Our Beloved Salmon

Tuesday, September 15, 2015
2:27 pm

Spawning Coho Salmon on the Sol Duc River. Credit: National Park Service

Things were never looking good for our beloved salmon this year. I've been a fisherman all my life (I actually just got back from catching a bunch of albacore tuna off the Washington Coast), so I care quite a bit about how our salmon are doing. First and foremost, they are some darn tasty creatures, but they are also super fun to catch, and I think there's something special about a fish that leaves a river, travels thousands of miles in a couple years, and then heads right back to that same river. Salmon are one of nature's most fascinating creatures... and for a fish, that's saying something!

The problem, of course, has been our rivers. The journey upstream can be very tough, as salmon often have to navigate strong currents and rapids. Therefore, it is essential that they have water temperatures that are cold enough for them to not get exhausted and water levels that are high enough so that they can migrate upstream in the first place. The two are closely related; when the water is high, it means that there is a lot of cold freshwater input either from remaining snowpack, rainfall, groundwater, melting glaciers, lakes/reservoirs, or other sources. When the water is low, it is more easily warmed by the surrounding atmosphere both because there is less water to warm and the currents are often slower, meaning that the water takes more time to get to the ocean and thus has more time to warm.

Salmon prefer temperatures between 46 and 59 degrees. Once you get above this, they get tired more easily, as warmer water holds less oxygen, resulting in a variety of negative effects.  

Credit: Willamette Riverkeeper Volunteer Monitoring Program

Salmon, like many other of Earth's wonderful creatures, don't want to die. Therefore, if they sense that the river they are about to enter is, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, at least 66.4 degrees, they wait at the mouth of it for it to cool off. This can be great for fishermen at that moment, but it can throw off the salmon's cycle, making it a more difficult experience when they do go up. Think about how you would feel if you had a reservation at your favorite restaurant, but then you found out they COMPLETELY overbooked, and that you had to wait outside... for several weeks.  

I took a look at our current (9/16/2015) streamflows according the United States Geological Survey compared to average for this time of year (see them here), and found that only 29 of 226 stations in Washington had above-average streamflow. When you consider that our August was the 4th wettest on record and September has had near-average rainfall, that's pretty sobering. Ironically, one of the few rivers that is flowing higher than normal in many locations is the Columbia, which happens to be the biggest river flowing from North or South America into the Pacific. This is likely because its headwaters are located in inland British Columbia, which actually accumulated a decent snowpack this past winter. Also, the Columbia River is heavily dammed, so they are able to control how much water flows downriver. Unfortunately, this table did not have average temperatures, but some locations did have temperature measurements for the day. Most of the river temperatures were between 50 and 59 degrees, but many locations in large rivers like the Columbia and Snake were slightly above that 66.4 degree threshold. This is common for these large rivers, but if the temperatures were just a little bit higher, the fish would still be hanging out in the ocean.

So how are the fish going to fare this year as they go up to spawn? It really depends on the river. The Columbia River is forecast to have their third-largest return of Chinook salmon since 1938 and their water levels are near normal, so they should be fine. It's a different story for rivers in the Cascades and Olympics with our record-low snowpack and record-high temperatures. By the way, 6 of our past 11 months have been the warmest on record. And before anybody jumps to conclusions, it's because of our "Blob" and a persistent ridge of high pressure off our coast, not global warming. Global warming has an underlying impact that further raises temperatures, but it was not the principal reason why we broke so many records this year.

But back to our salmon. With the exception of the Skagit (which also has dams), our local rivers are much lower than normal. For example, the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River near Tanner was measured today flowing at 120 ft³/sec. There typical flow for this time of year is 549 ft³/sec. The Hoh River, a river on the Olympic Peninsula that gets most of its water from glaciers on the flanks of Mt. Olympus, was flowing at the rate of 519 ft³/sec today near Forks. Average for this time of year? 1,200 ft³/sec. It gets even worse when you go up north by Bellingham, where Anderson Creek's flow is 15 times less than its average.

The Hoh River. Note the blue tint due to the presence of glacial silt. Photo credit: Flickr user "Thomas"

The story is similar everywhere you look. The vast majority of rivers in the Pacific Northwest are much lower than normal and have been for the majority of the summer. 

