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| Thursday Dec 17, 2015 | |
| The energy news keeps coming at us at a fast and furious pace. The bear market in crude oil and natural gas prices continues to grind on. On Tuesday afternoon natural gas prices fell to a 16-year low. The last time we've seen prices this low was when the dot com bubble was in full swing (remember Flooz?) and the nation was readying itself for the Y2K disaster (all hype). Oil prices continue to drop, with WTI trading around $35 per barrel and Brent trading at about $37 per barrel. Low energy prices have led to weak balance sheets, and those weak balance sheets ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Dec 16, 2015 | |
| There has been a lot of talk about the leak at the Aliso Canyon Natural Gas storage facility in Southern California over the past few weeks. If you are not aware of the situation, Southern California Gas workers reported a leak in the largest storage facility in their system in late October 2015. Since that time, engineers at the company have been working around the clock to figure out the best method to fix the leak. As of right now, the latest idea is to build a relief well along side the storage facility, in fact they want to build two just in ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Dec 15, 2015 | |
| Typically if you turn on the weather channel this time of year you would see blue swirls over the East Coast of the United States followed by the newscaster saying something about preparations for the first “Nor'easter” of the year. For those of you lucky enough to have never experienced one, A "Nor'easter" a storm system that forms over the Northeastern coast as cold continental air clashes with warm ocean air. The results are hurricane force winds, tons of snow, and lots of heating demand. This results in frigid ... » read more | |
| Monday Dec 14, 2015 | |
| December is an interesting month as the new water year is right around the corner and skiers are anxious to get up to the mountains given there is snowpack at the resorts. Prior to this weekend, that has not been the case as the precipitation pattern across the region was met with a warm front leaving the region with more rainfall rather than snowpack. In fact, last week the Portland metro area saw record rainfall hit over a two day span that led to major flooding of downtown's with a river running through it. From a hydro system standpoint, these side ... » read more | |
| Friday Dec 11, 2015 | |
| Over the past week, the Pacific Northwest has seen record rainfall over a two day span (4.76 inches fell between Monday and Tuesday). Such an event brought record wind speeds to the area as well as some people were reporting that gusts got up to 140 MPH up on Mt Hood. Yesterday, the weather pattern saw the high and low pressure system collide to where a tornado touched down just north of Portland in Battle Ground, WA where the wind speed hit 104 MPH. All this has prompted the overall wind generation in the Pacific Northwest to be strong this week as BPA's ... » read more | |
| Thursday Dec 10, 2015 | |
| After experiencing the rainfall and wind gusts the past few days in the Pacific Northwest, one has to wonder if Mother Nature is ever going to take this show south as there has been plenty of hype around an El Nino winter in Northern California. I am not a weather forecaster, but I do believe things are setting up for El Nino to kick in over the course of the next couple of weeks. Figure 1 | NOAA Precipitation Pattern Over the weekend is the first round of showers expecting to move through Northern California. With the overnight temperatures shifting down ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Dec 9, 2015 | |
| A couple of things come to mind over the past two days as I drive through Portland hitting all the big puddles that take up most of the intersection. The puddles are there because the drains are clogged with the leaves that have fallen from the trees and massive amounts of rain that is moving through the city has nowhere to go. Back to the things on my wind, the first thing is the memories of this summer and fall when the skies were blue and there was not a cloud in the sky. Since the spring was rather mild as well, the days of blasting ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Dec 8, 2015 | |
| Over the last four years, hydro generation has drastically decreased on the West coast (California, Oregon, and Washington) averaging nearly 1500 megawatts less year on year from 2011 (producing 20gw to 14gw now). Much of it can be attributed to the critical water conditions in California and the La Nina weather pattern blocking the precipitation from hitting the West coast. This has affected hydro generation nationwide as for the first time in recent memory there was more wind generation than hydro generation (by 500 megawatts in November 2014). The ... » read more | |
| Monday Dec 7, 2015 | |
| As it usually does in the Fall and Winter, the NFL Ticket becomes the weather channel for me as I flip through the games to see who is winning but also what the fans are wearing this time of year. As I moved through the early games I could not help but notice most of the players on the East coast were still wearing short sleeves while some fans were not wearing any type of coat and/or head gear such as a hat and or ear warmers. In the Midwest, it was more of the same as the Seattle Seahawks might as well been playing in Miami as the weather in Minneapolis ... » read more | |
| Friday Dec 4, 2015 | |
| If you stayed up last night to watch the end of the Packer-Lions football game you were not disappointed in an exciting finish regardless who you were rooting for. With no time left on the clock (literally since there was a defensive facemask call on the last play to give the Packers one more play) and the ball on the Packers own 40 yard line, Aaron Rodgers and the Packers had only one option. Yes, the hail mary pass. Once the ball was snapped, Rodgers scrambled around a bit while his receivers ran straight down the field to the end zone, one he got ... » read more | |
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