Chris ☈ozoff
@agitatedcu.bsky.social
Cannot jump high, highly motivated by clouds, vector enthusiast, fan of wilderness. Erie, CO
This DJF El Nino-related seasonal prediction is accurate because it captures the permanent Erie, Colorado precipitation hole.
Anthony Edwards@edwardsanthonyb.bsky.social · 5h agoThe latest @ecmwf.int seasonal forecast paints coastal California with >8 inches above normal precipitation from December–February. That would be about 170% of normal for San Francisco (~22 inches). This is just a computer prediction, but El Niño may have an outsized influence this winter. #CAwx
Urban firestorms like the one that devastated Spokane Saturday have been growing more common because of increased development in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) and climate change. In this post, I document 9 such fires since 2016 in the U.S. yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/08/urba...
Urban firestorm devastates Spokane as dense smoke envelops the Northwest » Yale Climate Connections
Climate change, combined with development in high-risk areas, is making urban wildfires more likely.
yaleclimateconnections.org
This is a really nice overview to share with climate change curious family members and friends.
Kate Marvel@drkatemarvel.bsky.social · 2d agoExtreme weather is complicated (there are over 150 definitions of drought in the literature!), the Earth system is complex, models are imperfect, and we still have much to learn. But it's remarkable how spot-on most of our predictions have been: drawdown.org/insights/is-...
This smoke is thick enough it may mask fire radiative power that drives the smoke source info the model requires for good forecasts, and therefore, this may lead to underestimates of smoke in coming days. We saw this in the models for Sept 2020 in the same region.
Dr. Jeff Masters@drjeffmasters.bsky.social · 3d ago18Z HRRR-Smoke model predicts wildfire smoke to cause "Unhealthy" (red) to "Very Unhealthy" (purple) AQI in the major population centers of the Pacific NW and SW BC on Tuesday as a ridge of high pressure brings NE winds. Also a major heat risk for Portland, OR, with temps in the upper 90s .
Here are by year and by decade plots of record lows and record highs over time in Denver. I used Claude and xmACIS2 to create this plot for the official Denver observing site (which has moved, but does not explain the monumental changes in time).
Well, it's official...Denver just hit 90° for the 28th time this month, setting a new record for most 90-degree days for any month on record. Old record: 27 days (July 1964 + 2012). #COwx
Today is the 50th anniversary of the Big Thompson flood of July 31, 1976: one of the deadliest disasters in Colorado history. An intense rainstorm led to a rapid flood wave down the canyon where many people were commemorating Colorado's centennial. 144 people lost their lives. #cowx 1/
Hurricanes that suddenly intensify are especially dangerous since rapid intensification is notoriously hard to forecast and leaves little time to prepare. But now, NSF NCAR researchers have developed a technique to predict sudden intensification in hurricanes as far as 5 days out.
An interesting mesovortex structure in the storms northeast of Denver. You can see the swirl in the reflectivity and the couplet on velocities.
This is important - Honest Brokers (TM) and their echo chamber will often point to the decreasing global wildfire, but that reflects changing human land use practices. In temperate and boreal forests, climate's role is more clear. See this paper by Cunningham et al. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Increasing frequency and intensity of the most extreme wildfires on Earth - Nature Ecology & Evolution
Analysis of fire radiative power derived from satellite data finds that the frequency of extreme fire events increased 2.2-fold from 2003 to 2023 and that these increases were mostly driven by extreme...
nature.com
The Associated Press@apnews.com · last wk.Experts say the world is experiencing two opposing fire trends because of human impact.
54-hour animation (just over 2 days) of infrared satellite imagery (left) and NHC estimated intensity (right) for eastern North Pacific Hurricane Genevieve, which strengthened by 60 kt in 24 hours, later briefly achieving category 5 status. Satellite images extend ~600 km from the storm center.
I should not be surprised after the ‘winter’ we had, followed by a scorching summer, but Arapaho Glacier is almost gone. It’s a location I visit often as it’s not far from home, and it’s the first time I’ve seen it in such a dismal state.
Exploring the great outdoors (in her “freedom” harness).
A recent viral graph found fewer days in the contiguous US above 95F/100F/105F today than in the 1930s. But the graph is misleading – it fails to correct for changing measurement times and techniques, and overstates regional warmth. I take a deep dive at The Climate Brink: www.theclimatebrink....
I know GFS is notorious for getting too enthusiastic about 2-m temperatures during heat waves at distant leads, but even so, has it previously forecast 121°F in SD during some of its earlier infamous scorchers? Either way, I don't like the temperature outlook for the next few weeks for the plains.
These images of First Nations community members evacuating Collins, Ontario on motorboats are absolutely surreal www.facebook.com/reel/1548244...
Luke LeBrun@lukelebrun.ca · 3w agoThese photos of FNs community members fleeing their homes by boat are genuinely apocalyptic (Photo via Wayne Wastaken of Collins, Ontario, who says his “hometown is gone”) www.facebook.com/share/r/1ArN...
AQIs expressed as "cigarettes per day". I am not sure how good the conversion is, and there are some reasons to believe that heavy exposure to the kinds of AQIs being observed up that way is even worse than smoking those many cigarettes (esp. while exercising), but it still puts it into perspective.
Parts of Ontario and northern Michigan are experiencing a truly awful combination of extreme heat and terrible air quality due to the ongoing heatwave and wildfires in the region. While satellite imagery looks dramatic, what matters for population exposure is smoke at the surface. 1/
Summer used to be a favorite season when I was young, but now I dread it during the 3 non-summer months of the year.
No words. Here is a peak at one of our most incredible drone flights around a #tornado to date near Tulliby Lake, AB. This will likely be one of our last intercepts of the season, thank you so much to everyone for following along! #stormchasing #nature #weather
🌎 Explore, Learn, Connect - RAL/MMM Joint Seminar 🌎 ⚡ From Hurricane Scale to Structural Load: Advancing Energy Infrastructure Design Standards Using High-Fidelity Simulations ⚡ Miguel Sanchez Gomez, NLR ⚡ WED, July 15, 2026 | 1-2 PM (MT) | Free Hybrid Event Details: ral.ucar.edu/events/2026/...
Here is Raymond Pierrehumbert’s response to the article I posted on the energy imbalance. Worth a read for additional context.
ClimateBook@climatebook.bsky.social · 4w agoThe essay does get a lot right (namely that you expect OLR to increase, because it has to to offset the increased opacity due to CO2 and other GHG's and bring the Earth back into balance) but it is a bit fuzzy regarding causality. Causality cannot be determined by energy budgets. While the
