By CIRCulator Editorial Staff Reprinted from: The Climate CIRCulator MANY CLIMATE ADAPTATION plans are largely based on climate model projections of precipitation. However, many of these models are notorious for their inability to accurately simulate seasonal rainfall at the regional level. This is especially true for the Pacific Northwest where models consistently depict summers as […]
By: Ryan Niemeyer “This place is gonna burn.” That’s what I told my Dad a year ago (May 2015) when we were at our cabin at Crawfish Lake, 30 miles outside of Omak, Washington. I wish I had been wrong. But the forests were dense with unhealthy and downed trees. That previous summer (2014), the […]
By Nic Loyd, WSU meteorologist, and Linda Weiford, WSU News
SPOKANE, Wash. – One of the strongest El Niños on record is waning. Now the big question is whether La Niña is on the way.
A temperature shift in the tropical Pacific Ocean, combined with climate model outlooks, suggest that she probably is.
In fact, if surface sea waters continue to cool, La Niña could emerge as early as this fall, say scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and an increasing number of international forecasters.
Why is this significant?
Because La Niña – like her attention-grabbing brother El Niño – can disrupt normal weather patterns around the globe. But while El Niño is marked by a band of warmer-than-average sea water in the equatorial Pacific, La Niña represents cooler-than-average water in the same region.
Which means, if El Niño seesaws into a La Niña event, various parts of the world could get hit with very different weather in 2016-17.
The Pacific Northwest is no exception. In 2015, El Niño was a major driver behind the region’s unusually warm weather and lack of snowpack in the mountains. The emergence of a strong La Niña could do just the opposite, bringing greater precipitation and cooler temperatures.
It’s not unusual for these naturally occurring phenomena to run back to back. Most legendary is the double billing that took place in the late 1990s, when the strongest El Niño on record segued into a powerful La Niña.
Each ushered in its own stretch of intense weather conditions around the globe, ranging from heatwaves and severe droughts to heavy rains and flooding. If El Niño produced intense heat and less-than-average rain in a certain location, chances are, La Niña did the reverse.
Talk about the ultimate sibling rivalry.
If a La Niña episode is on the way, her impact in the U.S. would peak next winter, bringing cold and wet weather to the Pacific Northwest, warm and dry conditions across the southern states and cold, stormy weather patterns to the central and northern tier.
Weathercatch is a bimonthly column that appears in The Spokesman Review.
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Much of the work on climate change is communicated by discussing annual average temperatures, and how those averages are expected to change over the next century. Lauren Parker, a graduate student working with John Abatzoglou at the University of Idaho, shared some of their work looking, instead, at temperature extremes. In particular, they focused on […]
Article reposted from University of Idaho News: Oregon almonds and Louisiana oranges? It could be if future projections in hardiness zones come to fruition. A new study by University of Idaho researchers uses climate models to assess how the coldest temperature recorded each winter in the United States may change over the next several decades, […]
By Linda Weiford, WSU News
PULLMAN, Wash. – A rare, early-April warmup will bring Washington state its first dose of summer, with temperatures surging into the upper 70s and low 80s in the region east of the Cascade Range.
If you’re suffering from a vitamin D deficiency on the heels of winter, tomorrow and Friday are days you will want to get outdoors and soak up the sun. The state will experience a miniature heat wave, with temperatures expected to run up to 25 degrees above normal, said meteorologist Nic Loyd of Washington State University’s AgWeatherNet.
“Birds are singing and flowers are blooming – we expect that in April. But highs in the low 80s? In some locations, it may well be one for the record books,” he said. Warm temperatures will peak Thursday in the western part of the state and Friday in the eastern half, he explained.
Cities such as Yakima, Walla Walla, the Tri-Cities and Wenatchee should all surpass 80 degrees, while Lewiston, Idaho is predicted to top 86 degrees – breaking its 1952 record for that date of 79. If Wenatchee and the Tri-Cities hit their forecasted high of 83 degrees, they will break records as well.
Pullman is expected to reach 75 tomorrow and 79 on Friday. The normal high for those dates is 55.
The brief temperature spike is due to a warm, high pressure ridge over Washington that’s expected to weaken on Saturday, said Loyd.
“Though the heat will be short-lived and the weather this weekend will cool off into the 60s, temperatures will still remain above normal for this time of year,” he said.
Contacts:
Nic Loyd, WSU meteorologist, 509-786-9357, nicholas.loyd@wsu.edu
Linda Weiford, WSU News, 509-335-7209, linda.weiford@wsu.edu
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