Not a whole lot to talk about tonight. I’m loving our current weather pattern. Not as a meteorologist of course, but it’s wonderful to wake up to warm sunshine almost every day. I’ve been messing around in the yard and garden each morning (way ahead of last year!), then riding bicycle for a couple hours in the evenings between shows. Feels like midsummer, except temps have been a bit cooler than we would generally see in July and August.
The weather pattern changes the next 4-5 days are pretty straightforward, then it gets messy after that. The strong upper-level ridge over the Desert S.W. bulges north the next 48 hours with rising heights over us. That also shoves the moisture and instability for thunderstorms farther north and west. No model shows any storms developing either tomorrow or Friday west of the Cascades and I agree. The flow is too southwesterly and there is no triggering shortwave. Then the upper high gets “dented” by a trough passing by to the north Saturday and Sunday, turning the upper flow westerly. That pushes the storms way over to east and southeastern Oregon. Low level flow here west of the Cascades never goes offshore or easterly during this period; we just get weaker onshore flow. I have a gut feeling the 88 forecast high we have for Friday may be too high. We’ll see.
Beyond Sunday, models are in disagreement. The GFS and ECMWF both have a strong upper-level trough moving into California (rare for June), mainly bypassing us. At the same time a weak trough drops in from the north out of Canada. Neither one bodes much or any rainfall for us. I see the new 00z GFS just bounces upper-level heights back up over us next week, prolonging the warm spell. ECMWF isn’t quite as warm.
All in all, it looks like the warmer than average weather is going to continue over the next 7-10 days. I just finished planting all my warm weather stuff yesterday in the garden; corn, beans, pumpkins are all in. Things are definitely running ahead of the past few years on the Nelsen “farm”…okay, back-yard raised beds, but you get the idea.
Mark Nelsen
FOX 12 Weather Blog 
WHAT is this???
Alright, a shower near La Pine had a warning with it just recently. It said the public reported golfball sized hail from it. According to the KPDT radar, it doens’t look like it. Can any of you go on your radars and switch to KPDT to see what the heck they are talking about? It looks like a normal shower, i think the public is lying.
they have started a new blog string
It was a mistake, i posted other comments there already.
Nice image from top of Mt. Hood Meadows
http://skihood.com/cams/camimage.ashx?loc=vstop
My thoughts are activity will develop in roughly the same areas, but managed to move 75-100 miles further north. I also think there will be a few more t-storms and some severe thunderstorm warnings are possible.
Well, today there were already warnings for Northern CA. Since conditions tomorrow seem more likely for activity than it was today, the chances of warnings are not mentionable. Perhaps some supercell triplets or quadriplets like what California had earlier?
Moving Forward with Coastal Radar:
http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2009/05/big-day-for-coastal-radar-and-heat-wave.html
10:30 PM SPC thermodynamics update
MU CAPE: 2000-3000j/kg
Still VERY favorable elevated instability. Imagine if we had a shortwave/vort rotating north from southern Oregon. We would see more activity and probably severe warnings.
Things are really weakening. I hope they pulse back up. It is possible….
I see cells trying to fire now further west over central Lane County.
I’m watching Mark’s weather cast and he said we may see flashes off to the southeast later and tomorrow could be up towards Mt. Hood… Great! That falls in line with my analysis and thoughts from earlier.
Timmy, yep we sure do…. I’d like to see some activity manage to creep it’s way northward into southeastern Linn County or southwestern Jefferson that way we’d know the southerly flow is advancing further north than projected.
Still 69.8F here with calm winds. Surface gradient show the flow is very lightly offshore in the -0.2 to -0.6mb range.
The storm is touching the east side of Lane county, so technically we have a Valley storm right now.
It looks like we might have some high level clouds filter-in over the NW. That may keep the night time temps up. I am currently 74 with a steady NNW at 9 here in the Grove where it usually cools quicker than the Metro area.
test
Nice…. A small 67.5dbz core now WSW of Bend.
Possible 1″ hail marker. VIL 42.5. I’d probably say it’s more penny sized personally.
It looks like we might have some high level clouds filter in over the NW. That may keep the night time temps up. I am currently 74 with a steady NNW at 9 here in the Grove where it usually cools quicker than the Metro area.
Rob, there is another rapidly strengthening storm SW of Bend. Echo tops to 43,000 feet, and VIL’s up to 46 kg/m-2. Maybe a warning with this perhaps? Impressive day so far!
btw nice one on the analysis explanation.
Timmy, thanks a lot… Yeah pulsing in nature and feeding off the very favorable MU CAPE. A warning? well perhaps briefly… It’s fun to track regardless.
It has been quite awhile since I’ve done a detailed analysis like that… It felt good, real goood.
Looks like t-storms are surviving nicely a bit further north along the Cascades southwest of Bend, so slightly deeper moisture is creeping northward.
Okay 9:30 PM SPC thermodynamics update
SB CAPE has weakened quickly which is no real surprise as things stabilize in the lower layer. The surface CAP is becoming quite strong. However there is plenty of elevated instability present with MU CAPES exceeding 2000-2500 along the entire Cascades which could lead to renewed convection firing well into the evening hours.
