Charlie Phillips

There has been a lot of talk about climate change, and how we need to do everything we can to mitigate it. At the same time, there has been a lot of talk about how the climate is “always changing,” and that […]

Credit: NOAA

Earlier this week, my good friends at NOAA (well, hopefully we’ll be best buds someday) issued a La Niña watch for the Tropical Pacific. Some of the models were showing a […]

What a change a month makes! Back on the 10th and 13th of March, we had two powerful windstorms roll through the area, with the one on the 10th causing lots of damage to the Northern Interior and creating a lot […]

Wow, what a change in weather we have had! From the wettest winter on record to two consecutive weeks with temperatures above 70 degrees! Our transition from autumn to winter is swift, but our transition from […]

On Wednesday, the New York times came out with an alarming article. It said that a new, high-resolution model was showing that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), a massive ice sheet west of the “Transantarctic […]

Credit: NASA AQUA Satellite, ~2pm on Easter Sunday, March 27, 2016

Yesterday was definitely a crazy day for weather! For much of the day, a pretty strong Puget Sound Convergence Zone set up […]

Wednesday, March 23, 2016
2:28 pm
Every year, around the first week of March, springtime allergies hit me harder than a bottle of caffeine pills. For the majority of the winter, I’m totally fine, and then […]

Pi Day 2016
4:55 pm

I apologize for not being in the blogosphere yesterday – I was up at Alpental introducing 5-year-olds to poles. I taught lessons up there this year on the weekends and had a spectacular […]

Thursday, February 11, 2016
8:12 pm

Although it has been my most enduring, meteorology was not my first foray into the natural sciences. When I was in preschool, I was obsessed with volcanoes and […]

Tuesday, February 9, 2016
11:37 am

Right now, we have a pretty impressive inversion over our region. This was something I expected, and honestly, I was surprised that it was not stronger yesterday. It will […]

Monday, February 8, 2016
4:59 p.m.

We’ve seen our fair share of suffixes and nicknames for atmospheric and oceanic phenomena of all types these past two years. We had “The Blob,” a simple but very accur […]

Monday, January 25, 2016
1:24 pm

A car submerged in snow. Photo taken 23 January 2016.
Credit: Wikimedia User Aude

Last week in Seattle was pretty stormy, capped off by a very wet Thursday […]

Tuesday, November 17, 2015
10:34 am

Things are really ramping up now throughout Western Washington. The all-important PDX-BLI gradient, which was forecast to max out at 14-18 hPa, is already at 18 hPa, and […]

Saturday, November 7, 2015
2:13 pm

Less than a week ago, Cyclone Chapala slammed into Socotra, a small Yemeni Island some 150 miles east of the Horn of Africa, and Yemen, a small country on the […]

Saturday, October 17, 2015
4:01 pm

Beach erosion by Pacifica, California due to storms during the 1997-1998 El Niño event. Credit: USGS

With all of this talk about the “Godzilla” El Niñ […]

Thursday, October 15, 2015
3:52 pm

Every autumn, our beloved deciduous trees shed their leaves, creating an annual economic boom for children everywhere as parents and neighbors pay them the proverbial quarter […]

Monday, October 5, 2015
2:49 pm

The Pacific Northwest is no stranger to flooding. I believe that Washington has had the most federal disaster declarations of any state, which may be surprise you due to […]

Thursday, October 1, 2015
4:08 p.m.

At Sea-Tac, the last time we had a month that was cooler than average for that month was February 2014. Since then, 20 months have passed, with 19 consecutive months […]

Thursday, September 17, 2015
1:24 p.m.

The port town of Coquimbo, Chile after the earthquake and tsunami. Credit: Wikimedia User Sfs90

 
Chile is hands-down the most active place in the w […]

Tuesday, September 15, 2015
2:27 pm

Things were never looking good for our beloved salmon this year. I’ve been a fisherman all my life (I actually just got back from catching a bunch of albacore tuna off […]