Bruce’s Briefs: Wx for 31 Jan, 1,2,3, Feb. Will it ever stop Raining?

First of all, a BIG Thank You to all who took my weather class this Wednesday, to those who attended the seminar last night at the Boat Show and to those of you who stopped by the information booth at the Boat Show just to say hi. It’s always great to put faces to names and carry on a non-electronic conversation.

So to answer the above question, yes, of course, it will stop raining just not any time soon. The good news is that the snowpack continues to build in the Cascades and the Olympics and we are now 2.5 inches of rain above the normal average for this date.

Today’s surface analysis shows that stalled warm front that is over us right now bringing rain and wind to the Salish Sea. This will be run over by a strong cold front tonight and into Saturday bringing even more rain and stronger wind to the area. When you combine the factors of supersaturated soil with high wind speeds you can probably expect some trees to come down as well as some power outages.  If you can get away from work early today, it might not be a bad idea to give the mooring lines and fenders on the boat a quick check.

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I think the really cool chart for today is the 48hr surface forecast chart which shows two very interesting surface features. The first being that monster low in the mid-Pacific which yesterday was at 948mb which is the deepest low we’ve seen this winter. It’s also not moving very far or very fast which means it is only going to slightly weaken as it moves towards North America. The second feature of note is that very summer-like high(1042mb) off of the north coast of California. This is very much a high we would love to see for any race to Hawaii. As we get out to around the 4^th of Feb (96hr Forecast) the lows and attached frontal systems will continue to come into the Northwest and will degrade that high-pressure system and move it slightly to the southeast.

Now about that rain….This week marked an interesting transition in the NOAA weather satellite constellation as they put GOES 14 into “orbital storage” and brought GOES 17 online to cover the western region. You can read the entire announcement below.   I mention this because today’s Satellite Picture is the new IR version and provides a very graphic representation of the “atmospheric river” or Pineapple Express coming from Hawaii and bringing a lot of moisture with it.

NOAA officials also announced GOES-14, which had been providing supplemental space weather instrument operations, will be powered off and placed in storage by January 31, 2020. GOES-16, perched in the GOES-East orbit, is sending more advanced space weather data to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. Additionally, GOES-17 is providing products in a developmental system for space weather. Having GOES-15 in storage allows GOES-17 to operate with sole coverage of the GOES-West domain, able to see the weather, including storms, fog and wildfires, at high-resolution in the western U.S., Alaska and Hawaii and much of the Pacific Ocean.GOES-15 and GOES-14 can be called back into service if either GOES-17 or GOES-16 experience issues.

As always, if you’re going to look at the surface charts you might as well check the 500mb charts as well and then watch as the jet stream where it hits the Pacific Northwest moves generally south as it’s directed below the monster low and above that strong high. Then by the 4^th of Feb, it becomes truly meridional in nature flowing due south along the coast.

All in all, it will be a very interesting week for the weather.

Thank you again and have a great weekend!