60 Degrees Today? Milder, Wetter, February Weather Headed Our Way
Monday, February 05, 2007
We went from a red sunrise Saturday followed by several hours of light rain to a red sunset Sunday to be followed by fair weather on Monday. Sunday I recorded 59 degrees, could we reach 60 degrees Monday? More rain is on tap for this week.
NOWCAST - Fair weather today and Tuesday and then clouds and rain are back in the forecast the remainder of the week. Could start as early as late Tuesday. Hard to pinpoint exact periods of rain but rain it will. Temperatures remaining mild with high freezing levels.
FORECAST - Monday: Partly sunny. Areas of fog in the morning. Highs 55 to 60. Light wind...except east wind 10 to 20 mph near the gorge.
Monday night: Partly cloudy in the evening...then mostly cloudy with areas of fog after midnight. Lows 35 to 40. Light wind except east 10 to 15 mph near the gorge.
Tuesday: Mostly cloudy. Areas of fog in the morning. A slight chance of rain in the afternoon. Highs around 50 light wind..
Tuesday night: Mostly cloudy with a chance of rain. Lows around 40. East wind 10 to 15 mph.
OUTCAST - Okay the fallout from last Friday's IPCC report about global warming is causing quite a stir. Remember what I said in my point of view that we are all going to pay for it? Well, it certainly didn't take long for officials to start talking about how to pay for it. Read this article issued from the Seattle Times a day later on Saturday: Seattle Times
Here is a piece from the Washington State Climatologist's web site (link is on my blog side bar):
"The world is unquestionably warming - the more difficult question to answer is whether human activity (chiefly the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas) is responsible. Dozens of scientific studies have demonstrated that the increase in globally averaged temperature since about 1950 cannot be explained as a natural cycle or the result of changes in solar output or cosmic rays or volcanoes, but can be explained as a result of rising greenhouse gases. For detailed answers see realclimate.org. On smaller scales like eastern or western Washington, though, it is not yet possible to show conclusively that the observed warming is a result of human activity, though it is unlikely natural causes can explain all of the observed warming."
Notice the disclaimer in the last sentence? Is this over the hedge or what? If you wish to read about what that means for us check out this link at the Climate Impacts Group.
First off I want to be sure we all understand that most everyone myself included, agree that we are in a warming period of climate change. The debate is whether man is the main cause of it. To that end
, I will report and place links to both sides of the debate rather than be one sided and let you decide. Either way, there is some interesting reading affecting the Pacific Northwest with potential outcomes if things continue to warm up at the above link .For those of you older enough you may remember back in the 1960's and 1970's officials were talking about a pending cool down in climate and perhaps a mini ice age coming our way. They said if we didn't clean up air pollution especially over our cities gloom and doom was on the horizon. You may remember those stinking black smoke polluting buses and trucks and stinky car exhaust. By the mid 1970's we placed catalytic converters on vehicles, switched to unleaded gas, put scrubbers on industrial smoke stakes etc. Well, now that we have all these clean running vehicles, we are headed into a massive warm up. Instead of global cooling we have global warming. Do some web searching and you can read articles and reports from this time era. They was saying the opposite then folks.
January rainfall from around the local area:
Let us review just how wet it was from your friends and neighbors around the region for January. Vancouver Pearson field measured 3.26 inches and I recorded 3.59 inches here in north Salmon Creek; Dan Hein, north Camas, 4.84 inches;
-- posted by Pat Timm @ 12:08 AM,
