Rubus Leucodermis

Sure beats the death ridge with no end in sight that we were facing a week or two ago.

Off by one year. It was Feb 2014 I was thinking of.

And not just 2017, 2015 IIRC was pretty good for PDX and Seattle got mostly skunked that year. Last February was just the inevitable evening out.

I remember when that was a quarry.

Good and frosty out there already in my neighborhood.

Ditto. Not sold on it up here, either.

The planetary K index is forecast to be 5 (at best) tonight. That just doesn't support mid-latitude auroras. It needs to be 8 (or, if you're lucky, 7) for the aurora to be visible in Washington.

I don't understand why. Solar activity isn't abnormally high right now. For some reason, the news media decided to hype a relatively minor, high-latitude aurora event out of all proportion. I'd be most surprised if anything is visible in the continental USA.

Nobody's mentioned it so far that I've noticed this time, but one thing to keep an eye out for is snow in the Columbia Basin. Getting the ground covered there really helps to build a good cold pool. So far, the models haven't exactly been very consistent about the basin getting much white stuff.

I can hope.

With this trend, it will be coming ashore in Ensenada.

I think the pros have trouble forecasting inversions, too. IIRC, our most profound ones sort of just sneak up. One day is a little colder and foggier than forecast, the next one a little colder and foggier still, and so on. If it starts on the cold side, it doesn't take much for it to slip to the point where it's perpetual fog and temps in the 20s and 30s. Been a while since we've had a frosty cold inversion. Wouldn't mind seeing another one next month. Will probably eat these words if it materializes and lingers for weeks.

You post as "Rob - S.E. Portland" on the Fox 12 Weather Blog, no?

Pretty much all the Sierra Nevada and Cascades (which do extend into northern California) have interesting weather. And the coast from about Mendocino northward has in many ways a very PNW-ish feel to it. All are, of course, lightly-populated areas.

Montana simply doesn't have many people, period. That alone suffices to explain the scarcity of Montanans in online forums.

My college meteorology professor said that most meteorologists liked "bad" (i.e. stormy) weather more than "good" (dry and sunny) because the former was simply more interesting. Stands to reason that weather buffs would tend to gravitate towards a region known for its active weather (and away from one known for its reliably dry conditions most of the year).

2017 was the best for that in the Seattle area. Snow began as dusk fell on Christmas Eve, and continued on and off until Christmas morning. Timing by Hollywood.

Didn't even get below 40˚F at KBLI overnight, but we've had multiple frosts earlier this month.

I agree, there is a 100% chance the sun will set at the time forecast in the app.

Oh, that hill. I worked at Canyon Park for two years and the shortcut route from my place in Shoreline crested that hill. It's a total snow zone. Probably snowier than my old Shoreline place by as much a margin as my old Shoreline place was snowier than the UW campus in Seattle.

I've had it, and in my case it wasn't particularly painful. In fact, it wasn't painful at all for the first few days; just a general feeling of low energy coupled with a profound lack of appetite. When the pain finally came, it was in a different place than I had ever hurt. I checked Wikipedia, and it was the appendicitis spot. Because I didn't feel that sick (or hurt that badly), and wasn't running a fever yet, I decided it wasn't anything to worry about. A few hours later, and it was hurting more and I was running a fever. I called up a friend and had him drive me to the emergency room. The real pain didn't happen until after the operation. The first 24 hours was pretty miserable. But my feeling here is that this is the sort of thing that can be very different from individual to individual, so for some people it probably is extremely painful as the symptoms develop.

The one time I lived at 300' elevation in Shoreline, I lost count of the number of times I had 4"+ on the ground (and sometimes 8"+), when areas near the sea level had bare ground. Of course, I had help from the PSCZ working in my favor there, too.

Not to mention the PSCZ.

I was living in the Yakima Valley then. One weekend I remember riding my bike on the farm roads in shirtsleeve weather during a particularly torchy late January. Not a trace of anything frozen, anywhere. By the next weekend, the Yakima River had frozen clear across from bank to bank.

WCA WishCast Alert