Rod's Weather Headlines

Deke Arndt, Chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch, National Climatic Data Center After 16 consecutive months with warmer-than-normal conditions, October brought fairly average temperatures to the United States. Arctic air kept the center of the country cooler than average, while most of the coasts...

Let me begin by saying, the skill level for seasonal forecasting is less then 20% better than pure chance or guessing.  The skill does increase with strong La Nina and El Nino episodes.  With that said, this winter is expected to be a Neutral or weak El Nino season, meaning equatorial water temperat...

The 2011-2012 water year and September come to an end.  Despite our recent dry stretch, the water year, thanks to another wet spring and especially June, finishes with a surplus.  The water year ends with:  39.73" of precipitation.    Normal Water Year 36.03"  /  2011 - 2012 surplus:  +3.70" Inter...

The .04" of rain at PDX last night ended 51 days in a row with a trace or less of rainfall, good enough for 8th place on the dry list of days with less than .01 inches.  The rainfall today also ended 22 days in a row with not even a trace of rain.  The streak of 22 days has been equaled nearly 10 ti...

August 2012 at PDX goes into the record book with a trace of rain.  The lack of moisture ties the years 1998, 1970, 1967 and 1955 for the driest August on record at PDX.  Back in 1885, no moisture was recorded.  Normal rainfall is .67 inches.  The wettest August all-time was 4.53" in 1968.   The av...

August 19th kicks-off the slow march towards the rainy season, which is considered to begin November 1st.  According to the climate record, the following is the progression of Portland's daily rain chance.  Driest Part Of The Year:  July 11th - August 18th /  Daily Rain Chance 10% August 19th - Se...

Peak viewing of the Perseid Meteor shower tonight around 9:00 pm.  Dark areas in the country could see 40-60 meteors per hour.  Visibility near the city lights will be closer to 10-20 at most.  The meteors, often the size of a grain of sand produce amazing light as they enter the earth's atmosphere....

  REVISED FORECAST: The CME launched toward Earth by yesterday's X-flare is moving faster than originally thought. Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab have revised their forecast accordingly, advancing the cloud's expected arrival time to 09:17 UT (5:17 am EDT) on Saturday, July 14th. Weekend...

Here is a look back at another cool and wet June: PDX Rainfall:  4.10"  / 2nd wettest in history, behind June of 2012, 4.27"  Normal for month is 1.70" Average High:  69.7 degrees / 3.8 degrees below normal Average Low:  52.7 degrees / slightly below normal, -0.9 degrees Mean Temp:    61.2 degre...

I was thinking yesterday, that the start of summer is truly more special for the Northwest than most of the country.  For most, summer weather, meaning sunny, hot days began weeks ago.  Summer fun in warm lakes, boating with sun screen and complaining about 90 degree heat has been going on for weeks...