Thanks to a study led by Julian Sachs, a UW associate professor of oceanography, scientists tracked rainfall from 1400 to 1850 at four Pacific islands, and found, in scientific-ese: "that the Pacific intertropical convergence zone was south of its modern position for most of the past millennium, by as much as 500 km during the Little Ice Age." more ›

"This winter, expect...absolutely anything," courtesy of the Seattle P-I. Thanks P-I...tell us something we don't already know! Oh, we understand, "El Nino is so last year..." and that this year is apparently "ENSO neutral," but is unpredictable weather in the Pacific Northwest really news? In general, Seattle winters and weather have always been unpredictable. Take this year for example, when it was snowing the last days of March and pushing 70 degrees yesterday, the first day of October. Basically what we're saying is they could post that headline everyday or it could be easily revised it to cover all Seattle weather, "As for weather in Seattle, expect...absolutely anything!" more ›

Yesterday's stormy weather left over 35,000 homes in Western Washington without power. Nearly 20,000 of the homes affected were in Seattle and South King County. The National Weather Service warned of gusts of over 55 mph yesterday and, while it's no scientific measure, the windows of our house were rattling and the power flickered more than once last night. Thankfully, it never went out. The Washington State Ferry Service reported "steady winds at nearly 40 mph" off Alki Beach, which must have made for some unpleasantly rough weather on the Sound. more ›

Alright, already! El Nino or the just rewards for our sins or a butterfly failing to or excessively flapping his wings somewhere in Asia have dictated that we have a million snow days this year. Our standard number of snow days per season is probably somewhere around .3. What is this so far? Five or so, at least? It's easy to understand that we don't have a snow removal infrastructure because that shit is expensive and .3 snow days per season just don't justify it, but where is the break even point? How many snow days a year are necessary to make the investment on some plows? It's probably more than we've had so far. It probably takes a month of snow days to make it worthwhile and it's not like we can count on even our relatively paltry five, but at some point the question has to come up: Is there anything we can do to make the roads passable after two or three inches of snow or are we doomed to closing the region down if any snow at all falls at sea level? more ›

Remember the monoski? The snow skate? Exactly. It is with great reservation that Seattlest takes a peek at the SMX, a mountain bike/ski hybrid thingamajigy. It feints at combining our two favorite sports, and yet we remain skeptical--is this the Segway of snowboarding? more ›