Current WV loop explains the synoptic pattern nicely.
http://sat.wrh.noaa.gov/satellite/loopsat.php?wfo=pqr&area=nw&type=wv&size=4
You can see the flow aloft rotating around the Great Basin ridge. Southerly flow is about up to Eugene now which mean any activity along the Cascades will slowly begin to drift off to the N-NNE north of say the Three Sisters area. As you can see though along the South Coast the flow has progressively turned southerly and is moving northward. The key will be to watch that dry slot along the Coast and if it remains moving north overnight/tomorrow, or if it gets shoved off to the northeast. We’ll see to see that advance much further north if we are to get into the deeper moisture at 700-850mb.
Further offshore the flow turns southwesterly near 131 W, 38 N. This MAY pinch off the southerly flow over Oregon turning it less favorably to the southwest inducing a more stable marine push. It is going to be a close call in terms of t-storms marching their way north up the Cascades to the Mt. Hood area, perhaps even the eastern Foothills.
We’ll need* to see that advance much further north.
Update: New storms have rapidly intensified along the same areas in the vicinity of Highways 58/97 near Odell Lake.
Thunderstorms are almost non existant right now. So Rob, they are supposed to have overnight storms?
Storms southeast of Oakridge near highway 58/97 around Odell Lake are very close to a severe warning. Also this storm is moving NNW trying to drift down off the Cascades.
Update: Storm appears to be weakening, but this could be a pulsing phase. However as it is with the majority of our storms I assume it is a weakening trends as we lose day time heating since these are diurnally driven.
SPC info update within 5 minutes
MU CAPE look strong up and down the Cascades… I assume some may remain overnight for a chance of t-storms albeit weaker from Mt. Jefferson southward. WV loop shows the flow ever so slowly turning southerly and that is advancing northward just as slowly. I think tomorrow evening/night we will might see flashes off to our southeast. One thing I’ve noticed is that my onshore breezes ended abruptly about 2 hours ago now. It is going to be very dependent on the onshore flow tomorrow/evening. If we can keep the surface flow very light or even very lightly offshore that increases chances.
Surface gradients
As of 9 PM
PDX-DLS: -0.1mb | 0.6mb Increase, switched offshore
TTD-DLS: -0.5mb | 0.3mb Increase
Currently 2 strong thunderstorms around Deschutes county. Warnings are possible. Hail sigs from 1.00″ – 1.50″
Does anyone know why Rod Hill was released from KATU and Dave S. moved in?
I have no clue why.
By the way, SB CAPE in Central California reached 5000 J/kg earlier today. High numbers so far, hope this continues, and a little more north next time.
So far the storm dynamics have been similar last August’s storms. We were almost just seeing a quadriplet cluster of severe cells in Northern CA. All the storms were very close together, with dark red cores. Satellite sure does look interesting…
Storm attributes were fairly impressive. One storm had a hail signature of 2.00″ hail, with a 45,000 foot top. VIL’s easily above 50 kg/m-2 with the majority of the storms that developed. That’s monsoon for ya, well only the start at least!
If instability is higher tomorrow, we will definitely see some really good development.
Nice flare-up of storms in N Cal and S Ore…Some have made severe criteria with large hail and heavy rain…
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~ovens/loops/wxloop.cgi?ir4km+12
82.8F
84 at the Hillsboro airport, that’s 12 degrees higher than yesterday at 3:00pm. That works out to upper 80’s for a high today if the NW winds don’t pick up. That’s higher than forecast. My place will probably make it to 90 today.
84.3F here. Looking at WV loop I see the flow has shifted southerly to about Roseburg, but it turns SWLY as you head further north towards Eugene/Portland…. I think we may be in for a slight surprise tomorrow evening with at least lightning to our southeast being visible. Next week looks interesting with possible S-SE flow and quite moist and 12z looks warmer now.
*sneaked up to*
Temps snuck up to 77.2F
Temps here running about 8° higher that at this time yesterday. Should get well into the 80’s…Seems like the best chance for seeing lightning (to the east-southeast) will be Friday PM…
73.7F
Hey Ryan,
I think that Steve Pierce guy would be a great addition to KGW. 🙂
SP
AS DO I!!!!
Indeed the GFS 00z shows highs for us well into the upper 70’s to the low 80’s the rest of this week and most of next as well..Nice weather, but I agree with you Mark, not too exciting (for us who like “fun” weather). Looks like most of the “convective” activity is going to be well to the south and east of us here.
Currently a warm 63.5F…
Mark, thanks for the update.
I’m hoping to at least see some flashes off to my southeast tomorrow and Friday night. Maybe the flow by early next week may surprise us if low pressure is near northern California. If not I’m fine with warmer temps and sun shine.
Have a nice night everyone.
Yeah, not looking good for Tstorms, our time will come.
Oh nice, hoping for some thunderstorms, but guess not.