Bruce’s Briefs: 14 Sept 2020. When will this post-apocalyptic weather end?

I think we have all had enough of this however it is still going to take a while to clean this out. At least in some parts of West Seattle, we had some rain today. It, however, didn’t do anything to improve visibility or air quality. The problem is that these systems aren’t strong enough to come in and just blast all this stagnant smoke and air out. The Langley Hill Doppler shows some promising rain off the coast and they have posted Gale Warnings for the offshore waters however the coastal buffer zone will do what it does and degrade these systems as they get to the coast.

Overall, the air will remain unhealthy for the Salish Sea through the end of the week. The reason for this can be seen in the Surface Charts as well as the Satellite Pictures. The new, high-resolution pictures from GOES 17 are impressive as well as depressing. I have included a series of pictures from earlier that shows just how far out into the Pacific the smoke has traveled. Todays’s picture even shows how the smoke has now become wrapped around the low-pressure system that is off of our coast. This smoke went out over 1,000 miles into the Pacific and is now returning to our coast. So while we always think that there is nothing better than sailing to get out and enjoy fresh air, that won’t be the case this week. You’re better off to stay inside until this goes away.

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The Surface Analysis Chart for today shows a weak low-pressure system off of the Northern California/Southern Oregon Coast with a long cold front attached that extends almost to the Hawaiian Islands. Unfortunately, this system is moving due north and dragging the frontal system that direction as well.  Note the two ship reports off of the mouth of the Straits of JdF that both show light SE breeze and heavy fog.  When you compare the Surface Chart to the 500mb Charts you see that there is nothing to direct these systems into our area. The 500mb chart for the 16^th shows a cut-off upper level low developing well south of the Jet-Stream and not moving anywhere very quickly.

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The Surface forecast charts for the 15^th and 16^th show very little pressure gradient over the area however the chart for the 17^th finally shows a weak front over the area. This will still bring only a 10-20% chance of rain for the Salish Sea and still no pressure gradient to bring wind to stir up the atmosphere.

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As if this isn’t enough bad news for one day, how about the poor Gulf Coast of the US about to get smacked by another hurricane(Sally). Then there is the possibility of seven additional named storms forming in the Atlantic and Caribbean over the next seven days. We’re going to run out of names for storms at this rate and we are still at only about the ½-way point for hurricane season.

To top it all off we have the appointment today by the President of a longtime climate change denialist, David  Legates, to run NOAA, are you kidding me???? Well, the Pres has been in California, not wearing a mask and breathing in the smoke from lord knows how many burning pot farms so it may have somewhat distorted his sense of reality when it comes to climate change. Maybe he thinks that if you just ignore a potentially record-setting number of hurricanes and ignore all the catastrophic fires in the West maybe they will all miraculously disappear and any talk of climate change will disappear as well. 

Ed. Note: Fires, like the virus, don’t respond well to the bs science deniers out there. Haven’t we all had enough of this? Let’s get serious folks, and have the US again take the lead in fighting climate change. And science in general. The appointment of a climate change denialist to run NOAA, like the appointment of someone trying to dismantle public schools to be education secretary, is just plain wrong. November can’t come soon enough. Nor can the end of this year.