There's also another factor: the presence of feed in the ocean. I am not a marine biologist, so I have no clue how abundant the feed for salmon has been this year. However, I do know that the amount of feed is directly related to the amount of nutrients in the water, and the amount of nutrients in the water is related to how much upwelling occurs along the coast. El Niño years generally have less upwelling than normal, thus limiting primary productivity and decreasing the amount of animal life that portion of the ocean can support. I don't know if the infamous Blob of warm water in the northeast Pacific affected the salmon, but it probably resulted in less primary productivity way out in the open ocean, as warmer ocean temperatures imply less mixing and therefore imply a more sterile ocean surface.

In conclusion, we've got a number of factors working against salmon this autumn all the way into next spring. This August was a tremendous help, and the additional rain we will see through the end of the month into October will help as well. 

But the tuna fishing's great!

Thanks for reading,

Charlie

My Fall Forecast

Sunday, September 13, 2015

5:19 pm

If you ask an astronomer when summer ends, they'll tell you "September 23." That is the date of the autumnal equinox, the date when the day and night are approximately equal in length (the day is always a couple minutes longer because the sun does not set all at once and therefore radiates light until the very last part of it has set below the horizon). Ask a meteorologist though, and they'll tell you that autumn begins September 1, as that is the beginning of 'meteorological autumn,' which goes until November 30. During this time period, our nights get longer while our days get shorter, our daytime and nighttime temperatures plummet, stronger storms start to enter the region, and people become more and more obsessed with the Seahawks. Our earliest lowland snows have generally appeared the last two weeks of November, and our stormiest week is Thanksgiving week. I will have an exclusive winter 2015-2016 forecast on WeatherOn that will be released November 1, so be on the lookout for that. For now, I thought I'd give a more informal autumn forecast.

This has been one of the more abrupt summer-to-fall transitions that I can remember. June and July both broke their respective all-time average temperature records and were extremely dry as well, while August was our 4th wettest month on record and was capped off by a historic windstorm at the end of the month.  Now, it's mid-September, and according to the National Weather Service, showers or rain are forecast for the area for the entire week, and highs likely will not reach 70 in many locations.

We've gone from a pattern of persistent ridging directly over our area to one of persistent troughing, with the ridge having retrograded much further west. Now, storm systems and "shortwave troughs" are undulating on the east side of this ridge and sliding down from the northwest into our area, giving us cooler temperatures and precipitation than anything we experienced during June, July, and even much of August.

Valid 05:00 am PDT, Mon 14 Sep 2015: Retrieved from UW Northwest Modeling Website

So far, this pattern has been pretty consistent. Will the mega-ridge return? I don't think so. That isn't to say we won't have some sunny days, but we won't be seeing the mid-80s until 2016. In fact, we may be done with the 80s for all of 2015. Time will tell.

I'll get into a brief month-by-month breakdown soon, but first let's take a look at some of the major factors that are influencing my forecast. The main factor I'm looking at is El Niño, not only because it is an incredibly influential phenomenon for our weather around here, but because this El Niño could end up being the strongest El Niño ever recorded, perhaps even surpassing the 1997-1998 El Niño. Right now, sea-surface-temperatures in the tropical Pacific are around 2 degrees Celsius above normal in the "Niño 3.4" region, which is the region of the eastern/central tropical Pacific that is most telling for the status of an El Niño. In addition, the trade winds have weakened and convection that typically forms over Indonesia has shifted westward, two things that are also consistent with a strong El Niño.

El Niños tend to give warmer temperatures and drier conditions to northern states and cooler temperatures and wetter conditions to southern states. These effects are most pronounced in winter, when El Niño is typically strongest. However, this pattern manifests itself at many other times during the year. During the spring, we had a persistent trough off southern California that not only gave them desperately-needed rainfall but gave us quite a bit of lightning, especially over the Cascades and in Eastern Washington.

Credit: University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

But remember... just because you have an El Niño does not mean that the above scenario will come true. It only means that the probability of it becoming true is higher. Also, just because a location is forecast to be warmer and drier than normal does not mean it can't have any cold and wet days. This week doesn't exactly look "warm and dry" to me.

SST Anomalies 9/14/2015. Retrieved from NOAA Office of Satellite and Product Operations (OSPO)

I'm also looking at the "Blob," which is an area of anomalously warm water in the Northeastern Pacific. The Blob was quite strong during the summer, but with the cool and wet weather the past few weeks, it has decreased in ferocity. I predict that El Niño will ultimately destroy the Blob due to increased storm activity into California, but it is still around for now and will influence our weather by warming us up slightly. I could look at the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and many other oceanic and atmospheric factors, but with the El Niño being so obscenely strong, it should overwhelm any of those other factors, including our beloved Blob. Just take a look at the SST anomalies right now in the tropical Pacific. Incredible.

