Tag: Seattle

When a “Drought” NOT a Drought?

“There was little evidence of drought over our region based on impacts, and such impacts are required to call a situation a drought.”

“There was little evidence of drought over our region based on impacts, and such impacts are required to call a situation a drought.”

From The Cliff Mass Weather Blog

By CliffMass

This year, the Washington State Department of Ecology and others (e.g., the Seattle Times) are claiming we are in a drought emergency.

In several of my recent blogs, I explained why I think they are wrong. 

Precipitation has been above normal, reservoirs are full, substantial snowpack is in place (about 50% of normal), soils are moist, current forecasts are for substantial spring precipitation, and there is little evidence of any impacts of the low snowpack on water supplies or agriculture.  

Remember, a key aspect of a drought is that it has to have substantial IMPACTS. 

To quote the drought.gov website:

A drought is a prolonged period of abnormally low rainfall or, generally, a severe deficiency of moisture, resulting in water shortages for people, agriculture, and ecosystems.

Droughts need to have impacts, and the negative impacts of the high precipitation/low snowpack situation this year will be minimal 

It would be interesting to evaluate the track record of drought advocates in government, the media, and climate advocacy groups.

So let’s do it!

Consider last year (2025).

The Department of Ecology put out a drought EMERGENCY declaration in early April and expanded it greatly on June 5, 2025:

The Seattle Times and other media outlets had several drought stories, becoming increasingly ominous over time, about the serious drought threat (see sample below).

In my blog last year, I argued against the extreme drought mania, providing the actual water supply numbers, which suggest little or no impact.   But the dire warnings continued and amplified.

A year later, we know the truth:  there was no problem with water supply for the population, and Washington Agriculture flourished.   

The dire warnings were totally wrong.

Seattle’s water supply?  Never got close to low-reservoir conditions in 2025 (dashed lines below).  Other major water supply reservoirs (e.g., Tacoma, Everett, etc) were similar.

How about the 2025 crops?

Apples?  There was a RECORD-EQUALING harvest of excellent quality (color and size).

Cherries? A strong, bumper crop with some of the best quality in years, with a long season.  Excellent quality and big fruit.

Potatoes?  The 2025 crop was characterized by high quality and excellent growing conditions, with a similar yield to 2024.   Chris Voigt, Executive Director at the Washington Potato Commission, noted that 2025 lacked extended periods of heat and overall had ideal weather conditions for potatoes.  

Wheat? USDA’s Small Grains Summary, Washington, noted that the state produced 141.5 million bushels of wheat in 2025, which is down 1.5% from 2024, but still 12% above the five-year average. 

Raspberries?   Last year’s total production exceeded 60 million pounds, which will be the highest harvest since 2018.  

I could discuss more crops, but you get the message.  2025 was an excellent year for Washington State agriculture, with little evidence of drought impacts.

Did drought greatly reduce Northwest hydropower output (see U.S. government analysis below)?

 Nope.   

According to Federal data, NW hydropower was close to the long-term average, with a nice recovery from 2025.

The bottom line in all this is that there was little evidence of drought over our region based on impacts, and such impacts are required to call a situation a drought.

Some locations are fortunate to receive more precipitation than is required, and we are lucky to be in such a place.

For me, a more interesting question is why Washington State officials don’t understand this basic fact?  

And why are Seattle Times reporters not completing the simple research that indicates that last year’s drought warnings were without any basis in terms of impacts?

I bet you guess why such deceptive, scary language is being used by those responsible for informing us.  

But whatever the motive, it is very harmful, resulting in unnecessary worry and leading to bad decisions (like the wasteful, corrupting Washington State CCA, which preferentially hurts low-income people while enriching special interest groups).

Oil Companies Sued Over Death of Woman during 2021 Pacific Northwest Heat Wave

A review of the marketing of “heat domes”, the history of American heat waves, and the real statistics behind temperature-related deaths.

From Watts Up With That?

Legal Insurrection

A review of the marketing of “heat domes”, the history of American heat waves, and the real statistics behind temperature-related deaths.

Posted by Leslie Eastman 

The daughter of a woman who died of “overheating” has filed a groundbreaking wrongful death lawsuit against seven major oil and gas companies in Washington State, alleging that their actions led to her mother’s death during a historic heatwave in June 2021.

The lawsuit, considered the first of its kind in the United States, specifically targets ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66, and Olympic Pipeline Company.

The New York Times reviews the case, and of course, its coverage makes the fossil fuel companies look like polluting villains.

