snow drift

I hope to God it isn't another January with a ridge parked over us. That does seems to be a very stable pattern though.

The 00z ECMWF will be telling. Does it hold its ground or cave to the gfs?

Very pleasant... 18 out of the last 21 days have been basically sunny here.   

 

Tomorrow and Sunday look pretty nice as well.   Saturday is the only the day with a good chance of meaningful rain.    Next week looks like more of the same too. 

The sunshine looks glorious.

2011-12 was warm overall for the West. 2007-08 was cool in the SW but had near average temperatures for the NW, definitely not a genuine cold one by any stretch for us here. I would say that the closest recent example was 2008-09, which had a solidly cold December across the entire West while the East torched. But the opposite occurred the following month, which negated most of the overall disparities that winter.

 

Topographical differences do explain a lot of the longitudinal bias in airmass trajectory but that certainly hasn't stopped a cold West/warm East setup from occurring many times in the past with help from large-scale blocks. Most  examples were before the 1976 PDO flip. The dearth of examples since then is far more noticeable. December 2008, January 1993, December 1990, and November 1985 would probably be the best examples since then. 

I would throw in the winter of 1978-79. It is another great example.