ABERDEEN, Wash. — The view of Grays Harbor’s weather has never looked better to storm watchers and meteorologists, especially when those 40-plus mph winds start to howl off the coast and the surf begins to smash against the beach like it did in the powerful storm that blew through the area last Wednesday.
That’s because several new technological developments will soon make storm spotting along the southwest Washington coastline more than just the climate that meets the eye of the beholder, or a science that is measured after the fact.
The National Weather Service this summer will pick its final site for a new Doppler radar station on Grays Harbor between Ocean City and Pacific Beach. And the Grays Harbor PUD just last week unveiled new wind-speed measuring instruments at a weather station now permanently in place at Ocean Shores.
Combined with a new batch of trained storm spotters, the Grays Harbor County coast is about to lose its reputation as a black hole of timely and accurate weather information, helping emergency management officials predict everything from major wind damage to the type of flooding that sometimes wreaks havoc inland across the county and in Western Washington.
“Up until recently, there has been nothing on radar from Grays Harbor,” said Allen Kam, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, who was in Pacific Beach recently to train a new group of weather spotters to be the “eyes of the Weather Service” until the Doppler radar is built in 2011.
“When we see a storm coming in, we know that what we see on radar should be blanketing all of Washington, but we have a whole stretch of the coast where we virtually have nothing,” Kam said. “The terrain blocks the radar we have now, and the current radars are far apart. We have another problem where the radar beam overshoots areas like Hoquiam. Even if it could get out to Hoquiam, from what we have now, it would be blocked by the Olympics. The radar beam would be up to more than 10,000 feet and there is a lot of stuff going on below that.”
Currently, there is a network of offshore weather buoys along the coast, but as University of Washington professor Cliff Mass notes on his popular weather blog, “Unfortunately, most of the offshore weather buoys are broken.”
“That is why we really need coastal radars,” Mass said. “The best buoy we have now is about 90 miles west of Tillamook, Oregon.”
In the interim, the Weather Service is buoyed by a network of volunteer weather spotters to help fill in some of the gaps. It’s not an exact science, but weather spotting traditionally has been the best way to confirm satellite imagery and measure the impact severe weather is having at ground level.
At a seminar May 18 in the Pacific Beach Fire Station, eight new weather spotters learned how they can augment the Weather Service’s vital efforts to better forecast the impact of impending storms.
“As spotters, you fill in the gaps in our weather detection system,” Kam told the group.
Even when the new Doppler radar comes on line and with the Weather Service’s use of satellite imagery, there will still be a vital need for human weather spotters on the coast.
“We can’t determine what is happening beneath the clouds,” Kam said. “You supply the proof to us of what is going on down on the ground where our weather systems fail. You will be reinforcing current warning and providing information that might be the basis for new warnings.”
On Wednesday, when winds gusted up to 60 mph, the warnings were well heeded and reinforced not only by the new weather spotters but also the use of the PUD’s new wind-speed data from Ocean Shores.
Located near the center of town on a PUD substation tower about 30 feet above ground, the new weather station is attached to computer equipment that posts new wind speed measurements every 10 minutes. It’s used jointly by the PUD and the Weather Service in a partnership that came out of discussion about the December 2007 storm that caused major damage across Grays Harbor.
“This is a great tool that provides the PUD and the general public with weather information from the beach,” said Liz Anderson, the PUD’s community and government relations director. “This helps the PUD to make decisions regarding our response to power outages in powerful wind storms. We are able to evaluate conditions and make informed choices about dispatching crews.”
Kam told the weather spotters he was training last week that they, too, play a critical role in helping emergency service responders react in time to make important decisions about where help is needed most.
One of the spotters, Milt Davidson of Steilacoom, was visiting Pacific Beach where his daughter has a vacation home. He previously had completed the training and was a certified spotter in Pierce County, but wanted to brush up on coastal conditions to help in the effort to supply better information to the Weather Service.
“For me, it’s a hobby,” said Davidson, who first became a spotter in the mid-1990s under a program at the Weather Service’s Seattle offices. “It’s fun and it’s a service.”
Davidson is now retired now from a job as a surveyor in Seattle.
“So I always worked out in the weather for 35 years. I always have my eye on the weather,” he said. “This gives me an opportunity to help someone else.”
Ted Buehner, another Weather Service meteorologist who helped train the new spotters, said the network of human helpers now totals about 1,400 spotters in Western Washington. That’s double the number only 10 years ago, he said. The spotters are now in 14 counties. The new group included spotters from the Quniault Indian Nation, Neah Bay, Westport, Ocean Shores and the Pacific Beach area.
“But the majority of them live in the population areas, so having an event out here where you have far less population is really important,” Buehner said. “It helps fill in the gaps — how strong is the wind blowing, how much rain or snow is falling, what’s going on with that thunderstorm as it moves onshore. That’s how we put all of the pieces of the puzzle together.”
Imagine looking at a puzzle without all the pieces in place. That’s the view of Grays Harbor weather region-wide without coastal radar.
“The coastal radar, once it’s installed, will be a large piece of the puzzle,” Buehner said. “But again, given the limitations of radar, it’s still important to have those spotters on the ground.”
The UW’s Mass has long been lobbying for better weather detection from Grays Harbor and the southwest Washington coast, and is pleased that $9 million has now been secured to finally build the coastal radar at one of the three sites now under consideration. A public comment period on the sites ended April 16 and a construction contract is scheduled to be awarded by this December. The radar will have a rotating antenna with a 35-foot fiberglass dome mounted on a steel lattice tower, rising to between 65 and 98 feet.
Buehner expects the radar will be up and running the fall of 2012.
“To me, that’s the most important thing we need,” Mass said. “It’s been more than unfortunate that it has taken this long.”
While he says the Pacific is “not a complete data void” he notes that much of the tools that forecasters need — such as the offshore buoys — often prove unreliable, especially after they have been battered by severe storms.
“Right now, the further offshore buoys are all red, which means they are broken and providing no data,” Mass said.
Having the PUD’s new weather station helps, and Mass pointed out that last Wednesday’s storm was predicted well in advance, allowing alerts to go out in time to minimize damage to homes, power lines and boat traffic.
“But if things were going wrong, we really couldn’t have seen it very well” without a radar in place, Mass said.
Davidson has been keeping weather records since he was a child.
“I still remember the blizzard of 1949, which was probably the only real blizzard in Puget Sound in my lifetime,” Davidson said. “And then there was the windstorm on Oct. 12, 1962. That was devastating. Out here, the weather tends to leave a lasting impression.”
Information from: The Daily World, www.thedailyworld.com
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