Hemingway - is rapidly melting, researchers report.

Some 85 percent of the ice that made up the mountaintop glaciers in 1912 was gone by 2007, researchers led by paleoclimatologist Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

And more than a quarter of the ice present in 2000 was gone by 2007.

If current conditions continue "the ice fields atop Kilimanjaro will not endure," the researchers said. Read more »

Strange, and not so strange, clouds return to skies

Maybe it's just Mother Nature getting in the Halloween spirit.

A new video making the rounds on the Internet shows a spooky looking cloud over Romania:

Read more »
Mars has tattoos?
This might look like some fancy print for an expensive couch or maybe the aftermath after your basketball got away from you and rolled across a bed of hot coals (because, we all keep those handy near playgrounds), but this is actually a photo of Mars.

More specifically, a part of Mars that has been dogged by their version of dust devils. Read more »

That's one angry ocean

Just came across this today, even though the event was a few weeks ago, of a great satellite shot showing two typhoons in the Western Pacific near the Philippines. This is a composite satellite image -- one taken of Typhoon Parma at 10:35 a.m. on Oct. 7; the one of Typhoon Melor taken a few hours later but it shows the correct geography of where both storms were at that time.

It's fairly rare to have to storms so close together, although I've seen it a few times with our fall and winter type storms here. You'd think they'd merge to form some sort of super storm, but actually, many times, the storms end up battling against each other for energy and can mess up the weather flow to keep them going. Other times, according to NASA you can get something called the Fujiwara Effect, where both storms will begin rotating around a center point.

That's apparently a bit what happened in this case shown above, as the approach of Melor actually pulled Parma back out to sea a bit.

You can find more about these storms and a higher resolution photo at NASA's Earth Observatory page.

Poll: Americans' belief in global warming cools
WASHINGTON (AP) - The number of Americans who believe there is solid evidence the Earth is warming because of pollution is at its lowest point in three years, according to a survey released Thursday.

The poll of 1,500 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that only 57 percent believe there is strong scientific evidence the Earth has gotten hotter over the past few decades, and as a result, people are viewing the situation as less serious. That's down from 77 percent in 2006, and 71 percent in April 2008. Read more »

What does this illusion have to do with weather?

To answer the title question -- not much. I know, this is a "weather blog" but this was just too mind-blowing to ignore...

I was trawling around for blog topic ideas on one of my favorite sites, the Astronomy Picture of the Day and came across this that was posted earlier this month.

The question is: Are the squares marked "A" and "B" the same color?

Read more »
More great photos from (way) down under

Issaquah's Jeff Fogg, who is working down at Antarctica's McMurdo Station, continues to capture some of the amazing beauty of the South Pole area. 

Here are some nighttime photos of the moon over the barren snow-capped landscape. It'll be an increasingly rare sight as they head toward summer and 24 hour daylight. Starting Oct. 23, the sun will rise at 2:08 a.m. local time and then stay above the horizon all winter long, not setting until 1:25 a.m. on Feb. 20th. 

But daylight changes rapidly -- around the equinoxes, the days get longer/shorter by a whopping 14 minutes a day -- or roughly an hour every four days.  So much so that when they have their first sunset on Feb 20 it's only two months (April 24) until they are in 24 hour darkness, and the sun won't rise again on August 19th.

Read more »
Incredible video of storm as it strikes Queen Anne Hill

Here is time lapse video of one storm cell as it moved over Seattle durign the storms of Oct. 17, 2009, taken from our tower camera atop the Columbia Center building.

You make a better phone than a window

Chalk this up to perhaps "why did they think of that?" but a new concept phone gives you a pretty convincing display of what the weather will be.

According to the blog DesignCrave.com, "The Window Phone designed by Seunghan Song provides a sleek glass interface that changes to reflect the weather conditions outside."

The phone's face, which is transparent, changes to a look of rain or fog or clear, depending on what it's doing outside.

