Chewbacca Defense

Been seeing filtered sun for the past hour or so here in Bellingham. A little bit more of a breeze but still pretty warm at my location.

Ended up with .74" at my house for the day, and still have some light rain falling. Looks like the airport only recorded .47" I haven't had much time to pay attention to the models or forecast, I knew it was going to rain a fair amount today, but it was a bit more of a blustery day than I was anticipating. Turned out to be a really nice October day!

Skies are starting to darken a bit here in Bellingham

Just had 3 good lightning strikes in the last 15 minutes. Looks like one of them hit around Mt Baker Hwy and Everson Goshen road. That one rattled things pretty good (less than 2 miles from me). Definitely seen far more impressive storms in Georgia but really good for this area

I was hoping to play soccer in the snow last night and all we got was 37 degree drizzle. We got barely a dusting last night. All in all a big fizzle for the north side of Bellingham. That said, I drove down to the Skagit Valley Saturday morning, and the canyon did well Friday night Saturday morning, especially just south of Lake Samish

I've got between 3.5-4" here, its starting to taper off for now.

I've been locked away in a meeting for more than 2 hours, I was quite surprised to see what was going on outside when the meeting let out!!! At least an inch on the ground (probably closer to 2) and its starting to stick to the road in the Barkley area!

Warmed up to about 34 here and melting faster than it is falling. It's been very small flakes pretty much all morning up until now. Starting to see heavier flakes but the rate is not really increasing.

Barely a dusting here, but this picture did pop up on my FB feed as a memory from 2009. The "official" forecast was for a "trace" of snow. Win some lose some I guess

That's 4.99999% more than I understand!

Just went for a walk for lunch, and I am sweating...it is so friggin hot out there!!!! In all seriousness it went from 35-36 to 46 in less than an hour according to my weather station. I walked past a green space surrounded by trees (sheltered from the wind) and there is about 3 feet of fog hanging over the snow. Definitely a "tropical" feel to the air.

Meanwhile in Sumas....this picture was taken this morning and is circling FB and Twitter. (credit to Sumas PD)

Sure is a lot less grumbling here the past day or so. I would imagine some folks might need a cigarette after this event!

Scott Sistek did a pretty big write up on the model performance for the Puget Sound event: http://komonews.com/weather/scotts-weather-blog/euro-outshines-us-models-in-forecasting-our-big-snow-event

This storm has worked out pretty good for my neck of the woods. I measured about 1 hr ago and it came in at about 5" but with the wind and compacting, I'm guessing it was at least 6" I'll be I have 12-18" drifts in my back yard. Tonight has done well, I shoveled my driveway at 5pm (not quite 2"), and again at 9pm, and got 2-2.5" during that period. Of course I wish I got more but I can't complain. About 8pm I ran some errands, and the roads aren't too bad (loose snow over compact snow/ice) but I did see a Subaru in someone's yard (it had obviously spun out and landed there) and a big rig got stuck on the hill at Hannegan and Sunset Hwy. It will be interesting to see what tomorrow morning brings....

Definitely a very dry fine powder. I shoveled my front walk this afternoon (which is on the north face of my house), and of course it was wet from the sloppy snow we had this morning. A good chunk of the sidewalk still does not have snow on it thanks to the wind, and is now dry. I have a big wraparound covered porch, and it is starting to get some good drifts on it.

Down to 24 with a N wind sustained at around 11mph just NE of Bellingham. It's been snowing most of the evening but it's been a very fine powder, so I don't think we've added too much in the way of accumulation. The intensity has picked up in the past half hour so hopefully we will start adding to the totals. I pretty much decided Bellingham proper was going to be in the screw zone again, glad to see I am wrong!

Wow...just got a text that Bellingham Schools has already cancelled class tomorrow! I must admit, I am surprised the made the call this early (even with the snow on the ground.) I tried to take my son out to practice driving in the snow, and all of the main streets are bare and wet, and the neighborhoods are mostly bare and wet. Kinda hard to teach him how to drive in the snow on bare roads. We finally had to go out into the county to find some snowy roads. I was not sure how it was going to go considering he did $2k damage to my car on wet roads, but he actually did really well.

Sorry to hear that man. Thoughts and prayers to you and your wife, as well as your pastor's family and congregation. My wife works at the Cardiology office here in town, and this happens alot. She hates it when I go out to shovel our driveway.

Also snowing nicely on the NE side of Bellingham.

I have a buddy who is a State Trooper, and he stopped by my house a couple of hours ago and said pretty much all of Northern Whatcom County is a mess. He said most places Lynden North, then East of Smith Road got about 4-7" last night, up to 1" of ice overnight then it's been dumping snow all day. He said they've responded to 22 accidents (doesn't include what the County and City guys have responded to). He said there are tons of power outages and the winds have really kicked up up there. He said there were lots of trees down and Hwy 9 and one other road (may have been Smith) were closed with trees across them. Meanwhile in Bellingham....still just freezing rain.

To reiterate Brennan's post earlier, this has been a very weird event. It has been raining or drizzling most of the time since mid day yesterday but I still have about 60-70% of the snow I got yesterday morning. My rain gauge thawed for about 4 hours last night and recorded some of the rain that fell. This morning it's raining, the top of my garbage can has a thick layer of ice but no ice on deck railings or hanging off the roof of my shed, and it does not appear my car is frozen (haven't ventured out to check yet) Very weird event..... Edit: the trees are finally starting to accumulate some ice, and I am starting to get some icicles on my weather station

Listening to a scanner app for Whatcom County, starting to have quite a few issues of drivers struggling to keep the rubber side down. Temp still dropping at my house... I would love to see this stay as snow all day!

We have a dusting here in NE Bellingham. Temp popped up to 32 at one point last night but is back down around 28-29 now

I have to disagree! What the Euro tells me is that Portland is going to get even more snow this weekend. And it's going to be even more epic-er than the January event. Dare I say...it will be YUUUUGEE!!!! Biggest Snowstorm ever! 1.5 million inches!