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December 1892 One Of The Great Lowland Snowstorms


snow_wizard

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Usually when the winter of 1892-93 gets brought up it's in regard to the wicked late January / early February Arctic blast / snowstorms which brought one of the most dramatic periods of extremely cold and snowy weather on record to Western WA and NW Oregon.

 

Because of that event the big snowstorm of December 21 & 22 during that winter is often overlooked. According to newspaper accounts and meteorological records snowfall ranging from 12 inches to over 2 feet occurred everywhere from Eugene all the way into the North Interior of WA. There are very few single snowstorms on records that have achieved that feat in the period of reliable records for the NW which date back to 1850. According to newspaper accounts everywhere from Eugene to just south of Portland had 12 to 15 inches of snow and the Puget Sound region recorded anywhere from 10 to 22 inches. There is some disagreement on how much snow was recorded in Olympia, which was apparently at ground zero for the heaviest snowfall. One newspaper story I found from Sacramento reported 5 feet on the ground in Olympia with reports of collapsed buildings, while the National Meteorological Summary for that month stated the depth at around two feet. The weather records I have for Olympia show several inches of water equivalent for the days in question with temperatures more than cold enough for all of that to have fallen as snow so I'm betting the actual depth reached at least 3 feet at that location.

 

Some firm snow depth reports for various locations...

 

Astoria - 20 inches

Portland - 29 inches fell (not sure of depth on the ground)

Seattle - 12.5 inches

Port Angeles - 12.4 inches

 

Without question it's an extreme rarity for such widespread coverage of heavy snowfall from a single storm in this region. A truly remarkable event in a truly legendary winter!

 

Unfortunately I have no snowfall data for the interior of Western WA north of Seattle. If anyone has further data to add feel free to do it.

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Death To Warm Anomalies!

 

Winter 2023-24 stats

 

Total Snowfall = 1.0"

Day with 1" or more snow depth = 1

Total Hail = 0.0

Total Ice = 0.2

Coldest Low = 13

Lows 32 or below = 45

Highs 32 or below = 3

Lows 20 or below = 3

Highs 40 or below = 9

 

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Nice post.  Do you know what kind of pattern produced that large of an area of snowfall?

The newspaper account makes reference to south winds in Oregon during the latter part of the storm, so my guess is a low moved up the Oregon coast and then moved inland over SW WA. A scenario like that could have given the very wide coverage noted with that storm.

Death To Warm Anomalies!

 

Winter 2023-24 stats

 

Total Snowfall = 1.0"

Day with 1" or more snow depth = 1

Total Hail = 0.0

Total Ice = 0.2

Coldest Low = 13

Lows 32 or below = 45

Highs 32 or below = 3

Lows 20 or below = 3

Highs 40 or below = 9

 

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