Wasatch Weather Weenies

Blogging will be light to non existent for the next couple of weeks as I think deep thoughts and ponder winter weather.  Þangað til ég kem aftur, bestu óskir.

As far as the first week of June goes, there's never been a hotter one in Salt Lake City based on data from the National Weather Service.  The mean temperature for the period this year is 77.4ºF, topping last year by 0.8ºF.  Both years are out there on the long-skinny tail of the distribution as the next warmest year, 2006, was 74.3ºF. Source: NOAA Regional Climate Centers Relief is in sight, however, in the form of a pocket of cold air, presently over the North Pacific, that will move in here over the next several days. GFS 700-mb temperature analyses and forecasts valid 1200 UTC 6 June – 1200 UTC 13 June Relief, however, looks to come in spits and spurts as the system pivots its way in here.  Yesterday looks to have been the peak of the heat.  Today will be a couple degrees cooler and tomorrow a bit more.  After some ups and downs, the cold air looks to be here in earnest early next week.  Right now it looks like a total decline in temperatu...

An article in today's New York Times highlights how the five states that get the largest percentage of their power from wind are red states (Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and North Dakota). Source: New York Times The reasons for this are multifaceted, but one that is not discussed explicitly in the article is climatology. On a regional scale, the highest average annual wind speeds at 80 meters above ground (roughly turbine height) are found in the upper Great Plains.  This so-called "wind corridor" includes large portions of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, and North Dakota. All of these states were "red" in the last Presidential election. Source: AWS Truepower/NREL There are pockets of good wind power potential elsewhere, but if Arizona is the Saudi Arabia of solar, then the upper Great Plains are the Saudi Arabia of wind.  And, to no surprise, a great deal of wind power development and production can be foun...

The snowpack in the central Wasatch is going fast as temperatures sit well above average for this time of year, offering up a good opportunity for lessons in the intricacies of snowpack statistics.   The graph below shows the snowpack water equivalent at the Snowbird SNOTEL site for this season (green line) compared to last season (red line), average (blue), and median (magenta).  I have added a dashed line during a period of missing data in late May and early June this season.   Source CBRFC (My dashed line).   Let's take a closer look at the graph from May through July.  As of midnight today (June 5), the snowpack water equivalent was 22 inches, which is 140% of median.  That sounds remarkably fat.  However, snowpack statistics can be very deceptive in the spring when the melt rates are fast.  Another way to look at it is that 22 inches is only 2 days behind the median.  Basically, we sit at the median for June 3rd, which doesn't...

The forecast for the next several days is ugly.  During the first couple of weeks of the month of June, the climatological storm track position is such that we can sometimes have a cooler pattern or at least the occasional push of colder air into northern Utah.  I always hope that's the case to reduce the length of "summer", but we're getting the shaft this year. The somewhat persistent nature of the warmth of the next several days is reflected in the forecast time series for Mt. Baldy (11,000 ft), which shows temperatures hovering around 50ºF through Friday.  That's pleasant up there, but equates primarily to highs in the 90s. And that's reflected in the forecast below from weather.com.  Six out of the next seven days (including today) with highs in the 90s. Source: weather.com Not looking forward to it.  Hopefully something cooler can drop into our area after June 10th.

I've been really impressed with the solar system we had installed and hooked up in December and each month, as the skies clear and the sun rises, the production continues to grow. Last month, we produced nearly 1.2 megawatt hours of power, or about 38 kilowatt hours a day. Those numbers are very satisfying today.

Yesterday was a dark day for me professionally.  The Paris Agreement isn't perfect, and I knew what was coming, yet I took the President's announcement like a blow to the stomach.  Adding insult to injury was the BS being thrown around about climate change. The Paris Agreement is freely available here , so feel free to peruse it.  The summary of key agreements begins at the end of page 21 and continues onto page 22 and includes "holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2ºC above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5ºC above preindustrial levels." A variety of reasons were given by President Trump for the pullout, but I'll focus here on arguments that the Paris Agreement will have little impact on reducing global temperatures.  During his speech, President Trump claimed that "even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimate...