La Nina Winter?

Whew…what a day.  I apologize for no blog updates earlier but I’ve been REALLY busy since 11:30am when I walked in.  Drew looked like toast at that time after doing 7 hours of continuous coverage.  It’s constant graphics work and you need to pay constant attention to when you’re on next.  Then radio stations need recordings, emails need to be answered etc…And I thought I was going to have a nice little day off.  Well, we must make weather hay when the weather is bad…or something like that.

Now I have to admit the wild weather was a bit of a buzz today, and I’d rather deal with this weather than snow/ice any day.  For example…last Saturday’s flurry storm.

The rain itself in the metro area was more than I expected.  And notice how the heaviest amounts were up agains’t the Coast Range?  Most likely due to the south-southeasterly flow running up into the Coast Range…a "reverse" orographic flow.  Plus the band of rain seemed to hang up over there a bit more.
As for wind…I was mostly pleased with the metro area wind forecast.  There were just a few spots that reached 50 mph.  The big disappointment was the lack of wind across the eastern 1/2 of the metro area.  The southerlies were running into east wind out of the Gorge, keeping speeds down there.

As for the coastal speeds, the length of time you folks were under the damaging wind was just incredible.  Looks like the Lincoln City area had gusts around 70 mph from midday Sunday until this evening!

By the way, 2 of NOAA’s weather buoys (off Newport and Astoria) broke loose during the storm and appear to be headed north.  You can track them here: Buoy 46029  or Buoy 46050  They will probably end up onshore in 24 hours or less.  Hopefully a nice sandy beach instead of the rocks at the Columbia River Bar.

I spent very little time looking at the future forecast…however it sure looks chilly.  I’m watching the surface pressure forecast map on the MM5 right now.  Cool Canadian air is on the way back as a system tracks by to our south on Thursday…heading into California.  No moisture…but cool.  Of course it IS December, so it won’t be unusually cool for this time of year.  Just cool compated to the current 59 degrees!   Mark Nelsen