Weather drama continues, and we’ll talk about forecasting

“If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute” – that’s an old saying. But some folks get mad when they don’t like the weather, and blame the forecasters. We’ll talk about why weather prediction, especially on the coast here, is part art and part science. And sometimes the weather itself couldn’t give a hoot about our ideas about what should happen.

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Some days it’s all about the weather

Today’s stormy weather is a great opportunity to talk about how weather can affect ship traffic, and what it means when the Columbia River Bar is on Yellow, or even Red, status. All part of fall and winter on the mighty Columbia.

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The autumnal equinox happens Saturday

Today we’ll talk about what the autumnal equinox really is and why it affects everything so much on our planet. Kind of a refresher of what we learned in school, but we probably haven’t thought about it much lately. So we’ll talk about equinoxes, seasons, and – what’s an equator, and where is it exactly?

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Ballast water: complex and critical issue for ships and ecosystems

Today I’ll be answering a listener question about ballast water: what is it, how is it handled, and why it’s such a problem for world ecosystems despite ongoing efforts to make it safer.

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The dangers of being far out to sea in a vessel when something goes wrong

Today we’ll talk about an emergency at sea in the Ocean Globe Race, the round the world race that started just 10 days ago in the UK. A crew member on one of the sailboats suffered an injury that was so severe he needed to be rescued. The incident shows the limits of rescue at sea, and also the dangerous environment mariners take on when they go far offshore.

Image Caption: The crew of French OGR entrant Triana (66) FR assisted Stéphane Raguenes into the liferaft before being winched onboard the helicopter and flown to Madeira for medical attention. Credit: OGR 2023 / Margault Demasles

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A listener question, in light of our wave warning: what conditions cause sneaker waves?

Yesterday the National Weather Service in Portland issued a sneaker wave warning for Oregon and Washington beaches for Monday and Tuesday. That prompted a listener to ask: how do we know that sneaker waves are coming?

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The research vessel Atlantis, visiting the Port of Astoria, has a long and impressive history

Today we’ll feature an esteemed visitor at the Port of Astoria docks: the famous research vessel Atlantis, which has on board the also famous submersible Alvin. We’ll talk about what this high tech ship does and why she’s in our neighborhood.

Image of the Atlantis courtesy Wikimedia Commons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

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Ships come and go, as our weather see-saws its way toward fall and winter

More today about who’s coming and going on the river today. Meanwhile, our fall weather pattern continues to see-saw between summer and autumn, with gusty winds and bigger seas, and then – back to sunshine next week.

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A look at today’s ship schedule and marine weather, including the reasons for wind

Today an in-depth look at our daily ship schedule and marine weather: we’ve got a good complement of ships on the river today, and they are true to form for us here on the Columbia – mostly dry bulk carriers with a smattering of other kinds of vessels.

And a little about our autumny weather, which includes high pressure here and low pressure to the south. The perfect prescription for gusty northerly winds.

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Cruise ship aground in remote Arctic Greenland highlights risks of high-latitude travel

Right now a cruise ship sits aground in a remote fjord in a Greenland national park, days away from the nearest rescue vessel. So far the crew has been unable to refloat her with the rising tide. The situation so far is stable, but it brings up troubling issues of ships with lots of people on board, traveling where resources to help them are few and the consequences high if anything catastrophic goes wrong.

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