Eyes Over Puget Sound: Air temps in the 70's at 2,500 feet!

El Niño persists! This month's Eyes Over Puget Sound marine monitoring flight found once again, air temperatures are running warmer and precipitation is higher than normal for this time of year. Our winter snow pack is in much better shape than this time last year, but we've lost some due to our recent stint of warm weather.

View this month's report

While flying this month, we noticed the outside cabin thermometer reading 72 °F at 2,500 feet above the ground! With weather this warm, we're keeping a close eye on snow levels and Puget Sound temperatures.

In the February issue

Scan photos from the Feb. flight on Flickr.

Winter's heavy rains bring us higher river flows, which means lowered salinities in Puget Sound and coastal bays. This influx in cool water doesn't seem to be making much of a difference in water temperatures however. Puget Sound waters remain at record-breaking highs.

It appears 2015 may not be our only year of the jellyfish. We saw large patches of jellies in the southern finger inlets of the Sound. Also, signs of phytoplankton blooms are already visible in coastal bays.

As you can imagine, winter weather can make it very difficult to find a good day to fly. When we can't take to the skies our research boat, the Skookum, gets the job done!

Read about this and more in February's report

What's Eyes Over Puget Sound?

Eyes Over Puget Sound combines high-resolution photo observations with satellite images, ferry data from travel between Seattle and Victoria BC, and measurements from our moored instruments. We use a seaplane to travel between our monitoring stations because they are so far apart. Once a month, we take photos of Puget Sound water conditions and turn those out, along with data from our stations, in the monthly Eyes Over Puget Sound report.

New report tells what happened in Puget Sound waters in 2011

By Sandy Howard, Environmental Assessment Program

The Puget Sound Marine Waters workgroup of the Puget Sound Environmental Monitoring Program (PSEMP), part of the collaborative effort of the Puget Sound Partnership, has released its first annual report on marine water conditions in Puget Sound.

The report combines a wealth of data from comprehensive monitoring programs and provides a concise summary of what was happening in Puget Sound’s marine waters during 2011. It covers areas such as climate and weather, river inputs, seawater temperature, salinity, nutrients, dissolved oxygen, ocean acidification, phytoplankton, biotoxins, bacteria and pathogens, shellfish resources, and more.

The report represents an unprecedented collaborative effort among various agencies and groups and provides a collective view of marine water conditions in Puget Sound for 2011, enhancing our understanding of this complex ecosystem that is an economic lifeline for Western Washington.

This collaborative and fruitful effort will improve transparency, data sharing, and communication of relevant monitoring programs in Puget Sound’s marine waters and help to determine how well these programs are meeting priority needs. It will also help the Puget Sound Partnership update and expand the dashboard indicators that are used to determine whether progress is being made towards restoring the Sound.

The report is available for download at: www.psp.wa.gov/downloads/psemp/PSmarinewaters_2011_overview.pdf
The workgroup looks forward to delivering a 2012 review of marine water conditions next year.

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