Oregon Hikers

cliffmass blog - interesting

maybe things will be dry for a while, all this rain is getting tiring

A Scientific American article about a year ago speculated that because of global warming, the arctic is warmer, and because of that, the jet stream is loopier, which caused all the cold weather in the interior U.S. last winter, and maybe makes this pattern we're experiencing.

Maybe there'll be more weather anomolies in the future

and then it's human nature to percieve the current situation to be extreme and you sort of forget the extreme events in the past

Signs that you know the long-range forecasts aren't very reliable:

1) The traffic guy fills in for the retired weather guy...and the new guy is more accurate

2) Sixty days after you hear the meteorologists say "we'll have dry years like this for many years to come," they say "we'll have wet years like this for many years to come."

3) When you see a 5-day forecast at 5 am with two Thursdays in the week...and an hour later there are still two Thursdays because no one in the studio is paying attention

4) When the high for the day will be 74 degrees, but the temperate at the afternoon bus stop for the same location will be 76 degrees (must be that new math)

5) Every time I hear a commercial by the station trying to entice me to listen to that hour's forecast, after I've already heard the 7-day forecast. So, does a "change" in the forecast mean you were right or wrong.

6) When the 6 am forecast has "Cloudy?" for the 7 o'clock hour...but the forecaster wants me to stay tuned for their 5-day forecast. Really? You can't be certain what the next hour will bring, but your confidence interval is 100% several days out.

7) And finally, when you keep calling it a "drought year" even though the rain bucket is 115% of normal.

Is this it for winter?

It's a little early to declare winter over, but no cold predicted in near future. We had a good hard freeze around New Years.

I'm rooting for a cold stretch so I can test my canister stove heat strip

Hey everyone, I'd be happy to get two consecutive days without rain at this point.

One of my sisters lives in the outer Hebrides. They had a record # of days without rain last year. It occurred in September and was an astonishing 5 days straight.

When you live on a speck of an island in the North Atlantic, you must expect a bit rain now and again.

Is this it for winter?

Jury is still out on that one. Arctic air masses have been known to settle in across the Cascades from us and set up east wind situations well into February.

yeah, that's what I'm hoping for, but it sure doesn't seem like the trend right now

noaa 8 to 14 day outlook says above normal temperature and precipitation

El Nino usually brings a warmer + drier winter, but what with the abnormally warm ocean all up and down the west Pacific coast last summer, we seem to be getting warmer + wetter instead. So, I agree that another big winter freeze is only a remote possibility. Still, the weather can always spring a surprise on you.

Okay, I'm giving up on rooting for a new record for consecutive days without rain.

0.01 inch today so 2018 is out of the running

I'm switching to number of days 90 F or greater
The record is 29 in 2015, we're at 26, we'll blast through the old record within a week.

Before 2015 the record was 24 in 2009. We seem to be breaking this record every few years. Global warming is my friend.

It might be your friend, maybe, until every forest in the PNW burns to a cinder and then you might have to reconsider.