Alas, yesterday we thought we had angered the Lord of Moss and Mildew when a great flaming ball appeared in an eerily blue sky. The denizens of the Puget Sound quailed in fright at this brightness thinking we may have offended the Lord of Moss and Mildew but, it was soon apparent that all was forgiven when the normalcy of leaden gray and rain replaced the frightening brightness.

Back to hanger maintenance.

The only indication that winter might be leaving the Pacific Northwest is that there are more hours of daylight to observe the crappy conditions that prevail. Hangar maintenance indeed.

At least you're weather is self clearing. I just got done plowing 5" of fresh snow over here on the Idaho side of the hills. I'm just done with all the snow. Retreating back to the heated hanger to resume Wagon maintenance. Tie some more trout flies tonight in front of the fire and dream of standing in the river fishing in the middle of a hatch.

You guys are funny! This has been one for the crappy wx record book. I'm going back to Palm Desert, Ca for 2 weeks real soon. I need to acclimatize to sun before spring returns.

Cheers...Rob

It sure has been good for my farm. The crop is very thick and growing fast. My hanger queen has only seen two hours of flight time this month and that was just above scud running.
Ron

I also looked directly into that orb of brightness yesterday afternoon and danm near went blind and crazy. Everything is normal now as we woke up to another good snow storm here at Langley Regional (cynj)

It's sure been crappy here, Fall and winter, not a great bunch of months for flying or farming. I've still snuck in a bit of each though. Taking the kids down to Palm Desert next week and get a break from this bs weather.

TomD, what's your annual rainfall there in Seattle? We've had 46" 2 years in a row; makes for a pretty sloppy airstrip in our black clay. Sometimes 5" or more at a time. Takes almost a week to get things firmed up enough to work again and then we get more... The rodent population has exploded and they have managed to eat wires and ductwork out of all our cars and trucks (the Maule has been safe so far ).

At least in the drought we could keep working. I'm getting fat (and cranky...) waiting on the weather to clear up. Who would have thought South Texas would be able to support moss, mildew, and mushrooms

DR: I'll toss my 2 cents worth in the bucket and TomD can add to it later. It isn't the number of inches of rainfall the Seattle Area gets as much as it is the number of low ceiling days, often with ice in the clouds during the winter. It doesn't rain all that hard in Seattle, it just drizzles a lot. In 2016, Seattle only got 45.18" of rain, but there were 238 rainy days in 2016. Seattle doesn't get many thunder cells, it is more common to have widespread systems that dump rain everywhere rather than isolated storm systems you can dodge. Therein lies the rub. Here's a graph of average cloud cover by month in Seattle:


I live in the rain shadow of the Olympic mountains, so most of those weather systems dump their rain on the temperate rain forest of the Olympic National Park (150" rainfall per year average) so the clouds are pretty dry by the time they get over Port Townsend. Part of those same weather systems come under the southern edge of the Olympic Mountains and part come over the top of the mountain, up the Straits of Juan de Fuca. These arms of bad weather close back together after they pass over our heads. That creates a 40 mile wide hole in the weather and results in Port Townsend only having an average of 19" of rain per year. The small, 40 mile diameter circle is great overhead and allows me to do pattern work, but can't go anywhere from here without filing IFR. Here's a typical radar image of our area. It's an interesting place to live. When the weather does cooperate, this is a spectacular place with lots of little public grass strips scattered through the mountains.

Interestingly, that "blue hole" in Gary's graphic is also the usual area for the "Puget Sound convergence zone"--
a place where pressure and/or temperature fronts approaching from the WNW & from the WSW commonly collide and produce turbulence & storm cells, even when it's pretty good elsewhere. It can impact flights from our airport, whether they're to the southeast (Seattle), the east (Arlington), or the northeast (Skagit or Concrete). A good illustration of our region's different micro-climates.

Gary is right on. It may rain all day and we only get 1". The average days of rain in February is 23, but we set a new rainfall record this year.

Losing the local FSS and having the forecasters located in the mid west or Texas has markedly degraded the local forecasting due to lack of local knowledge. The remote folks have a hard time figuring out the weather next a large body of water between two mountain ranges close to the Pacific Ocean. The convergence zones and other micro-climates in the area create "interesting" flight planning challenges.

I joke with folks about National weather service predicting %POP. In Georgia 50% would mean that there is a 50% chance of rain, here it means it will rain 50% of the time.

TomD wrote:Gary is right on. It may rain all day and we only get 1". The average days of rain in February is 23, but we set a new rainfall record this year.

Losing the local FSS and having the forecasters located in the mid west or Texas has markedly degraded the local forecasting due to lack of local knowledge. The remote folks have a hard time figuring out the weather next a large body of water between two mountain ranges close to the Pacific Ocean. The convergence zones and other micro-climates in the area create "interesting" flight planning challenges.

I joke with folks about National weather service predicting %POP. In Georgia 50% would mean that there is a 50% chance of rain, here it means it will rain 50% of the time.