I think this device has already been invented. It's called a window :)  Actually, I'd say if you have any cell phone with weather capability, you can achieve a similar effect:

Read more »
Winter forecast has no surprises: Warmer and drier
NOAA has released their official long range forecast for the upcoming winter, and it holds no surprises: With a decent El Nino event forming in the Pacific Ocean, the overall theme of this winter is looking warmer and drier.

But that doesn't mean your shovels and skies will be collecting dust instead of snow -- it's still possible to get snow in El Nino years. Snow events tends to be weaker and less frequent, and mountain snowpacks on average run lower than normal in El Nino winters.

Here is the full article by Associated Press writer Seth Borenstein:


Read more »
Video shows UFO over Russia? Eh, not really

A friend forwarded me this YouTube video of an extraterrestrial-looking cloud that was apparently filmed over Moscow late last week.

Read more »
47 years ago, it was REALLY windy

Monday marked the 47 year anniversary of the most devastating storm to strike the Pacific Northwest in the 20th Century.

Aptly dubbed the "Columbus Day Storm", the storm struck with great fury on Oct. 12, 1962, pummeling many areas with well over 100 mph wind gusts and causing catastrophic damage -- mainly across Oregon, but Washington wasn't necessarily left off the hook. According to state climatologist Wolf Read, the storm caused between $230-280 million in damage (in 1962 dollars) across California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, making it the worst natural disaster to strike the U.S. in that year.

The storm formed from the remnants of typhoon Freda and reenergized off the California coast into a super storm. Some of the peak wind gusts were over 145 mph at Cape Blanco, Ore., 138 at Newport, 127 at Corvallis, 116 in Portland and 96 in Astoria.

Even the Puget Sound area had some amazing gusts. Although Sea-Tac Airport had a paltry 58 mph peak gust (since topped by the 1993 Inauguration Day storm, and again by the Hanukkah Eve Storm of 2006 (I think that was 68 mph)), Renton reported a gust of 100, Bellingham had 98, Oak Harbor had 90 and Everett had 81 mph.

While other wind storms have had stronger storm centers, this one stands alone in how it formed -- something Read says it could be another 100-1,000 years before we see a storm like it in our future.

Read has done an excellent write up on the storm at climate.washington.edu. In fact, he's written up just about every wind storm to strike the Northwest. It's a great research site, and find more at climate.washington.edu/stormking

More links on the Columbus Day Storm:

HistoryLink.org
Wikipedia Entry

Northwest shows off again

We all know how beautiful this area is, but that doesn't mean Mother Nature can't provide a reminder from time to time.

First up are a series of photos from the brilliant sunsets of Wednesday night.

Gwennivere Miller, Darrington:

Read more »
Moon to take 1-2 punch from NASA

NASA will send a used-up spacecraft slamming into the moon's south pole to kick up a massive plume of lunar dirt and then scour it to see if there's any water or ice spraying up. The idea is to confirm the theory that water - a key resource if people are going to go back to the moon - is hidden below the barren moonscape. Read more »

The coolest mountain you never actually saw

It can go down as Antarctica's prettiest mountain that doesn't actually exist.

Our friend Jeff Fogg, who is from Issaquah but working a 6-month tour as a heavy equipment operator down at McMurdo Station on Antarctica, sent another great photo from his arctic environment.

This is of a mirage-like phenomenon called "Fata Morgana."  It has to do with light rays being reflected as the light travels through different densities of air masses, most likely related to temperature differences.

Here is a more complete explanation.

Behold the elusive "green flash"

Steve Vowell captured a sliver of what's called the "Green Flash" while in Newport last week.

The phenomenon is quite rare, but spectacular to see. It's usually noticed just as the top tip of the sun at sunset or sunrise.

It works on a similar level as to why the sun looks red as it sets, where the shorter wavelength colors of light - the blues, greens and yellows, become scattered in the atmosphere while the longer red and orange light is able to survive, giving the sun a reddish tinge.

