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thunderhead
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Joined: 14 Oct 2015
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We can also look through the actual data that directly refute that silly "mid latitude summer drying" nonsense, at least for our continent.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2013/08/supplemental/page-3/
They almost all show no significant trend with time.
Thats a pretty big, robust, dataset. Man, the more I look at this the more it becomes indisputably clear: summertime precip isnt actually changing. No change in the PNW, No change at dozens of sensors scattered across the US, no change in drought index...
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thunderhead
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Joined: 14 Oct 2015
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| Quote: | | WTF is this thread doing in Trail Talk, it should be consigned to the Stewardship gulag. Just more personal bickering. |
lol, true
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Ski
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Joined: 28 May 2005
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Ski
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 Wed May 30, 2018 10:28 am |
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| thunderhead wrote: | | "...who needs evidence when you can just say you remember things?..." |
The evidence is all around us. One only has to be observant. It's not rocket science.
You claim that "summertime precip isnt actually changing" is actually really kind of funny. You really should get outside more.
"I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."
"I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."
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thunderhead
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| Quote: | | The evidence is all around us. |
Indeed it is. Like that massive NCDC dataset I just posted that shows no summertime precip trends in the US. But your memory of a stream when you were a kid must be worth more than the National Climate Data Center. Right.
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Ski
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Ski
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Wed May 30, 2018 11:14 am |
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some of us are blessed (or cursed, depending upon one's perspective) with what are referred to as "photographic memories".
my observations and memory are just fine, thank you.
you don't know me, you don't know anything about me, or what I've done or where I've been, so your presumptuousness and assumption that there's something "wrong" with me in regard to my memory retention is laughable at best, and at worst simply obnoxious.
that's all okay, though - as I mentioned above, a good part of why I continue to peruse the posts on this site is simply because I need a good laugh now and then.
carry on.
"I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."
"I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."
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cambajamba
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Joined: 05 Nov 2011
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*pinches bridge of nose*
There's clearly something going on and there's no clear scientific way to describe it so I think we're at an impasse here. I am an empirically minded person and I can back up the assertion that there is less late season water in our local rivers over the past decade or so. I get that is anecdotal, but I feel like it's the job of researchers to find out why something is happening that is so severe it's NOTICEABLE TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC.
But all I hear is "long term models allow me to brush you off because I don't have the time or mental energy to explain the actual, complex, practically chaotic nature of atmospheric science or I just don't understand it myself."
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thunderhead
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| Quote: | | you don't know me, you don't know anything about me, or what I've done or where I've been, so your presumptuousness and assumption that there's something "wrong" with me in regard to my memory retention is laughable at best, and at worst simply obnoxious. |
There is nothing wrong with you. You are a human. You are not a scientific record of rain gauges. Enough said.
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gb
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gb
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Wed May 30, 2018 4:47 pm |
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| thunderhead wrote: | |
So in addition to no change in the pacific NW, there is no significant trend for the entire country either? I am shocked! Scary sounding news articles say the world is flooding, or drought will kill all our plants, or everything is going to burn down. But there is actually no change in the data? How could this be? |
Nor did anyone say that the average summer precipitation across the US has changed. And anyway your graph conveniently ends at 2010. This may be above your pay grade but weather patterns are not the same in the Pacific Northwest as in other parts of the country, California for instance. And anyway you are slow to the take and can't understand that lowland weather stations do not accurately predict mountain precipitation.
Then, too, average summer precipitation is irrelevant, for the effects on the glaciers (and hence in the mountains) you need to look not at average precipitation but the number of rainy days in the summer at elevation. One or two days with heavy rain (as predicted in climate models) has little to do with sky conditions or aridity over the course of a summer. Average rainfall is a poor metric. The number of sunny days is a much better metric, and not in the lowlands. The number of sunny days in summer would also correlate well with temperature.
For instance, I doubt you realize it, but May 2018 in Seattle set a record for being the driest May after the wettest winter. Despite that rainfall in Seattle, Eastern Washington was much drier than normal this past winter. On March 31st the soil on Cowiche Mountain was the driest I've yet seen it. This is reflected by snowpack depths at Mission Ridge which were about 80% of normal compared to westside snowpacks 15-20% above normal. White Pass and Crystal Mountain, and Stampede Pass, which exhibit precipitation patterns similar to Mission Ridge recorded May 1st depths below normal.
How about last summer, does your data show it was dry in the Northwest last summer? Like record dry? Oh, I forgot you cut your data to 2010.
And then there is California, wasn't there some sort of a minor drought there recently? California snowpacks particularly at Mammoth would be representative of moisture conditions in the Intermountain basin. Oh yeah, here it is: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/california-drought-worst-least-1200-years California had the worst drought in the past couple hundred years from 2011-2016. And this year was much drier than normal after a one year respite.
