From The Cliff Mass Weather Blog
Cliff Mass
Truth should be important to the Seattle Times.
Professional integrity and honesty should be a priority.
Providing the public with accurate information on an important public issue should be paramount.
But when it comes to issues dealing with climate, the Seattle Times has descended into advocacy, hype, and exaggeration, unsupported by facts and actual science.
Articles written by the Seattle Times Climate Lab, which receives financial support from climate advocacy groups, are the most concerning, as illustrated by the deceptive, unfactual article published yesterday.
The article, How bad is Washington’s summer drought going to get?, starts with a large picture of a major reservoir (Lake Keechelus)–see below
The picture shows a completely empty lake, and the legend describes a “depleted Lake Keechelus” and that this total lack of water is a “familiar scene.”
Totally deceptive and wrong. The truth is that the lake is nearly full, as shown by an image total from a WSDOT cam:
Don’t believe your eyes? The official measurements of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation indicate the lake was 95% full two days ago (it is now 96%):
Still not convinced? Below is a plot of this year’s lake level (blue line) versus normal (red line).
Lake levels are now WAY above normal….in fact, exceeding the normal maximum levels in early summer. So high, reservoir managers reduced the level a bit to avoid flooding.
So the headline claim of the article was wrong…and they had to know this.
I am hardly warming up regarding the ST tall tales. Much of the article is factually wrong.
For example, it tells us:
“This summer is expected to be especially hot and dry, too, Mellor pointed out. El Niño conditions are moving in from the tropics.”
This is nonsensical. We are still in a La Niña (see below), and the transition to Neutral and then El Niño conditions will only occur during the summer.
Blue colors indicate temperatures below normal
Even more important, Northwest summer precipitation has very little correlation with El Niño and La Niña–even if it were in place.
This figure from the NOAA Climate Prediction Center, which shows the precipitation anomalies from normal for an El Niño summer, shows this clearly.
Don’t believe NOAA and only trust online AI? Here is what Gemini gave me:
Key Correlations & Current Trends
- Weak Summer Link: Meteorologists note that El Niño does not have as significant an impact on the region in the spring and summer as it does in winter.
Lack of water for hydropower?
Then the article warns about the lack of water for Seattle hydropower, and particularly the Ross Reservoir. Turns out both rainfall and snowfall have been relatively healthy in the North Cascades this winter, and the reservoir level is now much higher than the previous year (see below). I note that the Ross Reservoir almost filled last year (see below).
Seattle’s power generation will have sufficient water!
Perhaps the writer of the Seattle Times scare piece should have checked the best long-term forecasts.
Here is the latest prediction of summer precipitation from the best (European Center). WETTER THAN NORMAL OVER WESTERN AND FAR EASTERN Washington. Normal for the rest.
The Seattle Times is failing our community, providing demonstrably false information regarding climate change. Hyping and exaggerating climate threats.
Providing such wrong information is hurting our community, resulting in very poor decision-making, including the waste of billions of dollars (e.g., the CCA).
Climatista preaching? It is the goal to get you in the right mood?
Preaching never seems to get “the mood” right. 🙂
The fact that the UK Met Office is constantly misleading and outright lying goes hand-in-hand with this report..! It’s that bad..!
“Climate Change has caused…Ed, look out the window and see what’s going on.”
That’s what all this “weather = climate change” (when it can be interpreted as being “bad” of course) nonsense boils down to.
Seattle Times Provides Deceptive and False Information on Washington State Drought
Was anybody really expecting
Seattle Times Provides Accurate Information on Washington State Drought
I nearly fell off the chair when I read: Seattle Times Climate Lab
FFS. What a bunch of utterly deluded w*nkers. All that’s fit to print in black and white, apparently…
I got a joker up my sleeve
I know what to believe
It isn’t right just because
It’s in black and white
Global Climate Change/Heating 101:
Dryer than normal = Manmade Global Heating
Wetter than normal = Manmade Climate Change
Class dismissed!
The empty lake photo looks fake. AI?
And nobody in that area notices that the lake isn’t empty? Other than the author posting here?
No, they drain that lake every other year for irrigation. When the photo was taken..
So when someone drives by the lake and you notice it’s full and say so- then your alarmist friend with you says, “no, it’s not full- the Seattle Times says it’s empty- so your eyes are deluding you.”
Having the proper thoughts are more important to the left than accepting empirical reality. Why they are so out of touch with how things work in the real world..
A little bit further north…this article was published March 30…a climate skyientist, Pomeroy, said the snowpack was low and the soon-to-come drought was due to human caused CO2 emissions….the editor read the info and changed the title to “Amazing snowpack”. Haha on the climate liars.
https://calgaryherald.com/news/snowpack-at-record-breaking-levels-in-some-parts-of-albertas-rockies#:~:text=Southern%2520Alberta%2520snowpack%2520is%2520extremely%2520low&text=At%2520Akamina%2520Pass%2520in%25202023,This%2520year%2520there's%2520162%2520millimetres.&text=%E2%80%9CIn%2520the%2520Oldman%252C%2520they%2520need,this%2520year%252C%E2%80%9D%2520said%2520Pomeroy.