The theory with the green flash is that if the atmospheric conditions are just right, you can get a brief period where the green light bends in such a way where you can see it.

That's the Physics 101 version. Here are some links that go into greater detail:

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/atmos/redsun.html


http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/GF/explain/explain.html

Gorgeous weather photos, Part II

In Thursday's weather blog, I highlighted some of the professional weather photographers on a national scale. How about giving some bigger props to the local folks?

Although this first one is a hybrid. Jason Hammel from www.alpinestateofmind.com was in the blog yesterday, but just posted some new photos of a hike on Mount Olympus, where he spent a week.  The top photo there is one of my new favorites, and this one below is a close second:

Read more »
Where'd ya find that cool weather photo?

I admit -- I'm a sucker for awesome weather photography. I have probably 75 or 80 photos I keep in a folder to rotate through my computer desktop -- many submitted by local readers of our web site, but others I've found online.

If you're a fan of fantastic shots too, here is a small guide to some of the best weather photography I've found online.  Most of them have ways for you to buy prints if you're interested.

Some of the best of the best are taken by professional storm chasers, who are just crazy enough to actually try to get themselves in the paths of severe storms. It's a tireless job that requires incredible dedication and a willingness to drive hundreds of miles a day, get soaked to the bone and pelted with large hail, all the while hoping that tornado forms where it's supposed to, and not, say, 10 feet from your camera.

There are times these people will drive across three states (and remember the Midwestern states aren't exactly Rhode Island and Delaware), all for a storm that fizzles. But boy, the times they get in the right place at the right time, the results are simply breath-taking.

Read more »
Is that stunning weather photo in your inbox real?

I get them all the time from viewers and I'm sure you do too -- e-mails filled with incredible photos with even more incredible tales behind them.

As you might suspect with randomly e-mailed items, a lot of these are either fake photos or perhaps real photos but wrong stories behind them.

With the help of stellar Internet urban legend sleuth snopes.com, I'll show you some of the most popular e-mailed photos, and whether you should believe what you read.

First up: Katrina tornadoes?

(Main photo above)

The e-mail comes with five or six ominously stunning photographs and says they were snapped in the Gulf Coast area as Hurricane Katrina approached in late August, 2005.

False! Snopes.com says these are actual photos, but not of anything related to Hurricane Katrina.

They are photos from various storms across the Midwest by storm chaser Mike Hollingshead. (Who, by the way, does stunning photography work. I'll be featuring him in a future blog.) Somehow, these got attributed as Katrina photographs. Snopes says these photos have also been erroneously attributed to Ontario tornados and tornadoes in Australia, among other things.

Approaching storm clouds from (insert hurricane name here)!

False! Snopes says this is another multi-use photo that seems to get reused everytime a hurricane approaches. It's believed this photo is actually a shelf cloud from a tropical storm off the Australian coast in 2003.

Read more »
 Hurricane season has been a dud - so far
MIAMI (AP) - It may be tempting the weather gods just to point this out, but this has been a dud of a hurricane season so far.

Only two hurricanes have formed in the Atlantic over the past three months, and neither hit the U.S. - a somewhat unusual lull.

"I'm glad that I didn't have to go out and get anything - yet," said Lissette Galiana, who was shopping at a Wal-Mart in suburban Miami on Friday, around what is usually the very peak of the Atlantic hurricane season. "There's always a chance." Read more »

A day in the life of a South Pole worker

I've been conversing a bit with Issaquah's Jeffery Fogg, who is stationed down at McMurdo Station in Antarctica for the next six months. He was the one that sent the stunning Nacreous Clouds we featured in the blog earlier this week.

It turns out, Antarctica is more than just pretty clouds and bone-chilling temperatures. They are doing important research!

I've been asking him what it's like down there, and we'll try to feature some of his experiences here on occasion so you can get a glimpse into life near the South Pole.

"This place is a beautiful wonderland," he said. "The scenery is spectacular!! Pictures just don't do it justice. You almost have to see it with your own eyes to appreciate it."

