KATU - Blogs - Weather

Intense thunderstorm upstages cruise ship entertainment

It's not often entertainment on board a cruise ship can be upstaged but on this particular night, Mother Nature gave it a shot.

Make that, several shots...

I took this video as the Disney Fantasy sailed into the Gulf of Mexico on May 1 just hours after it left a very hot and muggy Cozumel, Mexico.

(How hot? I went back and checked when I got home and it was 86 degrees with a 73 degree dew point that evening. Or as this Seattleite said: About 3 degrees cooler than molten lava. Though I'm sure many of the Florida residents on the ship probably thought it was a bit chilly.)

Brrr! Portland coldest major city in the nation Wednesday

Does it feel a bit like January out there Wednesday? Your skin did not deceive you.

A cold system from the Gulf of Alaska had settled into the Pacific Northwest, bringing not only a steady winter-like rain but has kept temperatures stuck in the 40s(!) through much of the day.

In fact, at 1 p.m., Portland was hovering at 46 degrees -- about the average high for mid-January.

The Rose City would finish the day with a high of 50 degrees --- the second coldest May day on record -- for any date! It shattered the daily record for coldest high temperature on May 22 which had been a "balmy" 55.

It was so chilly in the Northwest that Portland was given the "honor" as the coldest major city in the United States! (Even colder than Seattle (52) and Anchorage (54), although if you add in smaller cities, tied with Spokane, Washington, also at 50.)

How tornado victims got 36 minutes of precious warning time

Thirty-six minutes.

That might not seem very long -- roughly about the time it takes to wade through your hourly drama if you blaze through commercials. But compared to a few decades ago, 36 minutes of time might have saved countless lives during the devastating tornado that struck Moore, Oklahoma on Monday.

Years ago, the residents of Moore would have likely had no idea the tornado was coming until the twister was sighted, giving people barely a few minutes' notice. But thanks to advancements in technology, tornadoes rarely sneak up on anyone anymore.

In fact, forecasters as early as Wednesday began sounding the alarm for a potential severe weather breakout on Sunday and Monday. And, on Friday, the forecasts became more specific. On Monday, a Tornado Watch, which indicates conditions are right for tornadic development, was issued at 1:10 p.m. for much of Oklahoma, including the greater Oklahoma City area.

"What does ''EF-4'' mean?' and other tornado questions answered

With tornadoes in the news lately I figured it'd be a good time to post answers to some frequently asked questions about the powerful storms:

What does "EF-4" mean?

WIth the devastating tornado in Moore, Oklahoma, you'll be hearing a lot of about "EF" ratings -- that's from the Enhanced Fujita Scale that rates tornadoes on a scale of 0 to 5, 5 being the strongest.

The Moore tornado was given a preliminary rating of EF-4 ("Devastating") with estimated tornadic wind speeds of up to 200 mph, although many are thinking that rating could be increased to an EF-5 ("Incredible") once more damage assessment is done.

Sadly, it's not the first time Moore has had to deal with such a catastrophic storm. On May 3, 1999, Moore was struck by an EF-5 tornado which recorded the strongest wind speed ever registered near Earth's surface. this map provided by the National Weather Service in Norman, Oklahoma shows just how close the two tracks were.

Northern Lights peek out in Eastern Washington

As we mentioned in the blog Thursday, there's a particularly active sunspot on the sun right now.

It had, as its opening salvo while starting to face the Earth, unleashed a moderately strong solar flare that reached us late Friday, triggering a display of the Northern Lights that reached as far south as Colorado.

Northern Lights to be visible around the Pacific Northwest soon?

The sun has been getting quite active lately, with one sun spot in particular giving off several explosive flares this week, and it could eventually bring some brilliant displays of the Northern Lights to the Pacific Northwest.

Since Monday, Sunspot AR1748 has already given off four "X-class" solar flares -- X being the most powerful class of flares that have potential to disrupt radio and satellite signals. In fact, that flare has given off more X-class flares than every other sunspot of the past year combined, according to spaceweather.com.

Up to this point, the spot has been on a part of the sun not directly facing Earth, so the flares have been directed away from our planet and not really giving us much of an effect.

Northwest Weather Photos: Showing off our spectacular spring

'Ice wave' attacks homes in Minnesota

You've probably seen video of flash floods before, but for these homeowners in Minnesota, it was a little different this weekend: A "flood" of ice.

A woman on Minnesota's Mille Lacs Lake snapped this video of what some are calling an "ice out tsunami."

"Just sounded like shattering glass," Darla Johnson told WCCO-TV. "It was pushing and breaking and pushing and breaking."

'Tis the season for brilliant 'fire rainbows'

May is probably better known around here as getting ready for the upcoming Rose Festival but did you also know it's when we kick off the fire rainbow season?

Fire rainbows, or more officially (and more boringly) known as "circumhorizonal arcs" are caused by ice crystals in the thin, distant clouds being at just the correct angle to refract the sunlight into the colors of the prism.

Ron Glowen, now of Arlington, Wash., just sent me these photos that were taken in June of 2006 while visiting his hometown of Spokane.

2 weeks of fascinating weather condensed into one blog!

Those of you who frequently read the blog might have noted it was on autopilot the past two weeks as I've been out of town, but now that I'm back, I've found there were a lot of fun and cool topics that happened since I was off on the other coast.

First up: Did you know a baseball game at Denver's Coors Field set a record on April 23 for the coldest game time temperature on record? Just 23 degrees. It broke the record set... the week before in Denver at 28. Chicago had held the record at 29 before that pair of chilly games.