National Weather Service

Skywarn (TM) spotter News

Winter 2008 Edition

From the National Weather Service - Seattle

Fall 2008 started out dry, with temperatures near normal in September. At Sea-Tac maximum temperatures were mostly in the 70s for the first half of the month, then fell to mostly 60s for the second half. Most of the rain fell on the 20th, and the month finished with about half normal rainfall. October was also a dry month with half normal rain—and temperatures for Sea-Tac averaged out a degree below normal. With 22 days in the 50s, only 8 days in the 60s and one lone day hitting 74 degrees on the first of the month, the downward trend for temperatures was well underway. The weather pattern was somewhat active—just not very wet, and there were a number of breezy days scattered throughout the month.
November marked a false start to winter, with moist weather systems arriving in the first week of the month. There was one typical river flooding event and another moderate to major event, with high snow levels. Over three inches of rainfall at Sea-Tac on the 6th and 7th alone. The second half of the month was much more tranquil—as ridging along the west coast of the U.S. kept storms from reaching the Pacific Northwest. At the end of the month, snowpack in the mountains was negligible. For the month, Sea-Tac recorded a little above normal rainfall—owing to the pineapple express early in the month. Temperatures averaged 4 deg F above normal.
December marked the true start of winter, although the warmth and ridging weather pattern of November carried over into the first third of the month, the weather pattern underwent a dramatic turn by the middle of the month. At the halfway point western Washington was recording temperatures 15 degrees below average with the snow level falling to sea level. Precipitation was still on the light side, but at least it was finally falling as snow in the mountains. The first lowland snow event happened in the middle of the month, with snowfall reports ranging from a trace to 10 inches. The highest amounts were reported in Skagit, Island, Whatcom, and Snohomish counties.

Our area’s weather is terrain driven and snowfall clearly follows that trend throughout western Washington. Can you correctly match these communities with their average annual snowfall? The answers can be found elsewhere in Skywarn (TM) spotter News.

Are you ready for winter? Are you ready to report snowfall, strong winds, heavy rainfall, flooding and all our other winter season weather?

This winter promises to be another active winter since we are in ‘neutral’ conditions, that is in-between El Nino or La Nina conditions. Sea surface temperatures in the tropical central and eastern Pacific Ocean are close to normal and are expected to continue through this winter, hence the ‘neutral’ condition reference.

‘Neutral’ winters usually bring our area a wide variety of weather – from periods of rainfall and flooding that we have already had, to winds, high coastal surf, coastal flooding and even lowland snowfall. So again, are you ready for winter?

Be sure to contact us when significant weather is in your area. Your reports are a key element in helping your community better prepare for the inclement weather. Remember, your local emergency management team uses your reports, the media uses them, and our forecasters use them, all in the effort to help protect lives and property.

So, have your spotter criteria sheet handy and give us a call when significant weather occurs in your area including those strong blows, what falls on your snow board and in your rain gauge. Thanks!

Do you remember how to measure snow? Here is a refresher. First, use two pieces (roughly 2’ x 2’) of plywood or the like, to use as snow boards. One piece can be used to measure total snow and the other for ‘new’ snow since the last measurement. Paint them both white in color so they will not absorb the sun’s heat energy.

Place the two snow boards in an open area away from tall obstructions, likely close to your rain gauge. Be sure to ‘flag’ both boards so you can find them once they are snow-covered, and have a yardstick or a snow stake handy. We have been providing white snow boards and snow stakes at our weather spotter training sessions the past two years.

Snow boards provide much more accurate snow measuring platforms than using your deck, lawn or driveway. You can measure snowfall as often as you wish. We recommend measuring snow at least once or twice a day, such as first thing in the morning and then the evening, and shortly after a period of snowfall has ended to determine new snow totals. Contact us when you get one inch or more per hour, or 4” in 12 hours per our spotter criteria. Now, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

This year’s Skywarn Recognition Day event was held on Dec 5-6. This event began in the central U.S. in 1999 and has become a nationwide event, celebrating the contributions volunteer Skywarn radio operators make to the National Weather Service. This year, over 100 NWS offices participated in the event.

We had several local radio operators work our WX7SEA NWS Seattle amateur radio workstation, including three NWS Seattle staff members. We used (with permission) the K7PP repeater system which reaches nearly all of western Washington. We had over 100 contacts during the event. Current weather conditions were shared along with the latest forecasts and other topics. Thanks go to all that participated in this fun annual event!

The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow (CoCoRaHS) network is now about 7 months old in Washington state. Near the beginning of December, the number of those who had registered and are participating was just under 500 statewide – a fantastic start. We are shooting for at least 3000 CoCoRaHS team members across the state.

Skywarn weather spotters can easily become CoCoRaHS members. For a complete look at CoCoRaHS including registration information, a training slide show and information on the 4 inch rain gauges, go to http://www.cocorahs.org/

CoCoRaHS training was held for about 35 people on Dec 9^th. The online training took about an hour and was well received. We plan to hold more training sessions in the future. See the Washington CoCoRaHS web site found at the cocorahs.org website for training announcements and much more information.

For those of you who are CoCoRaHS members, please remember to report event-driven precipitation and your snow reports. When you do so, your report sets off bells and whistles in our forecast office, alerting forecasters to your fresh report. And those snow reports have been quite helpful so far this month.

Skywarn (TM) spotter News via E-Mail - In an effort to reduce our taxpayer funded mailing costs, we would like to promote use of email vs hard-copy mailings. If you would like to be notified by an email message that the latest edition of our quarterly spotter newsletter is available on our web site, please contact Jay Neher at jay.neher@noaa.gov, and we will add you to our email address book.

Moving? - If you have moved or are planning to move soon, please let us know your new address. We often get a number of spotter mailings returned with changed or unable to forward post office messages. If you have moved to another western Washington county, we will need to change your spotter number to that county. If you move beyond our area, we can forward your information to the corresponding NWS office. Please contact our database manager at jay.neher@noaa.gov . Thank you in advance!

Spotter Training Update - Skywarn Weather Spotter Training was held in Lewis, Skagit, King, and Jefferson counties this fall. Over 150 people attended these sessions. For new spotters, welcome aboard the Skywarn Weather Spotter team!

More spotter training is planned for early 2009. Spotter training is set for Feb 25^th in Thurston county. Other events may be arranged as well. Look for spotter training announcements either in your mailbox or via our web site here. More training will be held again in the fall too.

‘Spotter Tips’ On-Line - We have updated our ‘spotter tips’ publication. It is available for you to obtain via our web site at www.weather.gov/seattle. From our ‘spotters’ front page link, look for the link to ‘spotter tips’ for an easy to print out .pdf file. The tip sheet offers questions to answer and tips while reporting specific weather elements. You will find the tip sheet to be quite helpful while preparing and reporting your spotter reports.

Coming Soon – eSpotter - The capability to send your spotter reports online is coming soon to our area. Details on this program entitled eSpotter will be available in the first half of 2009. So look for those details soon!