Numerous independent investigations, including recent inquiries by Congress, have revealed that many major oil companies and their trade groups spread disinformation about climate change and worked to hold back the clean energy industry.

And scientists around the world overwhelmingly agree that fossil fuel emissions have caused significant planetary warming in recent decades.

Average global temperatures in 2024 were more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, higher than those the planet experienced at the start of the industrial age, leading to extreme heat, violent weather, rising seas and melting glaciers.

While the death of anyone during a heat event is sad, I think there is a lot to unpack here for a more complete understanding of the press and its destructive “climate crisis” coverage.

On June 28, 2021, Seattle experienced unprecedented temperatures, reaching as high as 108°F, which marked the city’s hottest day on record. Juliana Leon, a 65-year-old woman, was driving home from a medical appointment when she was overcome by the extreme heat. Her vehicle’s air conditioning was not working, and she had rolled down the windows, but the intense outdoor conditions proved fatal. A passerby found her unconscious in her car, and emergency responders were unable to revive her. Her official cause of death was hyperthermia, or overheating.

Misti Leon’s lawsuit argues that the oil companies named as defendants knew for decades that their products would contribute to climate change and lead to deadly weather events, yet they concealed and downplayed these risks from the public.

It’s worthwhile to point out that globally, Earth’s temperature averages are among the coldest that have been determined for the last 485 million years.

Much of the press coverage is focused on the “historic heat dome”, which is a weather phenomenon in which a persistent area of high atmospheric pressure traps hot air over a large region for an extended period, sometimes days or even weeks. This high-pressure system acts like a lid or cap, preventing the hot air from rising and escaping, which intensifies the heat at the surface.

The press is ginning up more fear about future “heat domes“.

During this historic heat wave, more than 250 people in the Pacific Northwest succumbed to the heat. In Western Canada, more than 400 people perished. Excessive heat is the No. 1 weather-related hazard-yielding fatality in the world. In fact, it kills more people than all other weather-related hazards — including hurricanes, floods, tornados and winter storms — combined.

However, it turns out that moderate cold is even more deadly to humans than excessive heat.

Globally, cold deaths are 9 times higher than heat-related ones. In no region is this ratio less than 3, and in many, it’s over 10 times higher. Cold is more deadly than heat, even in the hottest parts of the world.

Referring to the term “heat dome”, an AI search of the term reveals that “heat dome” first came into heavy use in 2011, according to a New York Times investigation into its growing popularity, which corresponds to the promotion of “global warming”.

The phrase had been used occasionally before then: one analysis found the term appeared 66 times in media between 1980 and 2000, yet its frequency increased dramatically to 700 mentions between 2010 and 2019, and it has remained widely used since. The American Meteorological Society officially added “heat dome” to its glossary in March 2022.

Yes, because marketing and language are important when you have snake oil to sell.

In the old days, long days of high temperatures used to be called “heat wave”, and the most severe heat wave in U.S. history occurred during the Dust Bowl era in the summer of 1936. Temperatures soared above 100°F (38°C) for prolonged periods, with some areas in North Dakota reaching 120°F (49°C) and Illinois seeing temperatures over 110°F.

Fossil fuel usage was not the factor here. Poor land management practices, which are also a contributing factor to the supposed ‘climate’ problems we face today, have played a role.

Several companies named in the lawsuit did not respond to requests for comments from the “impartial media.” A Chevron spokesperson did go on the record with a pitch-perfect remark.

Chevron Corporation counsel Theodore Boutrous Jr. said in a statement: “Exploiting a personal tragedy to promote politicized climate tort litigation is contrary to law, science, and common sense. The court should add this far-fetched claim to the growing list of meritless climate lawsuits that state and federal courts have already dismissed.”

While it is said that a woman died, 100% of all people will eventually do so. The woman also chose to drive on an extremely hot day without air conditioning and to continue to do so despite discomfort (not choosing to pull over into shade). That’s not the fault of the American petroleum industry.

I will conclude that the fossil fuels the energy companies can’t extract, transport, and sell today may make both summers and winters more expensive and potentially lethal tomorrow.

Image by perplexity.ai.

Too Cold to Swim, & Who Cares

It is the beginning of my third week in Seattle, and I still haven’t swum in Green Lake. There is a sign that says, ‘Early Season at Madrona and East Green Lake begins Memorial Day weekend’.

From Jennifer Marohasy

By jennifer 

It is the beginning of my third week in Seattle, and I still haven’t swum in Green Lake.  There is a sign that says, ‘Early Season at Madrona and East Green Lake begins Memorial Day weekend’.

