Skagit Weather

It's pretty amazing how different it can feel based on location. If this is it for the winter (not likely, but still) it will go down as the most forgettable and second or third worst winter for snowfall up here this century. The lack of snowfall, cold temperatures, and subfreezing highs would make it comparable with some of the worst Niño winters. Up here you tend to know it's a bad winter if we fail to hit the teens and my lowest temperature so far is 21F. Meanwhile, SEA has more snowfall already than 11 of the 18 winters since '04-05 and its 37F minimum high temperature is comparable to many winters in the last couple decades. So the winter could end today in the Central/South Sound and from a stats prospective it probably wouldn't look too bad. I know it's only early December and we still have loads of time (and things look promising), but I'm really hoping we get multiple more opportunities (and based even on climo we should).

Yeah, when each model run comes out I do a quick 1-2 minute scan of the medium to long range. Basically I look at total precip/snow over the period just to get an idea of the potential or upcoming pattern changes. Other than that I really only look at specifics within the next 2-3 days.

It's been a pretty impressive run of cooler than normal temps up here. I still haven't been above 40F this month and haven't been above 41F in 9 days. After today it looks like we should get closer to average for a couple days before we end up hanging out below 40F again. Unfortunately it looks like my 8 day stretch of subfreezing lows will end today, but it should start up again in a couple days.

If this ended up verifying it would get to a ridiculous level. It makes me wonder what the biggest seasonal snowfall discrepancy ever is between my location and Seattle. But, as others have mentioned it looks pretty borderline anyways.

Well technically using this method of analysis, you could have a super warm November or super cold September and still be considered "fall-like" because a high of 50F every day in September or a high of 70F every day in November would still fit within the normal fall range.

There was a discussion earlier of how this year was the "Year without a Fall" in the PNW as a result of the September/October torch and the November freeze. I was interested in if there was a way to actually quantify this for some cities in Western Washington (I'm too lazy to do Oregon, but the data and analysis is quite simple to find/complete if you're interested). I first wondered if I could look at monthly averages. If you have a steep drop off from September to October or October to November in average temperatures then it may suggest you "skipped fall." The problem with such coarse analysis is what happens if the pattern change happens midway through the month? Then October ends up average even if the first half of the month was significantly above average and the second half was significantly below. Instead I decided to look at individual highs for each day during the meteorological fall (September 1 to November 30) and compare them to average values. Clearly meteorological fall is a better measure than astronomical fall because by December 21st most of the area has already bottomed out for high temperatures. I only looked at high temperatures because as discussed on here before, the average person probably doesn't pay that much attention to the low for the day. I could have also looked at precipitation, but that would have made the analysis more difficult and I'm not sure how you would distinguish summer precipitation from fall precipitation from winter precipitation. For Seattle (SEA), Bellingham (BLI), and Olympia (OLM) I looked at how many days each station had where the high temperature was outside the bounds of the average high temperature between September 1st and November 30th. For example, the average high at SEA on September 1st is 75F and the average high at SEA on November 30th is 49F. So I counted up how many days in each year of record the high was 75F or above (I decided to include the boundary values) and how many days the high was below 50F. I've included the top 10 years for each city below. Seattle In the period of record, autumn 2022 was the least "fall-like" on record. Only 56% of the days (total of 40 out of 91) featured a high between 50F and 75F. The next closest year was 1994 with 59% of days being "fall-like." In case you're wondering, 2016 and 1954 were the most "fall-like" autumns in Seattle with 91% and 92% (respectively) of the high temperatures falling within the normal range. Bellingham Bellingham is cooler than Seattle by September 1st with an average high of 71F, and because of that the warm Sept/Oct were even more anomalous. 1/3 of the season featured highs warmer than the autumn maximum and almost 50% of all the days were outside of the 49-70 range. This was significantly more outlier days than any other year (1975 featured 62% of "fall-like" days) while 2018 was the most "fall-like" with 91% of days falling within the normal range. Olympia Olympia starts September with an average high of 76F and ends November with an average high of 47F. Once again, 2022 was the least "fall-like" by a wide margin with 40 days (56%) which fell outside of the normal bounds. 1994 was next closest with 64% of abnormally warm or cool days. The most "fall-like" year for Olympia was 1954 (same as Seattle) when a full 95% of autumn days had highs that were within the normal range.

In the south and central sections yes, but the Olympics and North Cascades look about average. Now if the GFS verified all regions would be very happy.

That map looks like an overestimate. 0.6" over my house? Not happening this winter. Throw it out.

Yeah, I wouldn't mind having some sort of pattern reset with a bunch of snow for the mountains. The 06z GFS showed 160"+ in the North Cascades by the end of the run. While the snowpack is in a decent position right now, it would be nice if it really dumped up there for a week or two before the snow levels lowered again and we went into a cold and dry pattern. Wind kept the temperature up a bit last night, low of 28F with clouds moving in from the south.

Interestingly, today was actually cooler than yesterday here. High of 38F (versus 39F yesterday) and currently at my low for the day of 33F. Should probably be able to squeeze in a freeze before midnight.

And turned out even worse than I expected . Models were showing anywhere from 6-15" of snow for the coming week here last Sunday and I ended up with nothing. Never seen so much phantom snow in my life. But it does look like most other places Everett south met or exceeded expectations which is nice.

Ended up with 0.3" of precipitation last night which ideally would have translated to 3" of snow. This past week I've measured 0.65" of rain total so it's not like it's been dry up here, there just hasn't been the right mix of precipitation rates and cold temperatures. I've now seen snow on five different days and have nothing to show for it. I can see the snow line on Fidalgo Island this morning and it looks like it was around 3-400'. Hopefully the next round (if it comes sometime later this month or next) brings snow here.

Looks like it won't be quite cold enough up here. Temperature stalled out at 34F and more rain starting to mix in with the snow. No accumulation, but it was kind of fun to watch the waves of rain and snow for a couple hours.

I've been stuck around 35F now for about an hour, but it's almost all snow and the radar is looking a little better. Probably still need it to drop another degree or two to really see any accumulation.

It's interesting that you're colder than me but haven't been seeing any snowflakes. I started seeing them at 39F and now at 36F I would say it's 90% snow out there. And yeah, I'm on the northeastern edge of that band. It's not particularly heavy (I've picked up 0.05" of precip so far), but hoping that it keeps up for a while longer.