Overview

June was drier than average in western Oregon, with generally average or above-average precipitation east of the Cascades. Most monthly temperatures were relatively close to average, but there were more below- than above-average monthly temperatures.

Table 1 is a summary of monthly averages and totals at selected stations throughout the state. Table 2 lists daily temperatures and precipitation for most of the locations listed in Table 1. In Table 3, monthly precipitation totals throughout the state are listed. Figure 1 is a map showing the percentage of normal precipitation statewide for the Water Year.

Basin Summary

Here is a summary of water indicators at the end of the month, by river basin:

n.a. Not available
(1) Percent of normal June precipitation, from NOAA Cooperative sites
(2) Percent of normal seasonal precipitation (since Oct. 1), from NOAA Cooperative sites
(3) Percent of normal seasonal precipitation, from Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) SNOTEL sites
(4) Percent of normal June stream flow, from U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
(5) Percent of normal seasonal stream flow (since Oct. 1), from USGS
(6) Surface Water Supply Index, from NRCS (-4 = very dry, 0 = normal, +4 = very wet)

Forecasts

The Climate Prediction Center’s (CPC) forecasts for July-September appear below. There is a higher likelihood of warmer than average temperatures and below-average precipitation in Oregon.

Oregon Climate Service predicts normal temperatures and precipitation for the next three months.

ENSO Update
Oregon Climate Service predicts normal temperatures and precipitation for the next three months.
ENSO Summary: Australia Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), July 11, 2007
Summary: Eastern Pacific remains cooler than average
Weakening Trade Winds in the western Pacific and a drop in the SOI, has stopped the recent strengthening of La Niña indicators. However, the eastern Pacific remains cooler than average and there has been a renewal of a cool sub-surface layer in the central Pacific, both of which provide the potential for a La Niña development.

The fact that all major international coupled models, including the POAMA model run daily at the Bureau of Meteorology, forecast further cooling of the equatorial Pacific Ocean over the coming months, indicates there is a distinct possibility of a La Niña event occurring in 2007. Cooler than average waters in the central to eastern Pacific, normally accompanied by positive SOI values, are usually associated with wetter than average seasons over eastern and northern Australia, even if La Niña thresholds are not reached.

Wildfires Blaze Across Parched Western

US Story by Jim Christie, July 9, 2007
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/43009/story.htm

SAN FRANCISCO - Wildfires raged on Sunday across the western United States as firefighters scrambled to prevent flames from spreading across rugged terrain thick with tinder turned bone-dry by scorching hot weather.Some of the intense blazes forced hasty evacuations of rural homes and recreational areas and officials temporarily shut highways and railways in some fire zones.
California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana each reported wildfires of varying severity amid a heat wave blanketing the western United States.

Fanned by high winds, a fire in Utah had grown into a massive blaze of more than 160,000 acres (65,000 hectares) and in neighboring Nevada a fire burning 30 miles (48 km) southwest of the town of Winnemucca had consumed an estimated 152,000 acres (62,000 ha). The two fires forced temporary closures of major interstate highways. Neighborhoods in Winnemucca were temporarily evacuated on Saturday as a separate fire that had burned an estimated 25,000 acres (10,000 ha) of brush neared.

" People are back in their homes now but we're keeping a very close eye on this fire," Jamie Thompson, a spokesman for the US Bureau of Land Management, told Reuters in a telephone interview. "There is a potential for extreme fire conditions today as well."
Lightning on Friday triggered both blazes near Winnemucca and fire crews are on alert for more strikes. "Isolated cells were moving through the area. They had very little moisture but plenty of lightning," Thompson said. "There is still the potential for isolated thunder storms with lightning of course this afternoon," he added.

In California, lightning-sparked fires in the Inyo National Forest forced the evacuations of numerous campgrounds. The blazes had scorched an estimated 34,000 acres (14,000 ha) since breaking out on Friday, according to the US Forest Service.

