A Rare Ground To Cloud Lightning Event on February 26th

A little before 8:00 on February 26th the sky started lighting up over Whidbey.  After I parsed out all the images there were some unique shots.  In particular a double ground to cloud strike in the same image.

Ground to cloud strikes are fairly rare for us.  The other unique event is that the tower that was struck in the image above was struck twice.  (See Below)  I guess you could call these captures a double double....

There were several strikes.  Below is a slide show from all my cams.

All this action caught the attention of a couple of my favorite bloggers....  They provide much more detail and science about this event.

Click Here For Cliff Mass's Blog

Click Here For Scott Sistek's Blog

 

Major Snow Event Coming....

It looks like there is some white stuff coming our way.  How much for Hansville is always a tough call, but there are 3 back to back storms coming.  Cliff Mass does an excellent job of breaking it down. 

Cliff Mass's Blog

2020 Wasn't All Bad....

 It was a good year to look up in the sky....

Comet Neowise and Noctilucent Clouds from July 14, 2020

Best Viewed Here: http://www.skunkbayweather.com/Neowise071420.mp4

A Very Nice Moonbow This Morning

We had a very nice Moonbow (Lunar Rainbow) this morning.  It is caused by the light of the moon rather than the sun.

More Wind Coming Tuesday....

The NWS just issued a Gale Watch for Hood Canal/Puget Sound for tomorrow and a High Wind Warning for Admiralty Inlet.  There is a very interesting storm brewing off Vancouver Island....  A "Meteorological Bomb".  Cliff Mass tells the story in his blog:

https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/11/a-meteorological-bomb-will-hit-northern.html

 

Possible Big Windstorm Friday/Saturday?

Update: 11/12/2020

It appears that this storm is coming ashore off the Oregon coast and will not affect us as much as thought earlier. Cliff Mass covers this nicely here:

https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/11/storm-approaches-with-high-winds-south.html

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This is just a FWIW post.... But worth paying attention to. Many of the forecast models are hinting at a major wind storm for Friday night/Saturday morning. There is a lot of uncertainty this far out, but I think its important to be aware and prepare as best we can. Cliff Mass covers it very well in his blog this morning....

https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/11/potential-for-major-storm-on-friday.html

The image below is what forecasters use and paints a pretty grim picture. The lines on this image are called isobars and represent barometric pressure and visually shows pressure difference (pressure gradients). A simple rule is if there are 11-13 isobars between Portland and Bellingham you are looking at a significant wind storm. For my aging eyes I lose count there are so many isobars but it gets close to the Inauguration Day storm level..... The Inauguration Day storm was around 21.5.....

This will be something to watch over the next few days.....

Just How Windy Has This Month Been?

I was asked if this month has been abnormally windy.  I created a measure that I have tracked since 2013.  I call it "Wind Minutes".  It is the number of minutes where the wind gusts are greater than or equal to 30mph.  I put together a table this morning measuring November 1-8 since 2013.  

YES....  This has been a VERY windy start to November.....  And we are still counting for today....