A Taste of Summer

Saturday, April 20, 2013
12:28 A.M.

Long Beach, California - Taken April 3, 2013 using a Nikon D3000. Photo credit: Michael Trofimov.

Hey everybody. Sorry for leaving you guys hanging for a couple days, midterms called. I think I had a false sense of this quarter being easy just because I have relatively more time compared to last quarter. Well, it turns out I still have a lot of work to do, more than I anticipated.

On another note, the above picture was taken by Michael Trofimov, a fellow weather buddy who is four years my junior and therefore still in high school. He's an extremely bright kid and takes some great pictures, and he's given me permission to use them on this blog. His Flickr Photostream is here, and I'll also post his site under the "My Favorite Weather Links" list on the left side of this blog. Thank you Michael!

This last week has been pretty darn wet. So wet, in fact, that it has pushed our April rainfall total to the second-highest total on record at Sea-Tac. The record for April precipitation is 6.53 inches, and this was set way back in 1991. As of 6 PM Friday, we've received 5.49 inches, which is 3.63 inches above our average value to date: 1.69 inches.

January had 4.16 inches of rain, February had a measly 1.58 inches, and March had 2.74 inches. These values were all below average, with those months averaging 5.57, 3.50, and 3.72 (yes, March is rainier on average than February!) inches respectively. Thus, our average value through these three months is 12.79 inches, and we received 8.48 inches, leaving us 4.31 inches below normal. As of 6 PM Friday, we have received 13.97 inches since January 1 (and probably over 14 inches by the time I will be finished writing this blog), which is only 0.68 inches below our average yearly-to-date value of 14.65 inches. Well done, April.

By the way, I got all these climate statistics from "Climate Data" under "Data and Forecasts" from the University of Washington atmospheric sciences department page. Here's the link: http://www.atmos.washington.edu/data/data.php?loc=climatological.

I wish we could use the next eleven days of the month to smash the rainfall record, but that won't happen. We look to be entering an extended period of abnormally warm and dry weather. Here are the predicted 6-10 day temperature and precipitation anomalies over our area from the Climate Prediction Center. Take a look for yourself, we will be warm and dry.

Here's a look at the 500 millibar chart for Monday over the Eastern Pacific. The semi-permanent Eastern Pacific High is creeping northward, a sign that summer isn't too far away.

Valid 08:00 pm PDT Mon, 22 Apr 2013 - 75hr Fcst: UW 00z WRF-GFS: 36km 500mb absolute vorticity, heights

This trend looks to continue for the foreseeable future. Brace yourselves, we are in for a boring ride.

Charlie