Forecast the other day was for a “slight chance of excessive rain.” What are we supposed to do with that? “Build the ark! Google cubits! Wait! Never mind!”
Used to be you couldn’t count on a weather forecast three days out, but they’re nailing it down with regularity now. When I was a small, frequently damp person, they didn’t have weather satellites. We looked out the window and our mommies jammed us into winter pants over our anklets and under our dresses, and popped us on the fanny to walk to school, where we had to remove our pants and tuck our dresses around our knees to stay warm, because, I don’t know, we were girls, or something.
Meteorologists didn’t know what was happening out at sea except what they could get radioed in from ships. Pros and weather nerds phoned in their rain gauge results, temperature and barometer readings here and there rounded out the data, and a good or lucky meteorologist could take a reasonable crack at it. Throw in the almanac and somebody’s arthritic knee and you’ve got yourself a forecast.
But I hadn’t heard of “atmospheric rivers” until fairly recently. I don’t think they’re new, although one can never rule anything out since we started bollixing up the atmosphere. But they can see them now. Big ol’ plumes just roaring over the ocean and ready to dump rain. We know we’re going to get a lot of rain here in Portland and we know it’s going to last a few days, because that there is one long strand of wetness, and it’s going to delta out over land before it slams into our mountain range.
So if the weather experts want to tell us we’re in for a deluge, that’s worth knowing. If I were near a crick that were, God’s will notwithstanding, gonna rise, I’d want to know. I’d want to get my sandbags filled or buy that spray rubber you can coat the bottom half of your house with and peel off later. That’s a thing, right? I haven’t really looked into it, because I’m on high ground. But I do want to know if I need to plug in the defroster on my bird bath or keep my hummingbird nectar warm.
And yet, I bridle a bit at the “slight chance of excessive rain.” That’s a judgment. Who gets to decide what’s excessive? The person deranged enough to plan an outdoor wedding in January, or the local salamander population? Because I do believe that one and only one of those entities has a real stake in this.
I’ve never cared for opinion in my weather forecasts. Just the facts, ma’am. If we’re farming a thousand desiccated acres, or if our town is under four feet of water and Grandma’s on the roof with the cockapoos, we might have some standing to bellow for our needs. But if you’re in western Oregon and you just think you’d be that much happier with a redundant amount of sunshine? Might be time to pack your bags.
Here we get weather guessers chirping “another beautiful sunny day” when it hasn’t rained in 6 weeks and what would actually be beautiful would be some moisture other than the omnipresent humidity.
Summer…..
Ceci
Yeah! I hate that! Or I used to, when we had sun!
I lived in western Washington State for eighteen months during the late seventies before Mount St Helens exploded and global warming reared its ugly head. We were told that it rained a lot in Washington, so we weren’t disappointed. It wasn’t rain like we got in NJ, which could be downpours in the summer, but mostly a steady mist. But mist will soak you to the bone as surely as steady rain. That is if you’re fool enough to be outside in it.
We found that spring, fall and winter were wet and summer was less so. Winter was also dark, which meant there was no reason any sane person would be out that time of year.
We returned to the Garden State and I’ve heard that Washington is now drier and warmer. 80 degrees in the summer was a cause for alarm in the 1970s. I’ve heard of 80 degree days in the winter in Seattle now. Not sure how that’s possible with only six hours of daylight, but I’m just passing on what I hear from my sources.
Meanwhile in NJ it’s been very dry. My sweet bay magnolia bloomed for the first time last summer and then died. My dogwoods are still alive, but two of them won’t be blooming this year.
Normally this time of year we see plumes of smoke from controlled burns, but haven’t seen or smelled any yet. Either it’s too dry, too windy or the forest fire guys were fired by Musk.
It’s a wonderful time to be alive.
It’s not that bad here. Hardly anyone catches on fire accidentally.
Setting things on fire isn’t difficult here. Any little spark or hot piece of metal will light things up.
The only weather forecast I remember was when I was a teen, living in Southern California. At that time, a band of dirty orange was a given when you looked at the sky (SOME things have changed for the better!)
Anyway, apparently the forecaster said something along the lines of ‘Another smoggy day, but no worse than what you’re used to.’ My mother exploded! “USED TO!!!! Our bodies will NEVER get used to this poison!!!”
Ah, the scandalized parental explosions! I remember every one of them, even though they were never directed at me. Well, almost never.
About 45 years ago I learned to fly (airplanes). My instructor told me to never trust a weather forecast for more than 6 hours. I have rarely been disappointed heeding that advice.
Do you still fly? I always picture you on a pony.
I scope out 2 different weather services on my computer every morning. Accuweather has an AQI (air quality index) for our area. The best it ever seems to be is Fair. A lot of times it’s Poor, and sometimes even Hazardous. Only a couple times did I ever see Good, or Excellent. No wonder lung cancer is so prevalent around here.
I compare Accuweather with NOAA. One summer one of the two was consistently wrong on the temperature as their sensor was out on the tarmac of an airfield. These days NOAA often calls for rain while Accuweather says no chance and that usually means there’ll be the briefest shower or the odd spit.
The EPA’s AirNow app is excellent- you can list a bunch of different places (I do family and friends locations) and commiserate w/ them in advance. It is reliable. Purple Air is a citizen based air quality monitoring program- useful where the topography is tricky- canyons, rivers , valleys etc…… and the air currents and layers tend to be mixed as is true here in Portland.
Our air quality is pretty good most of the time, but I sure recall that 9/2020 AQI that was in the 400 range for days.
You won’t need to dread approaching weather systems any more, now that Elon has ordered the firing of a huge number of NOAA experts. So relax — and just be surprised at what arrives!
Ignorance is weirdly refreshing. Okay, that’s not it, but being surprised is.
A nice post on the weather. Yesterday it was the warmest on record in Portland, 71 in Feb. I don’t know what it pertains for the spring and summer, but I’m not looking forward to it…
Thanks for getting my mind off, at least for a bit, the wretched state of the US, and the cowards leading it…
71- and although we had snow the ground and most locales did not have a frost— it means bugs, insects, slugs… galore
We made it to 54, clear and very windy. Gusts up to 37. Winds like that in central New Jersey strike me as a new phenomenon. Tornadoes and straight line winds used to be rare events separated by years. Now they are annual and semi-annual events.
Couple the winds with dry conditions and you have all the makings for massive wildfires. We’ve been lucky so far thanks to controlled burns and possibly less arson. Idiots throwing lit cigarettes out their car windows are unfortunately still a thing.
I would have thought the vaping helped with that part.
Ah, weather on the wet (aka west) coast. You got me wondering, Murr, just how our weather here on SE Vancouver Island compares to Portland. Here in Nanaimo it’s actually pretty close. Portland gets about 44 inches of annual rain over 163 days and we get 46 inches (1165 mm – makes it sound worse!) over 176 days. So, we’re two weeks and 2 inches worse (or better, if you are a salamander). I was surprised in looking up the stats that Vancouver has 57 inches annually and Victoria gets only 28 inches. No wonder people in Canada retire to Victoria!
I went into a little dream state with “if you are a salamander.” So thanks for that.
It is just an incomprehensible, staggeringly stupid act of colossal proportions that Trump et.al. are firing the experts in order to shush down the climate crisis.
Our planet is being destroyed. They put their tiny thumbs in their greasy, hairy ears and go “La la la la la la” and the equally stupid people who STILL support them are grinning and laughing.
Yeah, at this point we DO need a dictator, but not that dicktater.