Wasatch Weather Weenies

After 2 weeks and 14 time zones, it is great to be home on a spectacularly beautiful final day of June. Delta took pity on me and gave me a free first class upgrade last night for my trip home from Santa Fe.  It was on a small plane, so I enjoyed my favorite kind of seat — one that is simultaneously an aisle and a window. Although my side of the plane did not allow for views of any large fires, it was still an interesting ride.  Below is a nice cumulus cloud forming above a smoke plume in the San Juans. And here's a view looking south at the Trail Mountain fire, the prescribed burn that escaped in the Manti-La Sal National forest and has now burned almost 18,000 acres. I was in Santa Fe for the American Meteorological Society Conference and some incredible data was presented from western wildfires.  In particular, Neil Lareau, a Utah Alum, and Dave Kingsmill, who we'll call an honorary Utah Alum as he's collaborated frequently with scientists at the U, prese...

The National Weather Service system of watches and warnings sometimes creates confusion for the public for a variety of reasons and efforts are being undertaken to evaluate and improve it.  Many people do not discern the difference between a watch and a warning and shifts from one warning type to another (e.g., hurricane to tropical storm) sometimes causes complacency when threats to life and property remain high. In my view, the worst named warning is the Red Flag Warning .  What the hell does that mean to anyone who is not savvy about fire weather?  As noted in the National Weather Service graphic below, "red flag warnings alert fire managers on federal lands to conditions that are highly unfavorable for prescribed burns that may lead to especially dangerous wildfire growth." There's nothing wrong with that, but many wildfires are started by people who are not professional fire managers.  As noted in a tweet by @UtahWildfire today, there have been 27 human-c...

One of the more interesting activities during my trip to Beijing was a visit to the offices for the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Winter Games to discuss weather support. Their offices have been integrated into an old steel factory in ways that were pretty mind boggling.  I've never really seen anything like it.  In some areas, the offices were integrated into old silos that were once used to store iron ore pellets, with holes cut into the silos like Swiss cheese to allow light in.  In others, the grounds and offices were built around old conveyor belt systems, making for a scene that seemed to be out of a movie.  As can be seen above, cooling towers from the old power plant (coal fired) rise conspicuously at the edge of the facility.  These were a source of great pride and we were given a tour of one, which would never have happened in the litigious United States.  I was thinking that one hell of a sport climbing facility coul...

A highlight of my recent trip to Beijing was a trip to the Yanqing venue cluster, where the Bobsled, luge, skeleton, and Alpine skiing events will be held.  Source: Beijing Organizing Committee The Yanqing cluster is located northwest of Beijing and is one of three cluster sites.  The other two are Beijing itself and the Zhangjiakou cluster, with sits northwest of Yanqing.  All three clusters will be connected by high-speed rail and contain Olympic Villages.  The mountains outside of Beijing are fairly steep with many narrow canyons and ravines.  In general, the terrain is quite rugged.  Large trees are minimal, with the mountains covered primarily by scrub trees and brush.  A real highlight, which these pictures taken from a speeding van cannot do justice, are the views of the Great Wall.  Sadly, time did not permit a visit, but I would very much like to hike along it at some point in the future.  No facilities existed at Yanqin...

I am freshly back from a too short trip to Beijing pertaining to weather support for the 2022 Winter Olympics.  During the trip, I got a first-hand look at the construction of venues in the Yanqing competition zone, including the Alpine skiing facility on Haituo Mountain, spent three days discussing Olympic weather support with Chinese colleagues involved in meteorological forecasting and research for the games, and met with representatives of the Beijing Olympic Committee.  It was an incredible trip, my first to China, and remarkably rewarding culturally and professionally. I will cover my trip in a series of blog posts, which may come rapid fire or sporadically depending on jet lag and time as my travels continue next week (more to discuss on that eventually too). I'm going to begin with a look at Beijing.  My Chinese friends granted me a day of jet-lag recovery for my first full day in town, which I used to see as much as Beijing as possible, walking more than 20 k...

Blogging may be somewhat infrequent over the next couple of weeks as I'm not sure if time and internet connections will allow it.  Keep an eye here from time to time for updates and, given that we are reaching the half-way point of June today without any measurable precipitation...

Tropical cyclone Bud is still churning to the south of Cabo San Lucas, but is weakened from a hurricane to a tropical storm.  The satellite loop below from the great tropicaltidbits.com site shows the low center slow moving northward with rainbands moving across southern Baja California and near the coast of the Mexican staet of Sinaloa. Source: tropicaltidbits.com The forecast models still call for the remnants of Bud and it's associated tropical moisture to move across the U.S. southwest late Friday and Saturday.  This will bring showers and thunderstorms to portions of the four corners states, as illustrated by the NAM forecasts valid 1200 UTC (6 AM MDT) Saturday and 000 UTC Sunday (6 PM MDT Saturday). The transition in the four corners area is going to be quite remarkable.  Currently, a good chunk of eastern Utah and western Colorado is under red flag conditions, as illustrated by the pink shading below. Source: NWS Translation: Right now, that a...

According to the online interagency incident information management system inciweb, the Trail Mountain Wildfire that is currently burning in the Manti-La Sal  Forest southwest of Price, Utah, began as a prescribed burn, but escaped containment on June 6.  As of June 12, it has burned nearly 6,500 acres, with 259 personnel, five helicopters, and 11 engines fighting the fire.  Incident information available at https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5830/. ETV10, which covers news for Carbon, Emery, and Grand County, posted on their web site a Forest Service Press Release dated June 5th, prior to the fire breaking containment .  The release notes that crews had a successful test burn on June 4th and on June 5th were igniting mixed conifer forest and hoping to burn 4,000 acres.  Beetle kill had left dead trees in the area and the fire was intended to "stimulate aspen generation and reduce hazardous fuels." In a report posted on KUTV.com yesterday, Brandon Jensen...