Ten Years of the Wasatch Weather Weenies Blog!

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the Wasatch Weather Weenies blog!

3650 days, 3147 posts (3148 if you include this one), 3.3 million page views, one 800ish inch snow season, a few drought seasons, and no lawsuits.  

That's a pretty good run, and I still have tenure.  

Our first year was the best.  The newlywed stage.  The 2010/11 season produced an estimated 802.5 inches of snow at Alta (see Alta 800).  Ah, the good old days.

Rocky times followed.  There were some bad seasons, especially 2014/15.  The snow situation in the Wasatch was at times dire (see Has There Ever Been a Snow Season Like This?).

At times, I considered leaving.  We wouldn't have survived without the help of parents.  Mother Nature provided post after post.  Snowstorms.  Windstorms.  Floods.  Droughts.  You name it. 

There were also our friends, the humans.  Their stupid-human tricks and addiction to fossil fuels provided post after post, although their bad investment advice may eventually cause us to default on the mortgage.  

Finally, there's my current boss.  You know, the Tweeter in Chief.  He's got all the bad-boss boxes checked.  Inexperienced?  Check.  Narcissistic?  Check.  Toxic?  Check.  Takes credit for everything?  Check.  Doesn't respect your abilities and knowledge?  Check.  Keeps promoting people who don't know anything?  Check.  How I have survived the last four years, I'll never know.  I admit some weak moments and posts.  

Yet here we are, ten years down the road.  

Many more?

Time will tell...

Will It Ever Rain Again?

 Abstract

No.

Introduction

At the Salt Lake City International Airport, only 0.26 inches of rain fell in July, compared to an average of 0.72.  In August, it was 0.10 compared to an average of 0.76.  September?  Only 0.19 compared to an average of 1.33.  Will it ever rain again?

Data and Methods

I looked at the Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS) forecasts for the next week and extrapolated them 7.6 billion years forward to when the Sun will exhaust its fuel and expand as a red giant.

Results

No GEFS members produce precipitation at the Salt Lake City International Airport through 1200 UTC 8 October.  

Source: NCEP

Since there's no precipitation forecast for the next week, extrapolation suggests it will never rain in Salt Lake City ever again.  

Conclusions

It will never rain again in Salt Lake City.  This forecast, however, is contingent on a number of assumptions.  In particular, we assume that the forecast for the next week is accurate and will apply for the next 7.6 billion years. Weather variability, anthropogenic climate change, orbital variations, changes in solar luminosity, and other factors may affect this forecast.  Therefore, you should take it with a humorous grain of salt, enjoy the splendid fall weather, and hope that we see a transition to a snowy pattern in early November.  

A Busy Semester of Teaching

 Our fall semester like no other is now at the 1/3 point.  The University of Utah is now going into a two-week "circuit breaker" during which classes will be fully online.  This circuit breaker has been planned for some time, long before the most recent spike in Utah coronavirus cases began and was developed, based on modeling, to reduce COVID infections on campus and provide a pause for the Vice Presidential Debate, scheduled for October 7.

I am teaching entirely online this semester, but have gone to campus a few times, including several days of in-office working while my power was out.  With a majority of classes online, it's pretty quiet, with little of the energy and excitement that you find on a large campus during the school year. 

My online courses are taught live.  It was a major effort to retool classes that I've taught in person for 25 years.  Here's a short list:

• I learned canvas and had to move all my course materials to that format.  

• I revised all my assignments and exams so that they are shorter and done weekly rather than more comprehensive and done less frequently.

• Working with our computer support staff, we found ways to enable students to remotely make use of the visualization and analysis tools that we typically use in our computer lab.

• We completely revamped my weather discussion class to make it tractable for students to do remotely via zoom.

• I took several online "boot camp" classes to learn what can be done with Canvas and Zoom to facilitate learning.  I've revamped my class materials and am doing polling, breakout sessions, and remote visualization.  Note that I have done all of these things previously in person, so this change is about pedagogical change and more about technological change.  It also takes time, for example, to migrate polling from one software platform to another.  Additionally, one needs to find many work arounds to do polling in zoom that involves mathematics and visualization.  

Typically on Monday, I work to get everything setup for the next week.  This involves preparing an online quiz in canvas, an online learning exercise, updating all my class notes for the online approach, preparing polls, etc.  This keeps me about a week ahead on everything.  Tuesdays and Thursdays I focus on teaching two classes and holding office hours.  I've invented a new word, canvasophobia, to describe the anxiety that accompanies teaching online with multiple apps and hoping everything actually works.  

