Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Benign Weather Week Ahead

November 24, 2009
4:37 P.M

Hey guys. Sorry for not making an update earlier... I had tons of homework and was studying for multiple large tests. Although I still have to do some stuff tonight, it is looking like a less strenous day tomorrow which means I'm not currently swamped at the moment. I am pretty tired though. I can't wait for Thanksgiving, which is my second favorite (and Christmas isn't even my favorite, its like Winter Break before Christmas that I absolutely adore) holiday (although technically that isn't really a holiday, in which case Thanksgiving would come in first (and sorry for all the parentheses btw)). Thanksgiving is my favorite Holiday for several reasons. First of all, there is delicious food. What is your favorite Thanksgiving dish? I personally die for a mix of stuffing, gravy, and mash potatoes. Write your answer below as a comment to this post!

I also love Thanksgiving because it is, on average, the stormiest holiday of the year. Although we will have rather pleasant weather this time around, there have been many a stormy Thanksgiving, and many of those have been celebrated in the dark, which really makes you thankful you have a roof over your head. Maybe Mother Nature is playing tricks on us. Such a situation occurred on Thanksgiving 1983.


The image above is taken from Wolf Read's "The Storm King" website, a website I highly recommend for anybody interested in severe weather events, particularly windstorms, in the Pacific Northwest. It shows peak gusts at the Sea-Tac airport for each day during the entire month of November 1983, which was really stormy in general. For the "granddaddy" of them all, the Thanksgiving storm made landfall just north of Hoquiam as a 972 millibar low. It delivered a powerful gale to the Puget Sound region with a 62 mile per hour gust at Sea-Tac. As I'm sure you can imagine, this type of wind, combined with the saturated soil I'm sure was present at the time from all of the previous storms, toppled trees and power lines across the region, making for many a cold turkey. Don't get me wrong, I love charred barbecue - it makes me feel like a true Northwesterner -, which is what many families resorted to during the time, but I like a fresh turkey out of an electrically-heated oven more. I'm not that tough.

This week will bring fairly benign weather to the region. Fronts will arrive Thanksgiving day and Saturday with showers in between before we see some drier weather setting up by next Monday. Have a good one folks!
Charlie

1 comment:

  1. When you say pleasant weather, what do you mean? The sentence suggests that it's the opposite of "stormy." :)

    ReplyDelete