September:

September is halfway complete, so we don't need to use El Niño to try and predict what you should wear on Wednesday (you should wear a raincoat!). The models are painting a cool and rainy scenario for us the next two weeks... the above forecast provides evidence of that for this upcoming week, and the graphic below shows that we are expected to see below-normal temperatures and above-normal precipitation next week as well.

Credit: Climate Prediction Center

October:

Our longest range deterministic global model, the GFS, has been consistent in keeping our current pattern, with a ridge offshore and trough over the Northwest. As a result, we will likely start off cooler and rainier than normal. However, El Niño will continue to strengthen, and as a result, our precipitation and temperature patterns will likely begin to resemble those found in the strongest of El Niños, meaning southern regions like California and Texas will be wetter and cooler than normal while we will be warmer and drier. I should note that the precipitation signature over our region with an El Niño is weaker than the temperature signature, so while I am confident that the late autumn and winter will be warmer and drier for our region (the models have been advertising this for a long time), I am less confident about the precipitation than the temperature.

 Credit: Climate Prediction Center

November:

By this time, El Niño has kicked into overdrive. We will almost certainly be warmer than normal, and we will probably be drier than normal as well. November is our stormiest month, and El Niño years tend to bring less of the big storms, so it is less likely we will see one of those. It's also less likely we will see any of those early lowland snows I was talking about. I'm making it out to be a pretty lame month for us weather-wise, and it very might well be. But I want to emphasize this: it is unlikely that this winter will be as warm as last winter. Last winter was crazy warm, and our snowpack paid the price. The culprit? A consistent ridge of high pressure, pushing our storms to the north and leaving the entire West Coast warm and sunny. That is not predicted to happen this year. Even during the record-breaking 1997-1998 El Niño, snowpack was 70-80% of normal throughout most of the mountains here. Last year, our snowfall was around 25% of normal, with some places in the Olympics not breaking 10%.

 Credit: Climate Prediction Center

Remember... I'm talking about anomalies here. It's gonna be colder in November than the last two weeks of September. But compared to average, the last two weeks of September will be colder than normal, while November will be warmer than normal.

Thanks for reading! If you like this, be sure to look out for my winter forecast, which is truly a deluxe blog. And you'll only find it on WeatherOn.

Charlie

The Most Intense Summer Storm on Record

Monday, August 31, 2015

1:14 pm

I'll just cut to the chase here... Saturday's storm destroyed my weather station at our house on Whidbey Island. Before the storm, there were three cups on the anemometer. Now, there are two, and the station is not reporting. It was never very reliable anyway, but now it is completely shot. 

The remnants of my anemometer.

I know the picture isn't very good (the zoom feature on my camera is broken), but I'm not lying. If you enlarge the picture by clicking on it, you'll notice that there aren't as many cups as there should be.

Saturday's storm was the strongest summer windstorm on record for the Pacific Northwest. Nothing else even comes close. Whidbey Island NAS (Naval Air Station) hit 70 mph, Hoquiam hit 63, Paine Field in Everett hit 61 (and had several other gusts that approached 60), Tacoma hit 54, Sea-Tac hit 46, and a boat in Rosario Strait clocked a gust of 81! Even more incredible, Destruction Island on the coast recorded a 79 mph sustained wind with gusts to 87. That's hurricane force.

05:00 am PDT, Sat 29 Aug 2015: Retrieved from UW Satellite Archived Images

How do I know this is the strongest summer storm on record?

Well, there's a little website called The Storm King, and it is the premier site for all things Pacific Northwest windstorm-related. It is the brainchild of Wolf Read, who recently just got his Ph.D up at the University of British Columbia. If you are interested, I highly recommend you read his dissertation, "The climatology and meteorology of windstorms that affect southwest British Columbia, Canada, and associated tree-related damage to the power distribution grid." But looking at Dr. Read's website, you can see that there are no significant windstorms from May to September. But in case that wasn't definitive enough, here's some more proof.

