Add it to the list of things to be thankful for this season -- Dr. Dale and his wonderful time lapses!

He's on a new server now, and that's allowing him to capture more and more of these windows into the weather world. And your positive comments sure help!

This week, he had his camera rolling on six full days since last Friday. Enjoy!

Read more »

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's not just families that are getting together this Thanksgiving week. The three brightest objects in the night sky - Venus, Jupiter and a crescent moon - will crowd around each other for an unusual group shot.

Starting Thanksgiving evening, Jupiter and Venus will begin moving closer so that by Sunday and Monday, they will appear 2 degrees apart, which is about a finger width held out at arm's length, said Alan MacRobert, senior editor at Sky and Telescope magazine. Then on Monday night, they will be joined by a crescent moon right next to them, he said.

Look in the southwestern sky around twilight - no telescope or binoculars needed. The show will even be visible in cities if it's a clear night. Read more »

WASHINGTON (AP) - The 2008 Atlantic hurricane season, which ends Sunday, seemed to strike the United States and Cuba as if on redial, setting at least five weather records for persistence and repeatedly striking the same areas.

"It was pretty relentless in a large number of big strikes," said Georgia Tech atmospheric sciences professor Judith Curry. "We just didn't have the huge monster where a lot of people lost their lives, but we had a lot of damage, a lot of damage."

Data on death and damage are still being calculated, but the insurance industry recorded at least $10.6 billion in losses this hurricane season. That includes $8.1 billion in insured damage from Hurricane Ike, which ranked as the seventh most expensive catastrophe in the United States history, according to Mike Barry of the Insurance Information Institute in New York. Read more »

OK, so not exactly a weather topic today, but the weather is boring, so in perusing some of my past e-mails for inspiration, I found a discussion I had with a former Alaska pilot in talking about airport elevations.  But I also learned some neato stuff about how aviation works in general, and it's topical with the opening of Sea-Tac's new third runway last week.

The first question was about the elevation of Sea-Tac Airport for when I created this list of elevations of cities and landmarks across Western Washington.  I had originally had the elevation at around 330, which is what Google Earth had as the rough elevation. But the pilot says the official elevation of Runway 16L is at 433 ft.

Turns out, the airport slopes a little from one end to the other to where one end of the runway is 90 feet higher than the other. It's a slope of 0.7% over two miles, and the pilot says runways are allowed to slope as much as 2%. But the official airport elevation is listed as the runway at its highest usual point, which makes sense, because you want to err on the side of being too high than being too low.

But a secondary conversation revolved around the names of the runways.  You might have seen big numbers painted on the end of runways, or heard the lingo.  Sea-Tac's main runways are (now) 16L, 16C, and 16R, and then there's 34L, 34C and 34R.

Wait a minute, 6 runway names? But there's only three there? Read more »

Far and away, *the* most popular e-mail we get into the KOMO weather bin is some variance on: "Do you think we'll get any big snows this winter?"

Long range forecasting is an inexact science. At best, we can usually just give odds on whether it'll end up being warmer or colder, or wetter or drier than normal.  But even then, it's marginal (like, "a 55% chance of a warmer than normal year") and most of the time, the long range predictions bust, such as the really wet spring this year, or the mega rains of the 2006/7 winter.

But there's always speculation, and while that mutual fund saying of "past performance is no guarantee of future results" rings generally true for climate forecasting, it's sure fun to ponder, "what if?" Read more »

SEATTLE (AP) - Air quality officials say Puget Sound residents who burn wood in their homes should expect more burn bans this winter as a tougher state law goes into effect. The Puget Sound Clean Air Agency says the burns bans will be called at lower pollution levels than in previous years to protect public health. Read more »

In what is fast becoming a Friday tradition in this space, we've got another several days worth of time lapses today from Dr. Dale Ireland over in Silverdale -- this time I even gave them the correct date stamp! (Don't ask…)

Some of these I'd watch a few times -- take one pass just staring at the clouds, another just watching the mountains, and a third time watching the water to note the wind patterns and marine traffic. (At least one of these has another Bangor sub going out for training.)  Read more »

There were some wild temperature swings Wednesday night, courtesy of a strong and warm east wind that was blowing through parts of the region.

Higher pressure in Eastern Washington was sending air racing west to meet a cold front and its ensuing lower pressure off the coast. That air squeezed through the gaps in the Cascades in the form of a gusty, east wind.

But as that air came out of the Cascades and sank down the western slopes, it warmed up and dried out.

To wit, take a look at some of these temperature readings that were seriously toyed with by the warm winds: Read more »

The National Weather Service Doppler Radar is among the strongest weather radars around.  It's mainly used to track precipitation, but it's strong enough that in clear air situations, it can pick up such things as flocks of migratory birds!

Or, in this sense, it can also pick up the effects of strong wind.

Here is the radar animation of Wednesday evening, when strong east winds gusting as high as 50 mph were blowing through the Cascade foothills: Read more »

Did you plan an outdoor wedding or any other major outdoor event for today? Boy, were you lucky!

November 19th is statistically the wettest day of the year in Seattle, or at least, the day it has rained on the most in Seattle history, going back to 1893.

Over the past 115 years, it has rained on this date a whopping 86 times, not counting 2008. That's a 75% chance, or basically it rains on this date three out of every four years. Read more »