Wecome To The Arctic

Arctic air, that is. This temporary incursion of arctic air presents a tremendous opportunity to experience living in a place that has really cold winters. But only for a week or so! Perfect!

We had 5 inches of snow Sunday (which may be a local record), a cold inversion Monday, and beautifully clear sunny weather today. High temp today 23, low 9, minimum wind chill 0 (zero). Tomorrow, snow moves back in, along with another big storm this weekend as the arctic air starts to moderate. This is interesting weather, and I like interesting weather.

Fortunately, arctic blasts here rarely last longer than a week. They usually end on a very messy precipitation event, but they usually end in a timely fashon.

And this one had a perfect setup, at least for garden plants: There were (and still are) several inches of snow on the ground before the really cold temperatures set in, giving plants and the soil a comfy insulating blanket.

Here's a zoomed in and very fuzzy view of Mt Adams from the deck this evening. I gotta trim those branches (except that they belong to a neighbor a block away):


I'll have another post shortly regarding my thoughts on the Hood River Weather site's new addition: the live chat window.

Warm Spell

After flirting with a chilly, boring inversion event Thanksgiving week, the weather took a turn for the better (as in "warmer") the past few days.

On Saturday, the high temp at our station hit 59 degrees, tying the record high set in 1995.

And today, as a warm storm front moves into Oregon, the temperature has reached 57, surpassing the historic record of 56 degrees (1939).

We've dropped behind normal precipitation amounts for the current rain year. No snow at the ski resorts, either. We can make that up pretty fast, but time's a wasting. I've done my part by changing the top banner at the Hood River Weather site to a snowy wintry theme. That should do it.

February Revisited

February in Hood River was warmer, windier, and drier than average.

The average temperature was 2.8 degrees warmer than long term averages, and 3.1 degrees above 2000-2007 averages. There was no measureable snowfall at the city elevation. Wind speeds were above average, with SSW winds predominate. There were no inversion events during the month, making this winter the most fog-free winter in recent memory.

There was 1 local record set in February. On February 28, the high temperature hit 66 degrees, breaking the old record of 64 (1988)

	High	Low	Average	Historical Average	Variance
Temperature (F)	66.0	26.6	41.2	38.4	2.8
Wind (mph)	31		2.5	1.9	0.6
Rainfall (in)	1.15		3.08 (total)	3.65	-0.57

January Revisited

January was another entertaining weather month. Colder, windier, and slightly wetter than average, January had enough variable weather to satisfy even the most jaded weather junkie.

January's average temperature was 1.5 degrees cooler than long term averages, and 4.5 degrees below 2000-2006 averages. Snowfall was 23.5 inches, well above the historical average of 14.4 inches. Much higher snow amounts were recorded in the middle and upper valleys. Wind speeds were above average, with WSW winds predominate. That's unusual for January; east winds usually prevail. There were no depressing extended inversion events during the month, continuing this winter's very welcome "no-inversion" pattern.


There were 2 local weather records set in January. 15 inches of snow fell on January 26, breaking the old record for the date of 9 inches (1933). And, in a unofficial record, the barometer dipped to 28.91 inches on January 4th. The previous low baro at our station was 28.94 in 2002.

	High	Low	Average	Historical Average	Variance
Temperature (F)	49.0	10.0	32.4	33.9	-1.5
Wind (mph)	37		1.9	1.5	0.4
Rainfall (in)	1.16		5.30	5.20	0.10

Snow

After a week of sunny and cold weather, moisture returns. Right now (Saturday 8 pm), it's in the form of snow. Lots of snow. 11 inches and more to come. The temperature, which has dipped to 14 degrees in the past week, is still plenty cold at 27 degrees. The warming trend will be slow over the next few days.

Forecasts are for more precipitation through Tuesday. If past patterns hold true, most will fall in the form of snow, followed by sleet, followed by freezing rain.

For those who like a wide variety of weather, this winter has been great. Hardly any boring cloudy inversion events. And, in a couple more weeks, winter patterns will start changing over to more spring-like patterns.

Feel free to post your local snow amounts here.

Is This Unusual Or What

January 17th. The middle of winter. Clear outside with very strong west winds. So what is wrong with this picture?

Nothing. It's absolutely beautiful out. But... this is VERY unusual weather for this time of the year. Typically, we would be in the cold inversion foggy east wind pattern, and Portland would be sunny. But it's exactly the opposite right now. Strong west winds, relatively warm at 40 degrees. This more resembles an early March weather pattern. How great is this??

