KOMO Weather Blog

The scoop on tropical storms vs. hurricanes

I figured with Tropical Storm Fay in the news wandering around Florida, now might be a good time to chat about hurricanes and tropical storms and answer some frequently asked questions we get in the ol' e-mail bin:

1) What is the difference between a "Tropical Storm" and a "Hurricane"?

It's all about the wind. A hurricane is any tropical based storm that has wind speeds greater than 74 mph. A "tropical storm" is a storm with winds of 39-73 mph. A "tropical depression" is when the Florida Marlins lose to the Atlanta Braves -- or when a storm is tropical in nature, but has winds under 39 mph.

We only name the storms when they get to "tropical storm" strength or higher. Tropical depressions just get plan numbers like "Tropical Depression 3". I guess that's because we only have 21 names and we don't want to run out as they are more common.

Why does lightning zig-zag?

A nice simple topic for today's blog :) Despite lightning being around since the dawn of weather, there are many parts of it that are still not quite understood.

For instance, the general idea of lightning being formed as water and ice droplets move around inside a cloud and knocking off electrical particles (much like how you build up a static charge when you scuff your socked-feet on carpet) is pretty sound. But how those particles get knocked off and why is still somewhat of a mystery.

Ever seen a sunset rainbow?

The Northwest is really a treasure trove of spectacular natural photography, but this image has to be one of the most stunning. This "Sunset rainbow" photo was taken in Port Angeles on Sunday evening by Jeanne Pumphrey just after a storm passed. She says the camera didn't do it justice for the rainbow's brilliance factor, but I'd say it looks pretty amazing to me.

Here is another version of it:

How hot did it get during the last heat wave?

Seattle, along with many other cities, hit 90 or warmer on three consecutive days between Thursday and Saturday, although the coast and north interior lucked out a bit as an unexpected seabreeze kept temperatures down there a bit.

The three straight days of 90 in Seattle was only the 13th time in Sea-Tac history we had a streak of three days at or over 90. The record is 5 days set August 7-11 in 1981. There were five instances of a four-day streak, and six other instances of a three-day streak aside from last week.

A smorgasbord of thunderstorms topics

With thunderstorms back in the news, I figured it'd be a good idea to dig this out of the blog archives for today:

1) What's does a "Severe Thunderstorm Warning" mean?

Sun fans vs. rain fans -- sound off!

In Seattle, it's an underlying debate that has raged since Denny and Mercer pulled up their boat on Alki Beach -- more than Coke vs. Pepsi, more than boxers vs. briefs, more than did get peanut butter get merged into chocolate or did the chocolate get merged into the peanut butter… And that is -- are you happier when it's a cool, rainy, blustery day around Seattle? Or would you rather it be sunny and 80+?

Eh, it's been hotter

As temperatures look to climb over 90 degrees for three days in a row here, you might wonder how often that occurs.

Actually, it's not that rare. Seattle typically gets two good heat waves a year where we get close to, or over 90. And three days of 90+ is not unheard of. It just happened two summers ago, in fact.

So let's look back at some of Seattle's worst heat waves.

Global warming debate prompts $3,700 bet

One of my favorite game shows to watch while growing up was Concentration (not the original, but more the knock-offs in the late 70s and 80s).

For those that don’t remember or have the Game Show Network (is it even on there anymore?) it was memory game where you had, say, 30 squares on a game board, and each board had 15 hidden images. You would have to "open" a square, two at a time, to try and find the matching images. (Here is a rough online version to give the idea.)

Each time you were successful, the squares would be erased from the board and reveal part of a visual word puzzle like an a head of lettuce with "-tuce" after it, and then maybe a bingo card with an arrow pointing at the center space, followed by a church dome, and then an engagement ring and the puzzle would be "Let Free Dome Ring"

The more squares you removed, more of the puzzle is revealed. The first player to guess the word puzzle was declared the winner, and then got some fabulous prize like a 7 day, 6 night stay in Cabo San Lucas, spelled out by a man with a booming TV game show voice.

So what does this have to do with the headline to this story, promising some story about a global warming bet? I'm going to do the impossible: Tie global warming into historical game shows.

Oklahoma City is all wet, literally

You may have heard this before, but did you know Seattle is nowhere near the top when it comes to wettest cities in the U.S. by annual rainfall?

With our 37" of rain a year, we fall way behind cities with sunnier reputations such as Miami, Houston, and New York.

Why? Our rain comes in little drips and dribbles -- it can rain all day here and we'll get maybe 0.10" of rain.

In the Midwest and east coast, it can rain buckets in just a few minutes.

The poster child for that today is Oklahoma City. They had a massive rain squall move through on Monday and take a look at these numbers:

Plants moving on up in the world

Is it for the view? Or just survival? Striking new research in the Southern California mountains suggests recent warming is behind a massive die-off and rapid migration to higher ground by nine different plants - from desert shrubs to white firs. Here is the full story from Associated Press writer ALICIA CHANG: