Meatyorologist

Near the ground, yes. But on a macro scale, the storm systems powering our cold fronts are the size of continents and some of the largest heat transfer machines on Earth.

If I had to wager a guess as to what the issue stems from, I'd argue that the models have recently been toyed with as to allow for higher snowfall accumulations through moist-saturated near-sfc columns. This error seems to show up almost exclusively in the immediate vicinity of the coast, exactly where you'd find enhanced lift via the sudden onset of terrain, and the most saturated lower troposphere, right from Pacific onshore winds in a lightly unstable environment. Wouldn't doubt it would be a useful tweak given recent marginal snowfall busts in the Northeast, but since the greater Northwest sits in a gradual transition between a subarctic and subtropical maritime climate zone, where snow can fringe on the hair of dewpoints and Chris' 925mb temp maps and how badly you pray at night, subtle tweaks can wreak havoc on our beloved #snowmaps, as pretty as the colors may be nowadays....

Really hard not to get excited looking at weather models tonight. Lots of small mesoscale oportunities with very high jackpot potential. This next trough will be in rarified territory due to its cold nature alongside its negative tilt, allowing for moisture as well. Fun times ahead.

Can't bring you anywhere!

NAM is biased to overdo evaporative cooling... Likely stems from the same internal flaw which causes an underestimation of stratoform precip. Hopefully it's right though and I eat crow!

Took a drive up to South Everett! About 2-3" here.

That is a webcam for the ages, Skykomish.

That is a beautiful convergence zone...

KSEA coming in with a 5pm low of 35F.

Snow back at home! Grauple transitioned to plain snowflakes.

Yeesh! That blows. What happened?

I'm so, so sorry, Tim. If only I could take all this pain from you...

Rain/snow mix here, 38F

Oh that block support is strong, alright. It's just a bit too far to the west to incorporate any Canadian air. Off-the-chart positive height anomalies over the North Pacific; record breaking actually. Inarguably during our recent cold snaps the truly big story has lied with the heatwave on the other side.

This is pretty raw for the Pacific Ocean, at a latitude matching California, with outflow coming from the Aleutians instead of the continent.

The 3km NAM is the driest mesoscale model by far. It doesn't believe in stratoform precipitation at all, which makes it useless during the winter and pretty bad for stalled convection/latent heat machines such as PSCZ's.

Looking west, this wall of doom is showing up as nothing from KATX, not even on the higher bands. If it's gonna storm it's about to do so without warning.

Snow in King county will probably have to wait until after 10pm when 925's drop below freezing. 51F and partly sunny here. Big frontal passage just to the NNW.

Mannnnn that signal over the plains...

Could be sfc winds separated from convergence at the level of the LLJ? I've gotten northerly outflow 5-10 miles south of the main precip shield during CZ's. Guess other models keep things mixed overnight, allowing for a more vertically stacked CZ.

Unironically my least favorite model

Big, huge win for UT/NV/AZ/NM to get two very snowy winters consecutively. CO and southern WY not doing bad either... Lake Mead's life expectancy has probably been extended by a few years.

Actually on second thought I do remember a windy night back in January, that's probably what you're talking about. I guess I'm just antsy for the next "real" windstorm

Speaking of... For coming off the Pacific this front is a monster. Near instant 10F temp drop with colder air upstream. This is just north of Nanaimo.

Despite all my recent b!tching models have silently changed their tune over the last few days and turned the King/Snohomish border tonight into ground zero, and perhaps again tomorrow night. PSCZ snows can escalate pretty quickly if they stall, so I'm cautiously excited for the potential tonight. Though I also know it's fairly likely models aren't quite picking up on the northward extent of this evening's CZ and I could get completely shafted by a margin of a few miles. I've seen that movie before. At any rate the atmosphere is clearly disturbed this afternoon. The rainshadow has kept me completely dry throughout the frontal passage, but it hasn't stopped the wind. It's been gusting above 40mph here all day, with low clouds whizzing on by, and the trees swaying like crazy. Haven't seen it like this in a good while, maybe a year or so. It adds to the ominous feeling in the air today, kind of serving as a reminder that despite today's sunbreaks and dry weather, we're still undergoing a powerful frontal passage.