Weather with Cliff Mass

The next week will be one of great contrast for the Northwest.  We will go from MUCH cooler than normal temperatures over the weekend, with frost at sea level and moderate snow in the Cascades, to temperatures surging into the upper 60s west of the Cascades by the end of the week.  In the second part of the podcat, I go into some depth on the decline of the current La Nina, talking about the nature of the El Nino/La Nina oscillation and the potential impacts of a weakening La Nina on West Coast precipitation next winter.

The sky is often covered by thin lines of ice clouds, known as contrails.  In my podcast, I will explain why they occur and what they tell you about the atmosphere above.  I will also discuss the climatic effects of contrails.   And I will give you the weekend weather forecast and tell you how warm temperatures are only a short drive away.

Do humans have the power to alter the weather?   I will answer this question in my podcast.  And I provide a weekend weather forecast for the region, including a strong front that will cross Washington State on Sunday and plenty of snow late Sunday in the mountains.

Western Washington and Oregon have the longest springs in the nation, extending to 4 months or more.  I explain why in this podcast.  And I will give the weekend forecast, which promises lots of snow in the mountains, and showers with sun breaks in the lowlands.

Western Washington and Oregon have fewer and weaker thunderstorms than much of the U.S.   In this podcast, I explain why.   And I provide the weekend forecast, describing a beautiful Saturday, with a strong from moving through on Sunday afternoon.

In this podcast, I discuss a major issue:  U.S. global weather prediction is lagging the rest of the world.  Not only do I lay out the problem, but tell you why.   My podcast also provides the weekend forecast for the region, with a showery weekend followed by dry, warming weather later in the week.

In this podcast I start with the weekend weather forecast, which will be pretty benign because of the influence of a large ridge of high pressure over the eastern Pacific. Then I turn to the extreme weather of Texas, particularly its gyrations between summer warmth and Arctic cold during the winter months.   As I will explain, geography is meteorological destiny.

In this segment I discuss the profound rain shadow that will occur this weekend, with heavy snow and rain in the mountains and relatively dry conditions over the Puget Sound lowlands and the eastern slopes of the Cascades.  And then in the second segment, I take on the misinformation about the Texas cold wave.  There are a lot of claims in major media that cold waves, like the current one, are associated with global warming and will increase under global warming.  This is simply not true and I tell you why.

This podcast is about the expected snowfall this weekend, with the big event tonight and tomorrow (Saturday), with a look out into next week.

In this podcast I talk about the upcoming major snow event and some of the challenges in forecasting it.