Mostly it has.  It's difficult for me to tell so far, but I think one of my classes might be better than it was in person last year, only because of the effort put into it.  The other one I'm not sure about yet.  Ultimately, how good the class is depends on the perspectives of the students.  

My teaching load this semester also includes the development of a third course, which is brand new and called Atmos 1000: Secrets of the Greatest Snow on Earth.  The course is being designed as a general education physical and life sciences course (internal University of Utah approval is pending) and is slated to be offered for the first time in the spring.  As you might guess, this is a course specifically designed for on-the-go students with a passion for snow, winter sports, and weather.  It is fully asynchronous, meaning there are no live lectures.  Instead, each week students read a section of my book, Secrets of the Greatest Snow on Earth, view a series of short videos that expand on key material, and complete a series of scenario-based activities.  Forget boring lectures.  The class should give you an education in science that you can use for your fun and adventures.

It's difficult for me to reproduce the Canvas materials in this blog, but here's an example.  In week 5, the focus is on snow climates beyond North America, including the European Alps, New Zealand Alps, Andes, and Japan.  Students read part of a chapter of my book and then view short videos that go deeper into the snow climate of the European Alps and Japan.

They also complete a short quiz and two learning activities.  In one of the learning activities, they are planning a ski vacation to Switzerland, and use Swiss snow depth data to evaluate the natural snow-sureness at major Swiss resorts.  They are provided with a variety of web resources to do this, and I've produce high-resolution snow-depth analyses for more detailed investigation.  Below is an example for Engleberg, with snow depth overlaid on a topo map.  In this instance, I've converted to US units.  Sad, but good for better evaluations.  

I now have 10 weeks of material finished.  Below is the Canvas home page, which provides a look at the major topic areas.  I just finished off the three avalanche sections and am beginning to work on the forecasting and climate change weeks.  The content for those hasn't been finalized, and I'm thinking of possibly making some adjustments to include something on glaciology and glacial change.  

We'll talk more about this class later in the semester, when hopefully it's fully approved and I have more content produced.  We are also working on ways to offer it to those who simply want to take it for fun without being enrolled as a University of Utah student.  I should have more on that soon as well. 

A Hot and Dry July – September

 This year's three-month July-September period is going to go down as one of the hottest and driest on record.

For the period from July 1 through September 26, 2020 is tied with 2017 for the 2nd warmest on record with an average temperature of 78.7˚F, behind only 2013 (80.1˚F). 

Source: NOAA Regional Climate Centers

With four days left, I haven't done the calculus to see where we're likely to end up, but it will be up there, although it won't be a record (we have no chance of getting 2013, which finished the full July to September period with an average temperature of 79.2˚F).

The odds of precipitation through the end of the month, however, are vanishingly small, so the 0.55" we've received since July 1 is going to be the tally.  That rates as the 8th driest such period on record.  

Source: NOAA Regional Climate Centers

The driest July to September was in 1879 with only 0.14 inches.

Looking regionally, the we see that nearly the entire southwest has been below average.  California averages paltry amounts from July to September anyway, but Arizona and Utah are well below average.  We've had a "nonsoon" this year instead of a monsoon.    

We did a leaf-peeping drive this morning.  The best we saw was on the Alpine Loop highway.  As reported by many, the aspens in Pine Canyon, Guardsman Pass, and Big Cottonwood are decimated.  It looks like mid October rather than late September.  The aspens in Big Cottonwood looked awful even during the summer.  I leave it to the ecologists to explain if this is a result of the June cold snap and/or the drought.  

It looks dry for the foreseeable future, which for me means about a week.  If you must ask, the Climate Prediction Center 8-14 day outlooks has the dice heavily loaded for above average temperatures and below average precipitation. 

I usually like a warm, dry late September and October.  Above average this time of year is comfortable and no precipitation means no snow, which is good from the standpoint that early snow, unless it comes big, typically turns into rotten snow with persistent weak layer issues as we head into winter.  However, I'm feeling moisture starved right now and would enjoy a good multi-hour soaker.  

Changing Narratives

There is a narrative that often appears after "natural" disasters (natural in quotes since some are quite unnatural or have a strong anthropogenic component) that our society needs to change, and that is saying that the disaster was unexpected or came out of nowhere.  

An example of this is provided by the tweet below saying that 2020 has been the year of the "unexpected."

2020 has been the year of the unexpected. As we continue to stay safe & healthy, we want you to know resources are available. This week's #SLC News has windstorm recovery updates & next steps, the final countdown to the #2020Census, voting info & more, https://t.co/hzQm2GXDVH.

— SLCgov (@SLCgov) September 23, 2020

Although we have suffered a series of challenges, none of these were really unexpected.  A short list would include the pandemic, earthquake, fires/smoke, and windstorm.  Perhaps I've forgotten something as the year's been a blur.