So, I was hoping it would be warm enough to go swimming Monday/Memorial Day, but with the surface water temperature just 15.6°C/60°F – and after some discussion with the lifeguard who was on duty.  I declined.

The lifeguard explained that there was no issue with water quality despite all the duck poop, but that my body may be shocked by the cold. I am unaccustomed to it – swimming at 60°F.

Noone else was swimming – not a single local.  Rather many people were walking, running, skating, biking around the perimeter.

My daughter tells me that there are indigenous American peoples who following tradition (pre-European settlement) would dunk their newborn babies in cold water every day for the first year of the baby’s life.   So, the child becomes accustomed and resistant to cold.  Perhaps also to hard things – and the mother as well, who would wade out often into icy cold water.

I am a fan of Wim Hof who teaches the benefits of cold-water exposure for building resistance and immunity, both physically and psychologically within our bodies – though so far, I have only done his breath work.  I have never tried an ice bath – not yet.

That noone was swimming in Green Lake this Memorial Day would suggest that the population of Seattle has become somewhat resistant not to cold, but to the idea of being exposed to the benefits of cold – perhaps even hard things.

Another possible explanation is that it was unseasonally cold – never mind the claims that it is getting warmer and warmer, year on year because of all the carbon dioxides.

Given all the measuring you might assume it would be easy to know how cold it is now at Green Lake (Seattle) relative to how cold it was back in 1928 when the bathhouse was built, and everyone was swimming on Memorial Day.  You might think, of course we know.   We know the average global temperature to some fraction of a degree – if you believe the propaganda.

I’ve been reading ‘Our Polyvagal World’ by Stephen & Seth Porges – explaining why it is safer to believe.  To believe the propaganda, I mean.  At least for the individual.

It should be easy to know how air and water temperatures have changed at Green Lake over the last few decades.   But with all the equipment changes, and all the adjusting of the temperature measurements here and in Australia, I can reliably inform you that no one really knows.  Not for Green Lake or even equivalent bodies of water in Australia, not even for air temperatures.

More importantly perhaps, no one cares.  It is actually dangerous for the individual to care about such things in a world where temperature and its year-on-year increase has become so politically important.

Very few ask the hard questions anymore – because it is not safe.

Almost everyone wants to believe together that somehow it is hotter, and if not hotter, then maybe colder.  That the climate has become catastrophic.

Of course, those of you who have been following my work for some years know the effort that I have put into attempting some integrity in temperature measuring.

It is exactly ten years ago now, that I was working really hard and being very transparent with my numbers, showing that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology produces fraudulent remodelled temperature series that are then promoted as historically accurate records of our temperature history in accordance with the theory of catastrophic human-caused global warming.

Gerard Henderson from The Sydney Institute was kind enough to give me a platform to explain this, though he asked I not use the word fraudulent.

What I said that evening on 25th June 2014 – ten years and one month ago – is still relevant so relevant, and the notes are still available at my website, CLICK HERE.  Of course, I have expanded on this, demonstrated again and again not only problems with the remodelling but also, subsequently, problems with how the actual temperatures have been recorded beginning with the transition to platinum resistance probes in November 1996.  I’ve explained how the Bureau needs to make the parallel data public so we can compare measurements today from platinum resistant probe with the measurements decades ago taken with mercury thermometers, CLICK HERE. 

But who really cares – and how are they helping?

If they really cared, they wouldn’t have let Greg Hunt ‘kill’ the idea of a review into the Bureau.  The article published by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation is quite blasé about it all – there is mention of ‘following reports in The Australian newspaper’, CLICK HERE.

Each one of those articles in The Australian newspaper followed an extraordinary effort on my part, with checking done by Ken Stewart, to convert daily to monthly to annual values for whichever temperature series journalist Graham Lloyd requested.   Since then, over the last ten year a lot more of the data has subsequently become available, including monthly values for the remodelled ACORN-SAT series.   And so many numbers for other temperature series were crunched, with corresponding articles never written.

I was converting daily to monthly to annual and then charting the difference to shown the extent of the deceit.  I was crunching numbers no one had crunched before so the comparisons between the adjusted and the raw for the individual weather stations could be seen – along with the step changes.   Then my numbers were sent by Lloyd to the Bureau, for more checking.  It was never reported back to Lloyd that I got anything wrong.  Just that there was always good reason to remodel the original temperatures – to change what had been measured at the official recording stations by accredited officers decades ago.

A couple of Green Lake ducks.

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Heatless in Seattle Summer 2023

With all the talk of heat waves in the media these days, it is fascinating to note that the Pacific Northwest has NOT had extreme heat this summer. 