Of course, the first question you might ask: Just how cold is it? Here's a hint:

Read more »
'Old Farmer's Almanac' still going strong in digital age

Sure, you can find weather forecasts anywhere these days -- even on your cell phone. But the old tried and true Farmer's Alamancs are still going strong!

Here is a article by AP Writer Russel Contreras:


BOSTON (AP) - Doris Smith Mills often comes across past editions of the "Old Farmer's Almanac" lying around her family's 110-year-old Westport, Mass., farm. She believes previous Smiths read it for entertainment and its yearly weather predictions to ready for New England's fickle climate changes.

Today, the 78-year-old has the 24-hour Weather Channel and various weather Web sites at her fingertips, and her farm has technology to handle all sorts of extreme weather. But she still reads the Dublin, N.H.-based almanac because it's been reliable for generations, she said.

"It helps us prepare," said Smith, whose family owns Noquochoke Orchards along the Westport River. "It's interesting. I like reading it."

Despite the accessibility of forecasts that rely more heavily on traditional science, the 218-year-old "Old Farmer's Almanac" and its longtime New England competitor, the Maine-based "Farmer's Almanac," still draw droves of fans. The books, which predict weather based on sunspots, planetary positions and meteorology, still are popular at farmers markets and bookstores. Each has a circulation of 3.5 million, and their Web sites are stacked with videos, blogs and podcasts.

Read more »
Now that's a rain shadow
We've always talked about the rain shadow in relation to how Sequim stays so dry, thanks to the Olympic Mountains.

But how about a more literal rain shadow?

The photo above was taken Wednesday around 11 a.m. by Susan Goodspeed, who works in Airport Operations at Sea-Tac Airport. She says there was a plane there waiting to taxi out to the runway when a heavy shower passed overhead. What you're seeing is the "dry" spot left behind on the pavement when the plane left.

OK, aviation experts, here's your challenge for the day: What type of plane was it? I don't have the answer so I can't say for sure if you are right, but you can see that the jets were running as it was blowing the raindrops away from the jets' wake.

Update: Thanks to our keen readers (see comments below), we think we've narrowed the responsible plane to a Southwest 737 that was heading to Sacramento and then on to Chicago/Midway.
Antarctica: Cold, but wow, those clouds are pretty

It's a long, long way from Issaquah for Jeffery Fogg -- and a good 95 or so degrees colder -- but this might at least make the trip a little worth it.

Fogg is currently working at the McMurdo Station on the Ross Island Shelf in Antarctica as a heavy equipment operator for Raytheon Polar Services.

He sent in these incredible photos of Nacreous Clouds, which are caused by icy conditions in the lower stratosphere.

Fogg is from Issaquah but says he'll be stationed down in Antarctica for six months. Sure, it's cold, but can't beat the view!

(At least, when it's clear. Check out this live web camera and weather station from McMurdo Station. Makes last December seem balmy!)

Here is the link to the top image there in full resolution

And here are three others he sent. Clicking on the photo will get you the higher resolution version.



By the way, if you want to see what it's like on the top side of the planet, here is a photo taken from the Arctic on board the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer Patrick Kelley)

The Healy has posted several photos from its journey to the Arctic. You can see their photo stream here

Coming soon to an e-mail near you: wind-blown hay bales?

If you haven't seen these photos yet in your e-mail inbox, you probably will sometime soon. It's the latest e-mail to make the rounds of awesome weather events, even if the e-mail itself isn't quite correct.

In the e-mail we received, it purports these are photos taken in the aftermath of a windstorm that went through Medicine Hat, Alberta "last week" although the e-mail has been making the rounds since at least early August.

Snopes.com, a go-to source on validity of such e-mail forwards, does not as yet have an entry for this. I haven't found any original news source for the photos to verify these were wind-blown in Medicine Hat, but the theory is sound. Out in the flatlands up there, they do get a lot of wind.

Read more »

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