Rantz: Media loves saying ‘atmospheric river’ to impress us, but it basically just means ‘storm’

Around this time of year, Seattle media loves to throw around a term that sounds ominous, demands urgency, and makes them sound like meteorological geniuses: “atmospheric river.” Don’t be fooled by the hype. This phrase, which has only become media catnip in the last few years, is just a fancy way of saying “storm.”

The problem? Seattle media coverage makes it seem like we’re bracing for the apocalypse — a river in the atmosphere!!! — when, in reality, an atmospheric river is hardly threatening. It doesn’t deserve the over-the-top attention, and most media folks using the term can’t even define it correctly. They’ve convinced themselves it means more than “storm.”

“Well, people like terminology, and it sounds kind of impressive, but it’s nothing new,” UW Atmospheric Pressure professor Cliff Mass tells “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH.

That it’s happening in October is nothing even remotely surprising.

“The terminology is not that old,” Mass explained. “It only was developed in the 90s. So all it means is that this moisture comes in, and then when the moisture interacts with our mountains, the moisture is forced to rise. The air cools and precipitation dumps out. So that’s all that’s going on here.

Should we be worried about an atmospheric river in Washington?

There’s nothing unusual about a soggy October. Mass notes that “atmospheric rivers are very typical here on the West Coast.”

“All they are is a current, a few hundred miles wide of a lot of moisture that generally comes in from the southwest,” Mass explained. “I mean, this is typical climatology of our region, and it occurs when there’s a trough of the Gulf of Alaska and high pressure down in California. You get this current of strong winds, they’re bringing moisture into our region, and we call these an atmospheric river.”

The heavy rain also won’t disrupt life in western Washington. The majority of the rain will hit the mountains of British Columbia, especially Vancouver Island, plus the North Cascades may get a piece of it.

“There’s going to be some heavy rain if you’re on the coast near Vancouver Island. It’s not atypical and it’s happened many times before,” Mass explains.

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What weather can we expect in Seattle area?

Over the next few days, the Seattle region will see some rain, but nothing of note. Mid-October is when the moisture starts coming towards the region before “the precipitation increases rapidly” into mid-November, when we see the heaviest precipitation of the year.

“So we go from something that is really quite modest to the heaviest precipitation of the year within about a month,” Mass said. “So it really turns on quickly. So that’s kind of fascinating.”

As for atmospheric rivers during a typical Winter week, Mass says we typically get 10 to 20. That means it’ll be wet and we’ll hear every anchor and meteorologist try to impress us by saying “atmospheric river.”

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