Seattle's Worst 24 Hour Air Quality On Record...

Just when I thought it couldn't get worse, I woke up this morning with the familiar burning eyes and sore throat.  I could barely see my neighbor's house (slight exaggeration...)  Whidbey Island is missing....  So I put the drone up to see how bad it was.  This is definitely worse than yesterday.

There are rumors of relief starting tonight...  I can hardly wait!

Meanwhile, Cliff's Blog about this record breaking event is pretty interesting...

Cliff Blog About Record Setting Smoke - Click Here

The Smoke Continues....

The smoke this morning is awful....  The forecasts show some temporary relief for later today, but until these wildfires are contained, we will be in an on again off again smoke situation depending on the winds.  I took this drone video this morning. 

Cliff Mass used this video in his blog this morning.  He shares some good information about this smoke event....  Cliff's Smoke Blog - August 14th

More Smoke Coming... From All Directions?...

Cliff Mass just posted an interesting blog that coincides with what I am seeing.  The clouds I saw this morning seemed to be replaced with smoke.  We have a strong North wind blowing now, so the Maple fire and California smoke seemed illogical.  But it definitely looked like smoke....  Well...  We are now sharing smoke with BC again.  If I am reading Cliff's blog correctly, we have BC's smoke now and it will soon combine with California's smoke and eventually Eastern Washington smoke....  For a guy with asthma, this is NOT good news.....  It's also bad news for those looking forward to the Perseid meteor shower....

Click Here For Cliff's Smoke Blog... 

Time Lapse Storm Recap From Today.... August 11, 2018

The weather today turned out as promised.  Actually, we avoided the BIG hit.  I put it into a time lapse that shows Cam1, Cam2, Cam3 and then a panorama of all three.  It's a bit long at just under 2 minutes, but worth watching to the end....

Possible Lightning Today... And a couple of tools on this site to monitor this event..

We are looking at potential lightning here this afternoon.  This doesn't happen a lot around here and I think we all need to be reminded how to be safe during these events.  About 30 years ago when I was young and dumb, I was fishing in a 14ft. aluminum boat under jet black skies.  A bolt of lightning hit the water less than 100 feet from me.  Yes, that was a very religious experience.  I couldn't hear or see anything for a while after it happened, because it was so loud and bright.  Plus every hair on my body was standing at attention.....  That event "inspired" me to stay off the water when lightning is in the area.  A boat is a perfect target.

I have some tools on my site that I thought I would share in this blog.  The first is the CAPE Forecast tool.  This is down in the "National Weather Service" section.  CAPE is an acronym that stands for "Convective Available Potential Energy".  The weather service can measure the amount of energy an air particle would have if it was lifted in the atmosphere.  If it creates enough energy, it results in lightning.  

When you click on the "CAPE Forecast" link, you will get an interactive screen that looks like this.  You can see it is for 8:00am today.  The pink off the coast is potential lightning.  These forecasts are in 3 hour increments.  I will share the forecasts for today below:

11:00am - You can see the potential starting to move into Puget Sound

2:00PM - You can see it has us covered and a new color is introduced....  This is a higher potential.

5:00PM - It pretty much has saturated our area.

8:00PM - Still pretty solid, but starting to lighten up.

11:00PM - It finally starts to clear up....

So, we could have some interesting weather today.  There is one more tool to share from the site.  It is an interactive lightning map that shows where lightning has struck.  The link is right below the CAPE Forecast link.  Here is a direct link to that site:  Lightning Map

Be Safe Today!