The Forest Service had imposed fire restrictions a week earlier in all Inyo National Forest lands and neighboring Bureau of Land Management lands, expecting increased fire danger from hot, dry weather. Fire officials across the western United States have been bracing for a busy fire season after scant rainfall this past winter.

Advanced Hurricane Forecasting
By Brittany Sauser, Technology Review, July 10, 2007

Forecasters are predicting yet another very active hurricane season for 2007, but this year meteorologists expect to be able to more accurately predict the path, structure, and intensity of storms. The device that will make this happen is a new hurricane-forecasting model developed by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Environmental Modeling Center. It will utilize advanced physics and data collected from environmental-observation equipment to outperform current models and provide scientists with real-time three-dimensional analysis of storm conditions.
The model is able to see the inner core of the hurricane, where the eye wall is located, better and in higher resolution than all other models, says T. N. Krishnamurti, a professor of meteorology at Florida State University. The eye wall is the region around the hurricane eye where the strongest winds and heaviest rains are located, thus the place of the highest storm intensity. "It is a very comprehensive model that is a significant development for hurricane forecasting," says Krishnamurti.

Currently, experts at the National Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service rely mostly on the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) model. The model, which has been in use since 1995, forecasts the path and intensity of storms. Until now, it was the only global model that provided specific intensity forecasts of hurricanes. And while it is a very good model, it's limited by the amount of data it's based on. "It has a very crude representation of storms," says Naomi Surgi, the project leader for the new model and a scientist in the Environment Modeling Center. "GFDL is unable to use observations from satellites and aircraft in its analysis of the storm."

Isaac Ginis, a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island (URI) who helped develop the GFDL model, agrees that the old model "has too many limitations" and, while it's able to forecast the path of a storm well, it is not as skillful at forecasting the intensity or power of a storm. Ginis is now a principal investigator for the new model, called the Hurricane Weather Research and Forecast (HWRF) model, which is able to gather a more varied and better set of observations and assimilate that data to produce a more accurate forecast.

This new model will use data collected from satellites, marine data buoys, and hurricane hunter aircraft, which fly directly into a hurricane's inner core and the surrounding atmosphere. The aircraft will be equipped with Doppler radars, which provide three-dimensional descriptions of the storm, most importantly observing the direction of hurricane winds. The aircraft will also be dropping ocean probes to better determine the location of the loop current, a warm ocean current in the Gulf of Mexico made up of little hot spots, known as warm core eddies, that give hurricanes moving over them a "real punch," says Surgi.
The hurricane model will then assimilate the data--wind conditions, temperature, pressure, humidity, and other oceanic and atmospheric factors in and around the storm--and analyze it using mathematics and physics to create a model, explains Surgi. To understand hurricane problems in the tropics, it is imperative to understand the physics of the air-sea interface. "In the last several years, we have learned a lot about the transfer of energy between the upper part of the ocean and the lowest layers of the atmosphere," she says. "And the energy fluxes across that boundary are tremendously important in terms of being able to forecast a hurricane's structure."

Improving the intensity forecast of a storm and being able to precisely analyze a hurricane's structure were scientists' main goals in developing the new model. It can now forecast these aspects from 24 hours out up to five days out with extreme accuracy, says Ginis. The new model was put to the test by running three full hurricane seasons--2004, 2005, and 2006--for storms in both the Atlantic and east Pacific basin, totaling close to 1,800 tests runs. For example, the model was able to reproduce the life cycle of Hurricane Katrina very well, accurately forecasting that it would become a category 5 hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico--something the old model was unable to predict.

Over the next several years, scientists at NOAA will continue to improve upon these initial advancements with further use of ocean observations. They plan to couple the HWRF with a wave model, which will allow scientists to better forecast storm surge, inland flooding, and rainfall. NOAA has, in addition to partnering with URI in 2006, started collaborating with researchers at the University of Southern Alabama to work on coupling the HWRF with a wave model and enhancing its forecasting features.

" This model is enormously important for emergency response and emergency managers, and also the public," says Ginis, "because we not only want to know where the storm is going to make landfall, but also how powerful it is going to be."