My goodness, I guess the Midwest had it's worst drought since 1866 in 2012. https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060049766 Who'd a thunk it? After all albrghtmd's graph shows that average rainfall has increased.....
But, weren't we talking about the Northwest and albrghtmd's trumped up summer rainfall chart.
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Ski
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Joined: 28 May 2005
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Location: tacoma |
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Ski
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Wed May 30, 2018 8:23 pm |
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| cambajamba wrote: | | "I get that is anecdotal..." |
Yes, but that doesn't always necessarily equate to "inaccurate", and often it's the best information available. (Ask your friendly neighborhood archaeologist or historian.)
In the absence of "empirical evidence", anecdotal is the best that can be hoped for.
The graphs and charts posted thus far are for average precipitation at SeaTac airport, which may or may not mean anything 65 miles to the west or a hundred miles to the south, since SeaTac is in the "rain shadow" of the Olympics.
But that reality won't change the minds of those who believe the only information that can considered accurate is little charts and graphs - I get that and I'm okay with that.
Fortunately most people of that persuasion are not put into positions where they make policy, so we have nothing to fear.
"I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."
"I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."
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RodF
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Joined: 01 Sep 2007
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RodF
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Thu May 31, 2018 10:41 am |
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| Ski wrote: | | Fortunately most people of that persuasion are not put into positions where they make policy, so we have nothing to fear. |
Oh, boy, one may wish, but the last two years shake any assumption that rationality prevails.
I need say no more. This thread should be in Stewardship.
"of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt" - John Muir
"the wild is not the opposite of cultivated. It is the opposite of the captivated” - Vandana Shiva
"of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt" - John Muir
"the wild is not the opposite of cultivated. It is the opposite of the captivated” - Vandana Shiva
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kvpair
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kvpair
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Thu May 31, 2018 10:50 am |
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@thunderhead and others, as I wade into this impassioned convo:
(1) Summer Precip Trends - 1970-2014
(2) Population Density NW
(1) There does appear to be a precip trend across the region, does it not?
(2) In terms of reporting: Given the population density, anecdotal reporting may skewed towards regions of higher density for a statistic that varies across a region. But in this case, it seems to me that we are seeing lowered summer precip during this period.
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Ski
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Ski
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Thu May 31, 2018 9:20 pm |
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| Rod wrote: | | "...any assumption that rationality prevails..." |
you got me there, Rod. let's call it a slight oversight on my part. 
"I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."
"I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."
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cambajamba
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Posts: 339 | TRs | Pics
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| Ski wrote: | | may or may not mean anything 65 miles to the west or a hundred miles to the south |
This has been bothering me recently, actually - are any local forecasts or weather data based on anything other than that one damn station? Like if I ask my weather app for a forecast for north bend, but it's just pulling data from like Accuweather or Yahoo or something - how well is that going to work??
Also Ski, I know man, anecdotal data is often the best indicator that something measurable might be happening...for the little chart and graph types!
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kvpair
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kvpair
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Fri Jun 01, 2018 10:51 am |
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| Ski wrote: | | may or may not mean anything 65 miles to the west or a hundred miles to the south |
Well, the graph I showed earlier for summer precip trends from 1970 on shows a rainfall decrease across the region in summer.
And 1970 is probably within the outer range of memory for most people here. So there is some evidence that what people are saying is actually true for us graphey types.
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Ski
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Joined: 28 May 2005
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Ski
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Fri Jun 01, 2018 1:23 pm |
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| cambajamba wrote: | | "... are any local forecasts or weather data based on anything other than that one damn station?" |
I don't know the answer to that question.
I do know that the area in Western Washington I am most familiar with up until just a couple years ago has been a proverbial "black hole" in this respect, because the Doppler images didn't pick up what was happening out there (from about Humptulips up to the Hoh) until a recently installed Doppler station was fired up.
The closest rainfall gauge is at Owl Mountain, which is about 20 miles north of my usual haunt.
When I first got serious about gardening and landscaping in the early 1980s I went down to the public library and pored through archival weather records for the local area and learned that there are all kinds of little "micro climates" all over Western Washington. At that time my focus was on the area between Dupont and Lakewood, which is just a wee bit drier than Tacoma (where weather is actually measured at the airport in Gig Harbor on the other side of the Narrows Bridge), and considerably drier than Seattle (which was formerly measured at Boeing Field, and then later at Sea-Tac International Airport.) Those records only went up into the early 1960s, though, so I'm not sure they have much bearing on this discussion other than to point out that weather records are kept at local stations all over the state.
As for "forecasts", I've found the information on "weather.com" to be somewhat reliable for the area between Amanda Park and Kalaloch, but considering the capriciousness of the weather out there near the coast I think a lot of it is "best guess" stuff based on the data they have available.
kvpair - sorry, I guess I'm not smart enough to figure out what information is being conveyed in the graph you cited.
"I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."
"I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."
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