Salish Sea

Most accurate on April 21 at 9:30 PM.
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please read the first comment at the end of this article

“Where are this month’s maps for finding Comet Holmes?” I was asked. It seems that people are still interested in this amazing comet. Well, as the maps above show, the part of the sky with the comet, which contains all of those constellations with bright stars that give the winter sky its chilly glitter, are drifting down into the evening sunset. So, as the twilight fades that part of the sky is already low in the west, and as darkness increases, those stars set. At each dusk, that part of the sky is lower down.

In the coming month there are two prominent planets visible: Mars is near Pollux in Gemini, and Saturn is just east of Regulus in Leo. The Lyrid meteor shower will happen on April 22 — but the full moon will make them hard to observe.

Those of us around the Salish Sea anticipate some dramatic high and low tides around May 6 at the time of the new moon, which this time coincides with the Moon at its perigee (closest point to the Earth in its orbit - 357,771 km away).

Technorati Tags: Comet Holmes, star map

For people interested in the quality of the snowpack, it continues to be an extraordinary year. Today the weather is gloomy with a 40% chance of precip. The temperature at Pam Rocks (middle of Howe Sound) is 7º, down from a high of 10º yesterday.

The big news is that tomorrow, Saturday, we should see some sun and the temperature could soar to 21º. So, tomorrow could be the first warm day of 2008 for this region.

It is only when the temperatures at sea level rise above about 8º that precipitation in the mountains becomes rain instead of snow. This year we have received lots of precip, and almost all of it fell on the upper parts of the mountains as snow. And there has been almost no melting.

The last long-lead seasonal outlooks from NOAA was published on March 20:

COLD EPISODE (LA NINA) CONDITIONS CONTINUE ACROSS THE TROPICAL PACIFIC, ALTHOUGH THE EPISODE HAS WEAKENED OVER THE PAST FEW WEEKS. SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURES (SSTS) ARE BELOW AVERAGE THROUGHOUT THE EQUATORIAL PACIFIC OCEAN BETWEEN 150E AND 110W. SSTS IN THE NINO 3.4 REGION (FROM 5N TO 5S AND 170W TO 120W) ARE A GOOD INDICATOR OF THE STRENGTH OF A LA NINA. THE WEEKLY NINO 3.4 INDEX VALUE PEAKED IN MID-FEBRUARY NEAR -2.0, AND HAS DECREASED TO NEAR -1.0 BY MID-MARCH. THIS DECREASE IN THE NINO 3.4 INDEX IS CONSISTENT WITH A WEAKENING OF LA NINA CONDITIONS. WEAKENING LA NINA CONDITIONS WERE ALSO OBSERVED AT THIS TIME OF YEAR DURING THE LAST STRONG LA NINA EPISODE IN BOTH 1999 AND 2000.

The prediction maps show nothing remarkable for this area, but certainly indicate considerable warming for the mid-southern USA and parts of Alaska. Last October this blog article noted that La Niña might produce a colder and wetter winter. I think it has.

Technorati Tags: La Niña