Firstly, it seems to me it is degrading pretty fast, both in terms of temperature and cloud density/structural integrity, as you can find out from
here.
Secondly, having a warm spot at some point doesn't necessarily mean that a depression is fed by energy released from warm surface water via condensation, as happens in true tropical cyclones. Most storms have warmer areas and cooler areas... To me that weather system looks more like subtropical cyclone with mediocre size and shortish life time (if I'm interpreting the infra-red pictures correctly). Or based on its tear-shaped form during practically its whole existence it's also possible that it's actually a minuscule extratropical cyclone.
Thirdly, actual tropical cyclones on those latitudes are rare, but not unheard of, as you will find out from our friend Wikipedia and especially this excellent picture, which shows the tracks of every recorded tropical cyclone. Obviously you won't find out much from where there have been a lot of cyclones, it's all a bloody mess, but the rarities such as cyclones making a loop on Gulf of Alaska, or veering off to Scandinavia for example.
Beware, this is a thumbnail of a 5.6 MB picture at 8000x4000 resolution.
Of course I can be wrong but I wouldn't call this one a tropical storm or even a tropical depression, but obviously it will have some sort of impact on west coast of US of A. Rain and wind and ****ty weather in general probably, but I suspect it's up to anything major. Could you lik to the weather forum in question, where it was brought up? I'd like to see what arguments there are/were for this being or not being a tropical storm (or equivalent weather system)?
And if you get snow, for the love of supreme being be careful with your cars. I've seen how people react to snow and ice when it's a new thing for them to drive in such conditions...
Lock braking tires and trying to steer is not a good idea in general... as is demonstrated by
this clipAnd talking about climate warming up, the last summer in Finland was incredibly dry and warm. I actually can't remember a really rainy day (excluding thunder related showers on some days), and it kinda freaked me a bit. It was dry in Russia, too, and we got our part of the smoke they managed to put out to skies. It sucked.
Then again, we've been having a week of rain in temperatures ranging from -1 deg Celsius to about positive two degrees Celcius, and that comes with the wind. Meh.