Here's the Portland fog/cloud layer today that has stopped just west of Hood River:


And here's our view today of Mt Adams, a volcano about 40 miles due north, in all its snow covered glory (12,300 ft high):

December Revisited

December was a pretty entertaining month, weather wise. Warmer and wetter than average, with a nice mix of changing weather patterns. Heavy rain early in the month, which flooded Western Oregon and Washington, had little flood impact here. And, best of all, there were quite a few days where the clouds/fog parted and the sun made a welcome appearance.

December's average temperature was 1.8 degrees warmer than long term averages, and 1.4 degrees above 2000-2006 averages. Precipitation was a little more than 2 inches above average. At our location in west Hood River (400 ft), we had maybe 6 inches of total snow throughout the entire month, and it melted fast each time. Much higher snow amounts were recorded in the middle and upper valleys. Wind speeds were average, with west winds slightly predominate over east winds. That's pretty unusual for December; east winds usually prevail. And that also helps explain the total lack of depressing extended inversion events during the month.

There were no local records set in December.

	High	Low	Average	Historical Average	Variance
Temperature (F)	59.5	26.7	37.9	36.1	1.8
Wind (mph)	28		1.6	1.6	0.0
Rainfall (in)	1.86		7.99	5.81	2.18
Barometric (in Hg)	30.60	29.57

Snow

2 inches of snow on the deck this Saturday morning. Very nice to wake up to, and on a non-work day at that. Life doesn't get a whole lot better than this.

And now it's 4 pm, 39 degrees, and the snow is pretty much gone after warming temperatures and drizzling rain do their thing.

It's been a good weather month here in the Hood. Lots of variety, none of the flooding and hurricane force winds that devastated the Oregon Coast, and only an occasional fog inversion that doesn't last more than a day or two. The low temperatures are staying moderate: 29 degrees in November, and 27 degrees so far in December. So mild that we are still able to harvest some lettuce, green onions, cilantro, and celery from the vege garden. And the seed catalogues for next season are starting to arrive...

November Revisited

This November, the average temperature was 0.6 degrees warmer than long term averages, and 0.6 degrees above 2000-2006 averages. Rainfall was slightly above average. The first snow fell on November 18, and additional snow later in the month, for an unofficial total of 5 inches in Hood River. Much higher snow amounts were recorded in the middle and upper valleys. Wind speeds were lower than average, with west and east winds pretty much equally distributed. There was one extended high fog / low clouds inversion event around Thanksgiving.

There were no local records set in November.

	High	Low	Average	Historical Average	Variance
Temperature (F)	66.0	29.0	42.1	41.5	0.6
Wind (mph)	35		1.3	1.8	-0.5
Rainfall (in)	1.17		5.33	4.84	0.49
Barometric (in Hg)	30.56	29.63

Great Weather

And by "great weather", I mean weather that is dynamic, changes almost daily, and isn't an endless inversion fog pattern.

An inch of snow on the deck currently. More snow moves in later tomorrow, perhaps as much as 6 to 12 inches. Follow that up with warming west winds and heavy rain on Sunday and Monday. This is good stuff, except for the distinct possibility of major flooding...

Snow!

Well now, this is rather unexpected. Sunday afternoon, 4 pm, 34 degrees, and it's snowing in Hood River. Not sticking currently at this elevation, but it's certainly accumulating higher up. How cool is this?! We haven't had a snowfall this early in a long time. It used to be we could count on a little snow by Thanksgiving, and here it is!

The forecast is for more precipitation through Monday, and then a drying trend through Thanksgiving weekend. Hopefully sunny, but I wouldn't bet against a fog inversion...

October Revisited

This year, October was distinguished by cooler nights, comfortable sunny days, and calmer winds. Overall, a very pleasant month. The average temperature was 0.9 degrees cooler than long term averages, and 2.4 degrees below 2000-2006 averages. Global warming apparently took a break here in October. Rainfall was above average, due to heavy rain around Oct 3 and Oct 18. Wind speeds were considerably lower than average, with SW winds predominate. Cooler easterlies made an occasional appearance, and there were hardly any cloudy inversion events.

There were 2 records set during October, the daily rain total of 1.17 inches on Oct 18, and the high temperature of 77 on Oct 23.

