It was a remarkable winter in the western United States with phenomenal snow and heavy rain. Now that things have quieted down, UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain joins the meteorologists to discuss what's next.
What will happen as all the snow melts? What will this year's wildfire season be like? Will the atmospheric rivers return next winter? It's a deep dive into all things weather and climate across the West on this week's episode.
About the Across the Sky podcast
The weekly weather podcast is hosted on a rotation by the Lee Weather team:
Matt Holiner of Lee Enterprises' Midwest group in Chicago, Kirsten Lang of the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, Joe Martucci of the Press of Atlantic City, N.J., and Sean Sublette of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia.
Episode transcript
Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:
Hello, once again, everybody. I'm meteorologist Sean Sublette and welcome to Across the Sky, our National Lee Enterprises weather podcast. Lee Enterprises has print and digital news operations in 77 locations across the country, including in my home base in Richmond, Virginia. I'm joined by my meteorologist colleagues from across the sky, Matt Holiner in Chicago and Joe Martucci at the New Jersey Shore.
My colleague Kirsten Lang is taking some well-deserved time off in Tulsa for a couple of weeks. And guys, we've got Daniel West on the podcast today. A lot of people know him as Weather West. Why are you shaking your head at me? Daniel Swain. Okay. Daniel Swain. Daniel Swain. He's Weather West. Yes. You all knew where I was going with you?
Of course. Of course. Without a doubt. Without an end. And he's great. I mean, I've done some work with him when I was with the Climate Central. He's just got a wonderful, wonderful grip on what the weather and the climate are in the western part of the country. And it's really, really nice. Yeah, well, you know, Shawn, it's a good follow up from last week's episode where we talked with Donnie down at the Placer County Department of Public Works about all the snow that they plowed.
So we have the boots on the ground with your last episode with Donnie. This time we're taking it from the academic perspective and the forecasting and a look back perspective with Daniel Swain. So it's a good one two punch as we really exit out of the cool season, and then we promise we'll talk about warmer and more summery things as we go forward over the next couple of.
Yeah, this is a real interesting conversation with Daniel because he's just, you know, really focused in on the West. And I think oftentimes, you know, as meteorologists in the central and Eastern part of the country, because it seems like a lot of the time there's not much going on in the West, so it doesn't get discussed much. But, boy, this winter was truly the exception.
There was lots of talk on the National level about what's going on out west. And, you know, it kind of like shifted a tinge. It's like, wait a minute, I thought the you know, nothing happened in the West. It's just constant, never ending drought. And wildfires. Well, this is this year was the proof that you can't forget about what's going on our way because it's not going to be drought all the time.
It's not going to just be wildfires all the time. They're still going to get big rains. They're still going to get big snows and look at the impacts that it cause. And of course, Daniel is tuned in with the West all the time and is aware that it's not this drought going on out there. So he was the perfect person to bring on and really dive into.
This is a fascinating discussion. Yeah, it really was. We're glad to have him. So let's cue it all up and get our discussion started with Daniel Swain there at UCLA. And our guest this week is Daniel Swain, climate scientist at the Institute of Environment and Sustainability at UCLA and author of the popular Weather West blog