Next Calendar Signing Saturday December 17
At Barnes And Noble! Please Read Below For Details.

The Northwest Weather calendar is back, and it's bigger and hopefully better than ever. It's available at all Portland and Vancouver area Barnes And Noble Stores. All proceeds from the Weather Calendar benefit the Business Education Compact http://becpdx.org, which helps local schools by connecting them with local businesses. Making the pictures that go in the Weather Calendar is great fun for me, and it gives me another excuse to explore the more remote corners of the Northwest, and for this edition, the world. I made the cover picture in Greenland

This is a slice of ice from the bottom of the Greenland ice sheet. Climate researchers drilled through the 10,000-ft thick ice, retrieving ice core samples like this. The air bubbles in the ice act as a frozen record of the earth's atmosphere, going back 123,000 years. The research is helping answer questions about global climate change. I traveled to Greenland in 2004 to report on their work.

The picture above was made looking through a polarizing lens, which brings out the Christmas-like colors. The big crsytals on the left were made under intense pressure. The finger-like crystals on the right were formed when liquid water at the bottom of the ice sheet re-froze as it was pulled back up the the drill hole.

Even though the Greenland pictures in the calendar (there's another that shows the research station on top of the ice) are obviously not in the Northwest, I couldn't resist including them in the Calendar because it was such a unique trip.

All the other pictures were made much closer to home, like the shot below near Pacific City.

Nothing like a stormy day at sunset at the Oergon Coast to make good pictures! The captions in the calendar describe the scene in more detail. I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I enjoyed making them, and that you find the weather information included for every month useful.

Saturday December 17, I'll be out at the Barnes And Noble store in Vancouver at 7700 NE 4th Plain Blvd signing calendars from 1 to 3 pm. I'll also be giving away the much coveted FIRST ALERT STORM TEAM umbrellas, while supplies last.

Hope to see you at Barnes And Noble Saturday!

Matt Zaffino
KGW Chief Meteorologist

Oh yeah... the picture quality in the Northwest Weather Calendar is much better than it is here!