Weather Blog

Some of the most vibrant and horrible images of the last few weeks have been from the west coast, where smoke from fires had polluted the skies, turning cities from Seattle to the Bay Area an eerie, haunted shade of red.

After the conflagrations had exploded across he region, under a high pressure regime that trapped the ash and haze near the surface, reducing air quality, visibility and sense of reality. Setting aside the summer long conditions, and climatological deterioration that helped set the ground work for the fires, the high pressure was a short term weather pattern that made things worse over a broader area.

The attendant jet also spilled into the middle of the country, and brought all that smoke with it, rendering most of the country hazy. Fortunately, one feature was going to come through and help with both situations. A trough of low pressure.

Well hallelujah. Early this weekend, a weak, but still strong enough area of low pressure came through the area and scoured the atmosphere of smoke and ash and made life and the air a bit more livable. This is a recent capture from the Space Needle’s skycam.

Not only does this removed the smoke from Seattle, but also removes it from the jet stream, clearing skies through the Midwest as well.

Hopefully, the worst is over, even as fires rage in the Cascades. At least, the impact is no longer felt as severely for as far away as it was earlier this month.

Above is this evening’s satellite picture of the Atlantic. Usually, when we discuss the tropics, we can focus on one storm, or if it’s particularly busy, we can look at the western Atlantic and appreciate the activity bubbling up in September.

We need an entire corner of the Earth to fully capture what’s going on, and even then, we can count our blessings that Tropical Storm Alpha has already expired over the Iberian Peninsula, otherwise we wouldn’t be looking far enough to the east to fully encompass all the activity.

Right now, the biggest and most intense storm, right in the middle of the Atlantic, is Teddy. Teddy will only be what we call a “nautical concern” for the next few days as he drifts through the Sargasso Sea. Still, he is a strong enough storm that a hurricane landfall will be possible in Nova Scotia, of all places.

Wilfried is still far enough to the east that she is not a terrible threat, and will continue to be a fish storm, like Teddy but significantly weaker. That leaves Beta.

Tropical Storm Beta stands to become the third Greek Letter hurricane in history, after Beta and Epsilon in 2005. It’s curly path may result in an extended stay off shore. A trip further inland by the middle of next week would surely accelerate deterioration of the storm. Wind and surge don’t look like the primary threats with Beta, but rather rain, like Sally in the Southeast.

There is a lot made out of the prolificity of the 2020 season, but one bit of good news is how infrequently these storms have developed into hurricanes. While there have been a bunch of named storms, and we we will surely surpass 2005 in the number of such storms, we aren’t nearly to the pace of hurricanes as that horrible year. We are on the downslope of the hurricane season now, and hopefully the back side of this peak decelerates much more quickly than it ramped up.

OK, I get it. We’re in the middle of September, and I simply haven’t had a chance to circle back and name our forecaster of the month for either July or August. I’m not sure why, especially since Victoria-Weather was the forecaster of the month for July!

It was a tighter contest in August, which isn’t a bad thing, because there were more forecasts. I like to believe the convergence of forecasting values suggests a higher quality of forecasts across the board. That means WeatherNation, the forecaster of the month for August should really embrace their title.