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

With all the media noise about “Global Boiling”, they must think we are all frogs in a pot on the stove (electric, no gas permitted).  And yet, what a difference a year makes in the US Northwest, as Cliff Mass reminds at his blog A Summer Without Extreme Heat in the Northwest.  Excerpts in italics with  added image

With all the talk of heat waves in the media these days, it is fascinating to note that the Pacific Northwest has NOT had extreme heat this summer. 

No major heatwaves.   A lack of warm temperature records.

A really moderate, benign summer regarding high temperatures.  And the temperate weather is not over.

And more surprises…there is really little evidence over the past decades of increases in extreme July heat in our region.

Let me show you some data, to prove the above to you.

Just a reminder….the end of July is climatologically the warmest time of the year (see the climatology of SeaTac Airport, below).   By the end of August, solar radiation has declined so much that the temperatures inevitably decline.

A July Without Extreme Heat

Below you will find plots of the highest temperature in July over many decades for five local stations:  Olympia and Bellingham in western Washington, Wenatchee and Kennewick in eastern Washington, and Portland, Oregon.  I have plotted the July highs for the entire period of record and plotted a linear trend line for your reference.

Really interesting.   The high temperatures in July at these stations have been very average and FAR below record levels.  

Most of you have not needed AC this month.

Perhaps Shocking to Some

Now look at the trend of the extreme July temperatures above (brown lines) and you will notice something that is perhaps surprising:  there are no large increases in record July temperatures over many decades.

About a 1°F increase at Bellingham and Olympia, roughly .5 °F at Portland and Wenatchee, and a DECLINE of roughly 2 F at Kennewick over many decades.

The background global warming of mean temperatures is about 2F.  Our regional extremes are going up LESS than that.  

There is no local amplification of extreme temperatures as the planet slowly warms.To bring home the message of the lack of extreme temperatures this July, below are the temperatures at Olympia and Wenatchee (blue bars showing observed highs and lows), with record daily highs shown by the red colors.

No daily high-temperature records were broken.  None. Nada. Zippo.

Finally, the moderate temperatures are not over. 

To illustrate, the latest 7-day forecast from the European Center ensemble (shown below) indicates cooler than normal conditions (blue colors) over and west of the Cascade crest (this is for the daily average temperature, NOT the high temperatures).

As noted in my previous blogs, the lack of extreme high temperatures is associated with a persistent atmospheric circulation pattern.  It also helps explain the lack of wildfires over the region.

How Unusual Is the Recent Dry Period?

Let’s check the numbers, starting with Seattle.  Below I have plotted the total precipitation for May 1 through June 5 for SeaTac Airport and added a best-fit trend line as well.

From Cliff Mass Weather Blog

Cliff Mass

I have gotten several nervous emails from folks concerned with the relatively dry period of the past month over the Pacific Northwest.

Are such dry conditions unprecedented?

Are late springs getting drier?

Is global warming behind it?  Or El Nino?

I will try to answer the questions below.

Let’s check the numbers, starting with Seattle.  Below I have plotted the total precipitation for May 1 through June 5 for SeaTac Airport and added a best-fit trend line as well.

You will note that our recent period was dry, but not the driest by far.

In fact, a list of the driest May 1-June 5 periods shows that this last month was the 11th driest since the late 1940s.

Now check out the trend line.  There is NO indication that the May 1-June 5 period is getting drier.  In fact, the long-term trend is towards wetter conditions.  This suggests that progressive global warming was not the origin of our lack of rain.

What about the other side of the Cascades?  Let’s consider the long-period observation location at Kennewick in the Tri-Cities.

Similar story to Seattle.  We have had a dry period, but it has happened before many times, and the trend is towards a WETTER late spring.

According to the records, this recent period was the 10th driest on record at Kenniwick.

The bottom line is that we had a dry period, but such dryness in late spring is not that unusual and there is no trend towards drier conditions in May and earlier June.   No suggestion that global warming/climate change is the cause.

What about El Nino?   

El Nino conditions in the tropical Pacific have only really developed during the past month, but let’s check out the NOAA Climate Prediction Center historical precipitation anomaly from normal for April to June during El Nino years (below).  A very mixed bag over Washington State.  Wetter than normal over the Southwest.

Now if I blog about the lack of precipitation,  you KNOW what is going to happen in the future.  

Below is the latest total precipitation forecast through Friday at 5 PM.  Lots of precipitation (many from thunderstorms) east of the Cascade crest, with perhaps a few errant showers getting into western Washington.  Bountiful precipitation in northern California.