	High	Low	Average	Historical Average	Variance
Temperature (F)	77.2	29.0	50.4	51.3	-0.9
Wind (mph)	27		1.4	2.5	-1.1
Rainfall (in)	1.17		4.02	2.38	1.64
Barometric (in Hg)	30.52	29.49

It Used to Be Colder

Westerly winds this morning! We haven't had west winds for over a week. Luckily, there hasn't been much of an fog inversion layer for the past couple of days, and it has been mostly sunny and cool.

Speaking of cool, today marks the 57th anniversary of the coldest temperature in Hood River's official records. On Feb 3rd 1950, the low temp dropped to -21 degrees. Granted, the temperature has almost certainly been colder than that, since official records only go back to 1928. It was probably colder, say, in the last ice age, perhaps around the time of the Missoula Floods, which did a lot towards carving out the Columbia River Gorge as we know it today. There was an excellent PBS special a while back on the subject. Awesome stuff.

And speaking of awesome stuff, the IPCC's report on upcoming climate change has been released. There is now official international scientific agreement that:

• Increased levels of greenhouse gases in a planet's atmosphere tend to increase temperatures (duh).

• By rapidly releasing the geologic store of carbon (fossil fuels that took millions of years to accumulate) into the atmosphere over a relatively short time period (100 years or so now), humans have been directly responsible for most of the increase in greenhouse gases.

• If we want to do anything about this, we best be taking global action pretty soon.

My personal opinion is that, given human nature (and my own skeptical nature):

• Our species has a poor record of working together on issues of global magnitude.
  

• Our global economy (and our spectacular growth in population, infrastructure, and technology over the past 100 years) has been possible mostly due to the era of inexpensive fossil fuels, which is now drawing to a close.

• Since the biggest step in reducing fossil fuel use is to actually use less of it, and since that could severely impact the global economy's "need to continually grow", it seems unlikely that meaningful change is going to happen in a timely fashion. Such change is more likely to happen if fossil fuel prices stay high or go higher, but then again... the economy...
  

But I could be wrong. Maybe mankind will undertake substantial changes rapidly enough. And even though the science is pretty clear on the warming effect of increasing greenhouse gases, we don't know for sure the impact of all the positive and negative feedback mechanisms in the biosphere, and probably won't know until they happen. Not to mention climate tipping points.


In any event, if it were me (which it is), I wouldn't own or buy land less than 50 feet above sea level, and I would try my best to think globally and act locally. For better or worse, we are all in this together. We are indeed living in very interesting times.

Inversion Aversion

It's baaaaack.... We've been lucky for a week or so, with mostly clear skies or broken clouds overhead. The typical winter inversion fog layer that settles in when high pressure forms over the Pacific NW has been mercifully slow to develop this time around.

Unfortunately, the inversion layer is quite well developed today, and the majority of computer models indicate little change for at least a week and perhaps longer. It's a good time to head west (the Oregon Coast is usually sunny during inversions here), or up in elevation (Mt Hood skiing is above the fog and sunny), or anywhere tropical.

If you can't get away, you can take some comfort that the days are getting longer and Spring is less than 2 months away. Also, the inversion events typically stop occurring by mid February.

Up until this high pressure ridge set in, this had been an unusually wet and stormy winter for an El Nino pattern. Usually El Nino brings our area decreased rain (and increased media talk of impending drought). This year, due to record rains in November and occasional storms in December and early January, we are well above our average yearly precipitation (measured from Oct 1). In addition, mountain snow packs are plentiful, so we shouldn't be hearing about drought anytime soon.

Beyond Moderately Cold

OK, so I was a bit optimistic in my previous post to call this a "moderately cold" air mass that was about to settle in over us. This is cold. Very cold. Not as cold as, say, Alaska, but still, quite cold.

This is, however, nowhere near the all time (at least since 1928) record low temp; that was -21 degrees on Feb 3, 1950. And it's not too unusual for a winter here to have a couple of cold snaps down into the single digits. Usually the arctic blast lasts less than a week before moderating.

It's nice to not have the typical fog inversion layer over us currently. The inversion happens here in the winter whenever a ridge of high pressure sets in over the Pacific Northwest. Years ago, they didn't occur all that often, but in recent years they have been noticeably more frequent.

Or perhaps it just seems that way as I get older and more easily bored and sometimes even irritated by DAY AFTER DAY AFTER DAY of gloomy dark gray depressing skies where the temperature is cold and hardly changes a couple of degrees in 24 hours and we have to hear about how sunny and beautiful it is in Portland and up on Mt Hood above the fog and the whole thing absolutely sucks. But maybe that's just me.

Enjoy the non-inversion days while they last (until the east wind kicks in, probably).