Retrieved from NOAA's National Data Buoy Center

These are the peak wind gusts at Destruction Island from 1984 to 2008 in knots. Saturdays gust was 87 mph, or approximately 76 knots. This would likely put it at the 2nd highest gust of the entire period for Destruction Island. It completely obliterated the old August record of 58 knots. It wasn't just Destruction Island that got high winds of course... but Destruction Island got particularly high winds compared to a lot of other places. And looking at this graph above, you can see that Destruction Island got higher winds from this storm than the Hanukkah Eve Storm of 2006, the massive December 12, 1995 storm, the Inauguration Day Storm of 1993, and many others. Very impressive.

For southern Whidbey (where we live), this storm was not as strong as the storm last December that not only downed trees in our neighborhood but blew down fences, ripped roofing off of our dilapidated "crab shack," and blew our aluminum canoe into a small canal behind our house (it's a miracle we found it!). But that storm was in December. We had never seen a storm this powerful in the summer, and likely will not see another one like it for a very long time.

High winds are very patriotic! Taken at Cultus Bay (Whidbey Island, WA)

Here are some pictures from Puget Sound Energy's Flickr page of damage around the region. At the height of the storm, 500,000 people were without power.

Storm damage in Olympia, WA

Storm damage near Washington Blvd SW & Vernon Ave SW, Lakewood, WA

Storm damage near Miller Bay Rd NE & Indianola Rd NE, Kitsap Co.

Crew members from Northwest Utility Services working near Lake Chalet in Edgewood.

Storm damage in Swamp Creek Park, Kenmore 

One more treat... here is a 13-minute long video that I took of waves hitting the shore. My dad had to miss a haircut appointment for this (I had his car keys and forgot to give them back to him), so check it out, for his sake.

Credit to Cliff Mass and Scott Sistek for giving me inspiration to write this blog.

As always, thanks for reading!

Charlie

In With The Rains, Out With The Flames

Friday, August 28, 2015

11:36 pm

Most of our wildfires are actually started by lightning, but that doesn't mean you can have a tannerite party during a red flag warning.,

Hey everybody! I’m finally back from summer camp, and while I had an amazing time there, I am very excited to sleep in my own bed, practice lots of saxophone, get a job (hopefully related to meteorology), and, of course, get back to writing weather blogs. I came back in the nick of time, as we’ve got a lot to talk about today.

As I'm sure you have no doubt figured out by now, this summer has been one of the worst fire seasons in Washington's history. Many news stations said that the Okanogan Complex Fire by Omak was the largest in the state's history, but this is not true, as the many fires here have not merged into a single large fire. That title is reserved for the Carlton Complex Fire of 2014 (wow, we really are getting burnt up, aren't we?). I attached a couple amazing shots below of the Wolverine Creek Fire, a fire that has been burning since June 29 and has now burned over 50,000 acres. These pictures are from the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) Flickr page.

And here is a map of all the fires occurring over Washington and Oregon. It looks like all of Northeast Washington is on fire!

Credit: Northwest Interagency Control Center

Now, let's take a look at our mega-summer-storm. I can't ever remember seeing a storm this strong this early in the season. Even if it were November, this would still be a sizable storm for our region. But August? Good golly.

At 4 am, the storm was off our coast and travelling to the NNE. This is a perfect track for regionwide high winds... and it is the same path that our storm last December. I have a blog on that December storm here and you should all read it because it has an intense video of me in the storm. It's the same general track as the November 13, 1981 windstorm, the December 12, 1995 windstorm, and yes, the infamous Columbus Day windstorm of 1962.

Take a look at the nice, tight bent-back occlusion in the image below. The low center is right in the middle of that spiral.

Image valid 4 am PDT: UW Infrared Satellite

Image valid 4 am PDT: UW Radar

As the morning went on, the low moved further and further north and kept its intensity. One of the great things about our new coastal radar is that you can sometimes see the low centers of these types of storms as they swing on by, and you can clearly see the center with this storm less than 100 miles off the mouth of the Columbia River.

Image valid 6:30 am PDT: NWS NW Water Vapor Loop

Image valid 6:30 am PDT: UW Radar

At 9:30, the storm is moving on inland, and right now (10:56), it is crossing the Olympic Peninsula just to the south of Cape Flattery.

Image valid 9:30 am PDT: NWS NW Water Vapor Loop

Image valid 9:30 am PDT: UW Radar

Winds are reaching their peak now and will remain pretty strong until around 1 or so. After that, they will die down, but things will still remain pretty blustery around here. We have a high wind warning up (when was the last time Seattle had one of those in August?), but given the forecast wind speeds (40-50 mph gusts), a wind advisory would be more appropriate. We just have the warning since we are in the summer and weather like this is practically unheard of. I mean, take a look at all the weather warnings over our area. I've never seen anything like that in the summer.

