Forecast models worked well during this morning’s snowfall, mainly southeast of Seattle and south of the country’s Puget Sound. 2-4 inches of rain fell in many places, and the I-5 corridor near Tacoma looks like Alaska (see below)
But ANOTHER snow event is coming. And I don’t want to exaggerate this…it’s not going to be a big snow event. It would be a complicated, side event to test the fidelity of our modeling system.
Tomorrow night, a low center will move away from our coast, while cold air will cover the area (map below shows sea level pressure–solid line–and temperature lows–color at 10 p.m. Friday). A weak front will approach our shores, spreading some light rain inland.
Complicating the situation, there will be easterly winds (from the east) due to a strong east-west pressure difference (higher pressure in the east)
UW’s latest high-resolution forecast for total snowfall for the 24 hours ending at 4 a.m. Saturday shows heavy snowfall southeast of the Olympics (see below).
There is a lot of uncertainty with this forecast. I know this because our high resolution set prediction system (in which we run the model multiple times, each time with slight variations in initialization or physics) is everywhere. (see snow predictions for Queen Anne, Seattle, below). From 0 to 7 inches!
We will have a more confident forecast tomorrow.
Finally, I couldn’t help but mention today’s Seattle Times front page story (see below), claiming that climate change is leading to sea level rise in the Northwest of the Olympic Peninsula .
This is bogus and false.
Although global warming is causing sea levels to rise slowly around the world, Sea levels are actually going down or not changing along the Olympic coast.
Why? Because the Olympic Peninsula, and especially its west side, is BRINGING. Why increase?
Two reasons. First, the peninsula was pushed down by large glaciers during the ice age and is still recovering after the glaciers receded more than 15,000 years ago. Second, there is a subduction zone off our coast, causing the land to rise to the east.
Want some proof? This is sea level at Tatoosh, in the Northwest corner of the Peninsula from a NOAA site. Sea level is falling there.
The Seattle Times continues to provide questionable information on climate change. Some of it is clearly wrong. Our democracy requires an informed citizenry if the right decisions are to be made. Maybe the editors of the Seattle Times should think about that.
