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Neil Lareau

@neillareau.bsky.social

1.4K followers 74 following 97 posts

Prof. of Atmos Sci. @unevadareno. Mountain WX, Wildfire Plumes, Backcountry Skiing, Frontcountry Dadding. Formerly: @SJSUmeteorology @UUtah @Livermore_Lab @MWObs https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=UGaGnAgAAAAJ&hl=en

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Neil Lareau @neillareau.bsky.social · Jul 30

Cumulonimbus.

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Reposted by Neil Lareau

Anthony Edwards @edwardsanthonyb.bsky.social · Jul 30

Water levels are fluctuating rapidly as the tsunami hits Midway Island, 1,200 miles northwest of Hawaii... wow.

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Neil Lareau @neillareau.bsky.social · Jul 22

ACSL ALQDS

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Neil Lareau @neillareau.bsky.social · Jul 2

Diverting money from science funding for immigration crack downs is dumb. Science funding provides enormous ROI. Deporting & intimidating unauthorized immigrants undermines the functioning and growth of our economy. In other words, you spend money to lose money, or negative ROI.

Reposted by Neil Lareau

Mike Flannigan @mikeflannigan.bsky.social · Jun 26

Updated figure from Jain et al. showing global extreme fire weather trends since 1979. Metrics are global 95th percentile of annual Fire Weather Index (FWI), Initial Spread Index (ISI) and the Vapor Pressure Deficit (VPD). The trend is clear - we are seeing more extreme fire weather due to warming.

graphs showing fire weather index (FWI), initial spread index (ISI) and vapour pressure deficit (VPD) 95th percentile trends 1979 to 2024. Updated from Jain et al. 2022 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01224-1

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Neil Lareau @neillareau.bsky.social · Jun 26

Roger that!

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Neil Lareau @neillareau.bsky.social · Jun 25

And to be clear, it still would not be likely that you could match the really fast tsunami wave speed in lake tahoe with a squall line's forward speed...

Neil Lareau @neillareau.bsky.social · Jun 25

My evolving understanding of these though is that even for a small pressure perturbation if the propagation speed of the pressure induced wave (i.e, c=sqrt(gH)) is phase locked with the gust front then you keep pumping (wind stress) energy into it and build a bigger wave?

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Neil Lareau @neillareau.bsky.social · Jun 25

There is something screwy with the time stamps, but I’m 99% sure that is the correct interval

Neil Lareau @neillareau.bsky.social · Jun 25

Here is the high resolution pressure data, showing a 3 mb increase in pressure consistent with the dropping temperature (e.g., hydrostatic pressure change due to the cold frontal passage).

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Neil Lareau @neillareau.bsky.social · Jun 25

But I really don't know how coupled lake and wind dynamics work beyond... so please educate me if any of ya'll have insights.

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Neil Lareau @neillareau.bsky.social · Jun 25

6/n: However, Lake Tahoe is really deep, so the shallow water gravity wave speed is really fast (>50 m/s), so unlikely there is resonance between a propagating wave in the lake and the gust front...

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Neil Lareau @neillareau.bsky.social · Jun 25

5/n: The winds alone are strong (44 mph), but not severe. The wave response, in contrast is quite notable. It has me wondering about the "meteotsunami" phenomenon (agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....). This is pure speculation and I'd be keen to here a deeper background on the topic.

Meteotsunami occurrences and causes in Lake Michigan

Water level records indicate that meteotsunamis occur throughout the Lake Michigan basin Pareto family distributions describe size-frequency character of meteotsunamis Convective and frontal system...

agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Neil Lareau @neillareau.bsky.social · Jun 25

4/n: Next up are wave data. This plot from TERC, shows that the wave heights follow a pattern similar to the wind ramp on 6/21, suddenly reaching above 1 m. The abrupt increase in way height is really an alarming signal.

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Neil Lareau @neillareau.bsky.social · Jun 25

3/n: The corresponding temperature data show a sharp drop in temperature consistent with the frontal passage enhanced by diabatic cooling (evaporation) beneath the thunderstorms and stratiform rain/snow.

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Neil Lareau @neillareau.bsky.social · Jun 25

2/n: Now lets look at the buoy weather station data over the center of the lake, first the wind speed, which shows relatively calm winds during the morning, then a sudden wind ramp followed by ~1.5 hrs of strong winds as high as 20 m/s (~44 mph). [the time stamps on these plots are wrong...]

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Neil Lareau @neillareau.bsky.social · Jun 25

1/n: Still trying to understand the Lake Tahoe boating disaster from this past weekend. I like letting the data lead. Lets start with the radar, where I've added a red line annotating the clear, coherent wind shift associated with the front sagging south across the region.

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Neil Lareau @neillareau.bsky.social · Jun 17

It’s so frustrating to have had this beautiful organic way of accessing primary source intel… lost now to ego of a billionaire…

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Reposted by Neil Lareau

Scott Bachmeier @wisc-satellite.bsky.social · Jun 16

Visible & Infrared images from #GOES19/#GOESEast showed that the #TroutFire in New Mexico produced a #pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) cloud on 14 June - the first pyroCb in the US for the 2025. More on the CIMSS Satellite Blog: cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/satellite-bl... H/T @neillareau.bsky.social

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Neil Lareau @neillareau.bsky.social · Jun 12

That’s a very windy spot!

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Reposted by Neil Lareau

Mark Parrington @mparrington.bsky.social · Jun 4

Total estimated emissions of 2025 Canadian #wildfires to 03/06 at ~50 MtC, comparable to 2023 record over same period, and increasing. #CopernicusAtmosphere Global Fire Assimilation System data based on MODIS🛰️ active fire obs ads.atmosphere.copernicus.eu/datasets/cam... @copernicusecmwf.bsky.social

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Neil Lareau @neillareau.bsky.social · Jun 4