The Seattle Times permanently banned me for posting empirical facts about climate. When I refuted what they claimed was misinformation with peer reviewed studies they simply stopped responding and ignored my requests for a review.
It’s a disgusting propaganda rag dedicated to preserving the out of touch echo chambers that maintain left wing delusions.
Many moons ago I was banned from Skeptical Science for the same reasons.
Me too. For the longest time I couldn’t even access their web page.
LA Times long ago said it would no longer respond to or post any letters with CC skeptical content. The whole paper reads like a radical Leftist blog. Finally got the wife to cancel it when they announced an increase in delivery price to $6.50/day. $650/day for a biased newspaper!!
I’m not sure who said this but it is obvious with the climate hysteria media: Desperate times call for desperate measures. Just out and out lie about conditions and blame any unusual weather on “climate change.”
Stop complaining to a public that is not very interested.
Get some money together, hire some decent lawyers, discover if suitable evidence exists, then take the Seattle Times to Court.
That should produce rapid improvement. Geoff S
Sue whom for what? It’s neither a civil nor a criminal offense for a “news”paper to lie, unless the lie defames a person or a business.
There’s so darn much total BS on the internet these days by purveyors of
misinformation of the type that appeals to a person’s “confirmation bias”
that I wondered about this one. So after a Google AI search this was found:
Input to Google AT ==> Lake Keechelus Seattle Times
The Seattle Times has recently been involved in a controversy regarding its
reporting on Keechelus Lake.
On March 31, 2026, the paper published an article titled “How bad is WA’s
summer drought going to get?” that originally used a photo of a dry, depleted
Lake Keechelus as a cover image.
Controversy and Corrections
Initial Report: The article initially captioned the dry lake photo as a “familiar
scene for drivers on Snoqualmie Pass,” implying it represented current drought
conditions in late March/early April 2026.
Criticism: Local meteorologist Cliff Mass and others on Reddit criticized the
photo as deceptive, noting that the reservoir was actually nearly full (approx. 96%)
at the time of publication.
Correction: The Seattle Times subsequently updated the caption to clarify
the photo was “seen last November,” which is the typical low-water period for
the reservoir after irrigation drawdowns and before winter refill
_______________________________________________________________
So yes it’s true and the Times was forced to make a correction. So now a new
search to find out how prominently the Times published said correction. And on
further reflection it looks like the text of the article wasn’t changed. In other
words the BS still stood. So a link to the Times article is in order.
After reading my post it looks like the image remained and only the caption was changed.
Yup, Here’s the link to the Seattle Times story the BS still stands.
A leftist newspaper lying and deceiving? This must be the work of far right zealots whose thinking is affected by Climate Change®.
Seems there something inherent in the word “Times” when it comes to “news”papers. East coast: New York TIMES; West coast: Seattle TIMES; Transatlantic: Financial TIMES.& The TIMES.
Apparently, keeping up with the TIMES means you embrace opinion over facts.
Or, as Joe Biden put it so well in one of his campaign speeches: “We [Democrats] choose…truth over facts.”
The Dirty Business of Clean Energy (Rick Dunn, March 22nd, 2026)
“Washington State legislators must come to terms with their fatally flawed Energy Strategy and detached from reality promise of ‘energy equity’ “
The west-siders in Washington State, many of them devoted readers of the Seattle Times, are deep into the climate alarmism the Seattle Times is selling.
The west side has roughly 4,000 megawatts of gas-fired generation capacity available to it, which consumes approximately 30% of the total natural gas volume used by all Washington State gas customers.
Washington State’s own climate act dictates that steep reductions in the state’s total carbon emissions must occur over the next fifteen to twenty years.
Most, if not all, of that 4,000 megawatts of gas-fired capacity must be shut down between now and the year 2040 if the law is to be complied with.
Just as it is in New York state, the climate activists and the state legislators in Washington State haven’t got a clue as to how their Net Zero fantasies can be achieved.
But this doesn’t mean those fantasies will be abandoned. Far from it. These people show every sign of doubling down on their anti-carbon agenda if and when the state’s lack of progress in reducing its carbon emissions becomes fully exposed..
Very nice Cliff. Media outfits need to be held accountable for trash like this. They have been abusing freedom of the press protections for far too long. Freedom of the press does not protect lying.
Come on, Professor. How many debunkings does it take for you to call the ST what it is, pure propaganda. Expecting them to look up facts is not something they even care to do. They exist to send a specific message, and that message doesn’t do facts.
Like it or not (not, as far as I am concerned), the Seattle Times remains influential. Mass is entirely right to go after them in the way he has.
I didn’t say he wasn’t right. He’s just not harsh enough. He still thinks that if they’re shown some facts, that they’ll suddenly come to their senses.
The rainy season in western Washington state begins October 1st and ends about May 1st. June, July, and August, have the least rain.
As of today – Seattle has above average TOTAL rain fall since October 1st, since January 1st, and since April 1st.
Before October 2025, we had two years in a row of below average rain fall.
Eastern Washington always has limited rain fall in the summer. Most crops require irrigation.