WARM DAY, COLD WATER

It was four degrees warmer than average with a high of 70 at Sea-Tac. Meanwhile water temperatures are still very chilly. Sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean and the Puget Sound are mainly in the upper 40s and lower 50s. Lake Sammamish is 59 degrees and it is a degree cooler in Lake Washington. Not bad IF you’re a turtle.



It is still cold enough that being on the water is much better than being in the water. My Folks and Brady were heading out as I was about to go get ready for work. Check out the Olympic Mountains. They really popped today, still a lot of snow up there. Remember it’s that melting snow that is feeding our rivers, streams and lakes.



Air temperatures for the rest of the holiday weekend will be in the upper 60s and lower 70s while that water will remain rather chilly.

For the latest lake temperatures:
http://green.kingcounty.gov/lake-buoy/default.aspx

For salt water temps start here:
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/maps/NW_Straits_Sound.shtml

ON THE WATER… Calm but warm

I was on a sailboat today shooting a segment that will air in June on KING5. It allowed me a great vantage point for watching the sky.



It was a perfect lazy day for these sea lions. Notice how calm the water looks. The glassy appearance indicates that it was a bit too calm to give the sails a workout but it was still nice just to be out there.

Overhead there was a nice halo around the sun. A halo forms when sunlight is refracted through the ice crystals that make up these high clouds.

It was a bit hazy on the horizon but there is still nothing like seeing Mt. Rainier from the water.

I hope you enjoyed this weekend as much as I did because we are heading back to more typical spring weather this week.

A TASTE OF SUMMER

Despite the high clouds, many spots in western Washington warmed into the 70s with a few spots in the south Sound region in the lower 80s! The high at Sea-Tac was 76. It was a very nice evening to try out my new camera. My old one got a little too wet a few weeks ago, and by “wet” I mean in-the-lake wet. Now I’m back in business and my first photo shoot was during my dinner break on the roof garden at KING5. Here is one of the roof garden’s transient residents.



Here is my first movie with the new camera. It's 12 seconds long and it shows the high clouds we had at sunset.



I bet it was tough to get on that departing Alaska Airlines flight after a day like today. Sunday is also looking really good with temperatures similar to Saturday and more high clouds.

SPRING WEB CAMS Clouds, sun and snow!

Spring is a transition season from winter to summer. Sometimes it looks and feels like winter; at other times it seems more like summer; and then there are days like today when we have both!

The web camera from the Oregon Department of Forestry shows a good example of a typical northwest scene: some clouds and a few patches of blue. At 3pm it was 52 in Medford.

Meanwhile to the north in the Central Oregon Cascades we had a little taste of winter. If you look closely at the Oregon Department of Transportation web camera you can make out some flakes. Look at the side of the road, you can see some white spots, those are flakes close to the camera. The information on the ODOT camera shows the temperature right at freezing.


And finally it looked more like summer in the San Juan Islands. The web camera from Islandcam.com shows the nice western Washington scene and popular boating destination Friday Harbor where at 3pm it was 61.


Let’s hope the northwest looks more like the skies over Friday Harbor come this weekend. I know a lot of boaters are hoping so with opening day of boating season and the Windermere Cup at the University of Washington Saturday. Think sun!

CONTRAILS A sign of change

It seems our spring time weather changes as fast as the jet planes flying overhead. In fact, we can look to the contrails produced by those jets as a signal for coming changes in our weather.

First it is important to understand what exactly contrails are. They form when water vapor is emitted as a byproduct from a jet engine. The water vapor condenses in the cold air and forms a cloud (made of ice crystals). Most contrails form in the upper levels of the atmosphere, above about 25,000 feet (more than 10,000 feet higher than Mt. Rainer).

If the atmosphere is dry then the cloud will dissipate quickly, or a contrail will not form at all. If there is a lot of moisture in the atmosphere then the contrail will last much longer. So the longer it lasts, the higher the humidity.

Increasing moisture in the upper levels of the atmosphere is usually a sign of an incoming weather system. I took these pictures during the early afternoon, notice the blue skies. By dinner time the skies were totally white and the front was just offshore with rain falling at the coast.



Another sign we have increasing moisture in the upper levels is when we see a halo or ring around the sun. In this case you can make out a faint rainbow at the base of the ring with contrails below.

TUESDAY SUNSET

On my dinner break I took couple sunset pictures. It was sure nice to see the sun after some areas in western Washington had snow falling this morning!

The sun set tonight at 7:58 pm and despite some snow this morning it is another sign we are still marching toward summer. When you are watching the sunset, remember to turn around. There were some soft purple colors in the eastern sky tonight – the colors were faint so they were hard to make out on my reliable but aging camera but I was able to capture a little pink from the clouds directly overhead.


It looks like we will finally be getting back to normal this week and maybe even warmer than average by this weekend and into the first part of next week with more sunsets to come!

EASTER SUNDAY The Easter bunny was out and so were the umbrellas.

Walking home from the store early this afternoon I saw a warming sight on a soggy day. Hundreds of people were gathering in Kirkland for the traditional Easter Egg Hunt despite the cloudy and wet conditions. I snapped these pictures with my camera phone.



Western Washington had a very wet day with more than two inches of rain out at the coast and a record breaking day at Sea-Tac. The airport had .81” and that was good enough to break the old record of .61” set in 1950. Hoquiam and Olympia also had record breaking days.

We will still have some showers on Monday (maybe a few snowflakes) with a chance for afternoon thunderstorms. Tuesday we will also have some showers and maybe a little wet snow, but after that we are looking pretty good. If the forecast holds it could be sunny and warm by next weekend.