ConnieDee

Thanks for the post; was wondering about aviation impacts of this weather phenomenon. Drifting (or blowing) off topic maybe: I've been following atmospheric rivers for a few years. Now with the "bomb cycle" it gets interesting. Below is a link to a graphical weather site for watching these in action, along with an attached screenshot from 10/25 7:00 PDT.

The atmospheric river sometimes looks like a finger of fate pointing at your city or destination. Today it's pointing at California, while there's a less defined whirlpool-like formation offshore of the PNW. Here in Portland the wind's been blowing and gusting all day and all night. https://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-ti...hrs&anim=html5

FlyerWx

Thanks for sharing, ARs are always pretty to look at (well, the precipitable water in general is cool )

SFO got 4.02 inches of rain yesterday (Record) and max wind gusts of 60mph. Quite the storm for it only being October. At the risk of going further off topic, I'll leave my weather-related comments at that.

The Situation

I would say it was well forecasted by DL for DL's operations. The delay statistics were skewed by WN (60% delayed) and AS/UA all of which have significant operations in the Bay Area. DL's flights operated on time, with the exception of flights to/from California, for which there was a waiver in place. Power outages were mostly concentrated in the foothills of the Cascades, which has completely different weather than the airport and usually there this many power outages the first time we get some wind in the fall, since there are a lot of dead limbs that have not been blown down. The two deaths were also in the foothills, caused by tree that fell on a car. I live half between the airport and the foothills and can assure you that there was no weather impacting the airport that would justify a weather waiver for SEA. It's really a shame that the media blows everything so far out of proportion.

TuxTom

Getting from Tahoe to Reno is usually up to the careless semi drivers, as 9/10 times, when the interstate closes during a storm between Truckee and Reno, it's because a semi jack-knifed or collided with another. Going the other way over Donner Summit, it's a whole different story as it's often the white-outs and inability for plows to keep up with it along with stuck semis that closes the road. I regularly take 6am flights out of RNO all winter long and I quite enjoy those early morning drives down the canyon when chain control has held all the semis.