Rainfall from this particular storm will total around 0.5 to 1.5 inches in the lowlands, with several inches in the mountains, especially the North Cascades, putting an end to any fires there. Though the majority of the rain will not make it over to Eastern Washington, some rain will fall, and this, coupled with high humidity, will be a tremendous help for firefighters fighting the wildfires in NE Washington. They will have to battle with strong winds though.

Valid 05:00 am PDT, Tue 01 Sep 2015 - 72hr Fcst: Retrived from UW mm5rt modeling website

The rest of the week looks showery, but as far as major storms go, I don't see anything in the near future.

Charlie

Heavy Rains Friday

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

10:18 pm

Hello everybody! I have a day off from my counselor duties at Hidden Valley Camp so I thought I'd go ahead and write a blog about the upcoming rains later this week. We could get dumped on Friday, but there's still a lot of uncertainty. 

The weather down here sure was interesting though. I heard some thunder up at camp, and although I missed it, I heard through the grapevine that an intense thunderstorm passed right over Seattle. Today, Sea-Tac got more rain in 24 minutes than the previous 71 days combined. Also, Iwakuma tossed a no-hitter. I gotta say... today was a good day. Too bad it's cloudy for the Perseids meteor shower tonight, but hey, you can't get too greedy. 

Anyway, let's take a look at what we may be dealing with later this week. I get back to camp Thursday afternoon, and everything we do out there is in the great outdoors (including sleeping and eating), so even though I absolutely love the rain, it definitely puts a damper on activities. Me and my tent group of six 12-year-old boys are hiking Mt. Pilchuck on Friday, so I'm definitely interested to see what hiking in the rain with these kids will be like. By the way, the hike is only 5.4 miles roundtrip, but features 2,300 feet of elevation gain. I'm super excited, rain or shine.

Since I'm talking about Friday, I might as well give a brief talk about the weather we can expect Thursday. The newest models from the UW don't show much precipitation at all, but there will be a significant amount of CAPE (Convective Available Potential Energy) over the area in the afternoon, so some thunderstorms may develop. CAPE is defined as the amount of energy a parcel of air would have if it rose until it could no longer rise (i.e. it becomes colder and thus denser than the surrounding air). The more CAPE there is, the more unstable the atmosphere is, and the faster parcels rise. Because of this, high CAPE is an important ingredient for convection, but just because there is high CAPE does not mean there will be convection. There are many other factors that can inhibit convection... strong low-level inversions, high pressure systems, low vertical velocities of air parcels in the lower atmosphere to initialize convection... I could go on. There are plenty others. 

Valid 05:00 pm PDT, Thu 13 Aug 2015 - 24hr Fcst: Retrieved from UW Pacific Northwest Environmental Forecasts and Observations Modeling Page

Anyway, let's move onto Friday. I'm only going to give a brief overview, because the details are pretty murky for reasons I will explain shortly.

The rains are predicted to start heading into the area Friday morning.

Valid 08:00 am PDT, Fri 14 Aug 2015 - 39hr Fcst: Retrieved from UW Pacific Northwest Environmental Forecasts and Observations Modeling Page

A blob of rain will form south of the Olympics (at least in this model run)...

Valid 11:00 am PDT, Fri 14 Aug 2015 - 42hr Fcst: Retrieved from UW Pacific Northwest Environmental Forecasts and Observations Modeling Page

... and this blob will intensify and move eastward as the day progresses.

Valid 05:00 pm PDT, Fri 14 Aug 2015 - 48hr Fcst: Retrieved from UW Pacific Northwest Environmental Forecasts and Observations Modeling Page

This model run gives around an inch of rain to Mt. Pilchuck on Friday. This morning's run gave two. We'll see what tomorrow morning's run gives. All this variance in precipitation is due to a cut-off-low off the Northern California Coast. Since cut-off lows are not connected to the jet stream, they are rather erratic and hard to forecast. This cut-off low is responsible for Friday's uncertain forecast. There is an old weather saying: "cut-off low, weatherman's woe." That saying definitely holds true right now!

Right now, rain seems like a pretty good bet for Friday, but where and how much is up in the air. If the models are correct however, some places could see pretty heavy amounts, especially places north of Everett. But regardless of how much it rains, I'm prepared to have an awesome time climbing Mt. Pilchuck on Friday. 

Thanks for reading!

Charlie