That's not a problem unique to the PNW. Last Wednesday when I flew down to Rocky Mountain Metro to have the new com antennas installed, I called 1-800-WXBRIEF, which I rarely do since most of the time I do my own weather briefing. But I was concerned that the winds at Greeley were pretty low but the winds at KBJC had been quite high earlier in the morning (about the limits of my comfort level), had died down prompting me to head for my hangar at Greeley, and I needed to make a departure decision--didn't want to go if the winds had crept back to what they'd been.

I was hoping I'd get the Denver FSS for really local information--that would make sense, when the question asked by the automatic system is "What state will you be departing from, or operating within?" I said Colorado. Yet when I was connected, it was with a briefer in Atlanta! Fortunately, he was actually familiar with how Colorado weather works, because he said he'd lived out here. Yet still he could only look at what the instruments were telling him, because the only PIREPS were from aircraft in the flight levels. What he saw was still within my comfort level, so I departed.

As it happened, the trip down was pretty benign, the only turbulence of note was on short final, my extraordinary skill ( led to a perfect landing, and because the taxiing in was all with a headwind, even that wasn't difficult. Taxiing back out that afternoon, with the winds back up to their pre-dawn levels, was a different story (nothing pleasant about a 30-35 knot quartering tailwind), and the first thousand feet of climb was extraordinarily rough before it finally smoothed out shortly after I had climbed to 7500' and called Denver Approach for flight following home.

Cary

This is my first winter in the PNW.
On average I try to fly 3 or 4 times per week.
Logged about 40 plus hrs so far this 2017 winter.

The only trick I can think of is to live close to the airport and have a schedule that allows to take every window oportunity when the weather is even just ok.

There was a period of 12 days in a row that I did not fly because of weather.
And I was trying.

I have had the best flights ever in winter days, calm , clear and amazing performance.
Also have experienced the worse turbulence I have ever experienced in the Cascades after taking off in calm winds 10 miles away.

Freezing rain and snow all while VFR.

But I love flying in the PNW.

Another 6" last night.- at least the blinding orb is out and it's blue sky. I see a set of wheel skis going on the wagon next fall.

Flyhound wrote:The only indication that winter might be leaving the Pacific Northwest is that there are more hours of daylight to observe the crappy conditions that prevail. Hangar maintenance indeed.

Yep, that was my view yesterday morning trying to get into Skagit/Bayview to look at a hangar. I finally made it in but it took some probing before I was able to commit. Fortunately it was breaking up out to the west for an exit strategy.

Man, what a winter. Fortunately, when the good weather shines down on us once again, it is so ding dang stunning around here that we forget real quick those soggy wet dark mossy days of the three other seasons. You know,... the 4 seasons of the Northwest: Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Road Construction.

Our Cascade Mountian induced rain shadow has been a dissapointment lately. This winter has been a kick in the groin.

We average 7.5 inches of rain a YEAR out here in what I refer to the 'Frozen Desert' but we've received half of that just since New year's.

When it's not raining it's been inverted, or windy. I've gotten out some but not much.

Hardly any motorcycling and all my bicycling has been on rollers in my little home gym watching YouTube videos of other people riding outside.

I have been encouraging the locals to buy as many diesel F-350's as possible and leave them idiling to hopefully warm this place up.

TomD wrote:Gary is right on. It may rain all day and we only get 1". The average days of rain in February is 23, but we set a new rainfall record this year.

Losing the local FSS and having the forecasters located in the mid west or Texas has markedly degraded the local forecasting due to lack of local knowledge. The remote folks have a hard time figuring out the weather next a large body of water between two mountain ranges close to the Pacific Ocean. The convergence zones and other micro-climates in the area create "interesting" flight planning challenges.

I joke with folks about National weather service predicting %POP. In Georgia 50% would mean that there is a 50% chance of rain, here it means it will rain 50% of the time.

Seattle and San Francisco get similar annual rainfall amounts, but Seattle has more rainy days. Rarely hard rain but never quits sometimes it seems.

But I'll tell you no place nicer than the Northwest (or Southwest Canada) on the nice days. Many locals (I'm a Californian living in exile) like the rainy days just as much somehow.

Ok, it's the Ides of March and it is still raining.

Guess I need to start a project. Anyone know how to convert cubits to feet?

At least I don't have to shovel it like folks back East.

Tom: A cubit is 1.5 feet. I have to tell you though, Arcs are overrated as far as watercraft go. I'd recommend a high speed trimaran on the water. When you want to go slow, you can always jump back in the Maule. It's supposed to be nice tomorrow (Thursday the 16th) and some good weather over the weekend. Most of the grass strips are still pretty saturated, but I will get some airtime even if my destinations are less than ideal.

Flyhound wrote:Tom: A cubit is 1.5 feet. I have to tell you though, Arcs are overrated as far as watercraft go. I'd recommend a high speed trimaran on the water. When you want to go slow, you can always jump back in the Maule. It's supposed to be nice tomorrow (Thursday the 16th) and some good weather over the weekend. Most of the grass strips are still pretty saturated, but I will get some airtime even if my destinations are less than ideal.

LMAO!!!