The coronavirus pandemic isn't the first nor will it be the last.  Although the timing and details of a pandemic cannot be predicted precisely, the threat posed by them has been known for some time and the subject of significant research.  Some countries have responded well to the coronavirus threat.  The United States has not.  Why this is the case is not the subject of this post, but let's not treat the coronavirus pandemic as a surprise or a one off because it isn't.  We need the be better prepared to take effective action for the next one.  

The Magna earthquake awoke or startled many at 7:09 am MDT on March 18, with noticeable aftershocks for weeks thereafter.  

Source: https://quake.utah.edu/special-events/2020-magna-earthquake-sequence-faq

Similar to pandemics, specific earthquake prediction is not possible except in some circumstances with very short lead time of seconds to minutes.  However, scientists have been aware of the earthquake potential in our region, especially along the Wasatch fault, for decades.  Here too, there are lessons to be learned to be better prepared to take effective action for the next one, even though we don't know precisely where or when it will hit.  

The western wildfires have destroyed communities in the Pacific states and led to poor air quality at times across much of the west.  Utah has not had an easy fire season, but we've been comparatively lucky so far compared to the disasters that have ensued in California, Oregon, and Washington.  Here too, scientists have warned about wildland mangement, invasive species, development patterns, and climate change as agents for exacerbating severe wildfire behavior.  Perhaps an individual wildfire can "come out of nowhere", but the fact that we are now seeing extreme wildfire intensities and spread is not a surprise.

Finally, we have the recent windstorm.  The National Weather Service issued warnings in advance for this event as well and three days prior to the event, I commented on the potential for "strong downslope winds along the Wasatch Front on Tuesday."  An argument might be made that the impacts were more severe than anticipated, but the event was not unexpected.  

We need to change this narrative because it is one that fuels a reactionary response to natural hazards rather than one in which we more proactively build resiliency to these hazards.  Natural disasters are not acts of god and in most instances they are not unexpected, nor do they come out of nowhere. 

Our vulnerability to natural hazards today strongly reflects the choices we have made as a society and as individuals.  Our vulnerability to natural hazards in the coming decades reflects in part those choices, but also the choices we make today and in the future.  

With regards to weather and climate hazards, I often say that we are not prepared for the weather and climate of the 20th century, let alone the climate of the 21st century.   We know that the trends we see happening today: higher temperatures, more severe and prolonged drought, intensifying wildfires, and more extreme precipitation events, will continue and potentially accelerate in the future.  

We need to adapt and prepare for this coming reality, which is going to be different from the one that human civilization has experienced in the last 10,000 years.  

Fool us once, shame on you.  Fool us twice, shame on us.  In some instances, we've been fooled many times.  Let's work to build more resilient communities.  

What If RBG Had Been a Scientist?

 

"When I’m sometimes asked ‘When will there be enough (women on the Supreme Court)?’ and my answer is: ‘When there are nine.’ People are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.”
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

After the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Friday, I found myself choked up.  It is the tough loss of a great woman who meant a great deal to many, including my young daughter as she has grown into a young woman.  

Ginsburg was an advocate for gender equality, an area in which the "STEM" disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) has long lagged.  In high school, I did not have a single woman as a math or science teacher.  As an undergraduate student, I did not have a single woman as a math or science professor.  As a graduate student, I did not have a single woman as a math or science professor.  And, when I joined the faculty of the College of Mines and Earth Sciences at the University of Utah in 1995, I believe there were only two women on the tenure-line faculty.  

This is the male-dominated STEM world that Ruth Bader Ginsburg would have fought through in about 1956 when she entered graduate school, 1961 when she would have completed her Ph.D., and 1962 when she would have joined the atmospheric sciences or other STEM department at some prestigious University.  Even today, women are underrepresented throughout the STEM pipeline and account for only 18-31% of faculty in STEM fields.  

Imagine if RBG had joined the STEM world and how she would have been an agent for change.  She would have fought against gender pay inequity and sexual harassment in all of its forms.  She would have been an advocate for a more diverse faculty and the elimination of gender bias in faculty recruiting, hiring, and mentoring, as well as the classroom.  She would have rewritten the policies uses for the retention, promotion, and tenure of faculty, eliminating gender biases and rewarding faculty for their efforts to promote of feeling of belonging in STEM not just for women, but all from marginalized communities.  

RBG would have surely been a great scientist, but I think we can all be grateful that she found her passion and calling.  STEM's loss is the country's and world's gain.  However, all of us in STEM can learn from the ideals she pursued and work to achieve them in our disciplines where we still have so much work to do.