The Perseid Meteor Shower peaks this weekend, with the potentail for 20 or more meteors every hour!

The problem, is that many of these meteors will be blocked out by a very bright moon. So what should you do?

My suggestion is to watch for what we call 'earth grazers'. These are unusually bright meteors that usually streak from north to south. They're so bright and last so (relatively) long you will remember it for a long time if you get to see one. Perhaps there's one or two an hour this weekend.

For earthgrazers, lie on your back and look up into the sky between 9 and 10 at night.

For the regular Perseids, the highest number of meteors are after midnight. But the moon will be more than 80% full - so most of these meteors will get lost in the moon's light!

Let me know if you see anything this weekend and what it was like!

Bruce (Sussman)
bsussman@kgw.com

Posted by at 8:50 AM | Permalink

Uh, sleeper what? It seems like a strange term.

By now, most of us are familiar with the term 'sleeper cells' that describe terrorist groups here in the U.S., just waiting to be activated. Well, a sleeper fire is also just 'waiting for the call' to jump into action.

After we have lightning storms, some fires are obvious. But many more are smoldering quietly. They're undiscovered, they're barely putting out a puff of smoke. Still, they have the potential to become the next raging wildfire in the northwest.

Give these sleeper fires some warmer weather, a drop in humidity or a little more wind--and boom--they're burning the vegetation around them.

How long can they hide? Some have been known to lay low for a week. We'll see some pop up every day this week. But I suspect most will come to life as we approach the weekend and highs climb back toward 90. If you're a sleeper fire, it's just the kind of weather you needed to wake up and get moving.

Bruce Sussman
bsussman@kgw.com

Posted by at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's happened to most of us. You're traveling, strike up a conversation with someone from a different part of the country and invariably when you tell them you're from Oregon, their face scrunches up and you hear some form of:

"How do you handle all the rain?"

I usually respond with, yeah, it rains a lot in the winter, but what part of the country doesn't have a few months of less than ideal weather? Most people buy that. But when I explain that we have the best summers IN THE WORLD, you can see the eyebrows rise. I'm like, no, really, trust me I'm a professional. By then, if they're not running away, they're usually changing the subject to something else. Which is fine. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't get some measure of fun out of ambush conversations about the weather with strangers. Hee hee.

And we're in the middle of one of those classic great summer weather stretches. Other than a little smoky haze from wildfires up north, the sky remains clear, temperatures warm and humidity low. Too much for those enduring the annual East Coast heat and humidity festival to believe.

If you're wondering WHY our summer are so great, it all goes back to the oceans. The Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico get hot in summer, but our ocean stays cool, so it adds very little humidity to the summer air, and it keeps western Oregon from getting too hot, as long as the winds have some component coming from the west.

Last August we had ONE day with measurable rain. None so far this year, and none in the forecast for days to come. Soak it in, because you know we're going to get soaked and start earning our rainy reputation in a couple months.

Matt Zaffino
KGW Chief Meteorologist

mzaffino@kgw.com

Posted by at 10:53 PM | Permalink