BLI snowman

It's coming?

Their climate really isn't comparable to anywhere in the lower 48. For all intents and purposes they don't have a true spring or a true fall, as most people would see it. Essentially a 2 season climate there. They tend to go into winter just as quickly.

Fairbanks actually has 19.75 hours of daylight now, so it's quite a significant difference. And yes, the warm weather there in the last week certainly helps. But that's normal for them. They warm up incredibly quickly in May as the daylight rapidly increases. They go from a 53/30 average on May 1 to a 67/44 average on May 31. And probably leaf out quickly every year.

The 18 hours of daylight probably helps.

Not a bad 18z run. Two great weekends in a row at least.

I think the western metro actually did a bit better in 1992-93 than Portland/Vancouver. More like the WV. The clipper storm on 1/8/93 dropped a few inches west of the West Hills while the outflow ate it up to the east.

Tim is a true Golden God.

Yeah, 1992-93 was a really nice winter for most of the region and amazing for the Central WV. You guys really killed it in early to mid January while the gorge overpowered the PDX metro. We cleaned up a bit in December and had a few sloppy inches in late January. And then the February 18-19 storm was amazing for the whole Eugene to Portland corridor, stopping just to the north of here around Woodland. Actually that might have been the last storm that dropped 6"+ for the entire EUG to VUO region. February 2014 kind of managed it as well but that was spaced out between a couple events.

So dew for some serious southerly flow fireworks. Probably even more so than for a major arctic outbreak, actually.

Yeah, it was dope. Likely the snowiest since 1968-69 (1979-80 was close in some places around here but that was mostly just from the one storm). 2003-04 and 1992-93 are the only other winters that I've seen crack 20" in this area, and they only both just barely made it.

We hit 35" in 2008-09 where I was living, in Brush Prairie, WA. I think we could ride our little streak out until the next Nino, but we'll see. Neutral ENSO can be hit/miss. You have your gems like 2013-14 and 2003-04, but you also have your turds like 2012-13. I think the last 14 years have at least re-established that Ninas (particularly weaker ones) are still generally the best for lowland snowfall. After the travesties of 1998-01 and slow torture of 2007-08.

Yeah, really has been a consistently good stretch for here since 2008, after an absolutely awful decade leading up to that. 2011-12 had a good amount of slop here and then 2008-09 was obviously huge. So we're at 7/14 winters that have at least cracked 10" here (08-09, 11-12, 13-14, 16-17, 17-18, 20-21, 21-22). My area got fairly lucky in 2017-18 and was well placed for the most part in each event. Then we paid the price and got extremely unlucky in 2018-19 and finished with 2". Which was about as bad as anyone north of Red Bluff, CA.

I wasn't living here at the time, but like many of our deeper outflow events, it seemed like that was another one where the easterlies dried things out closer to the river, and then amounts increased in the less wind-prone areas. PDX measured 7.3" with that but I know amounts really increased to the north and west in Clark County. I think my current location had around 12" that week, most of which fell on the 6th during that big deformation zone that stretch out to the coast.

Seemed like the convective frontogenesis really exploded in and around both sides of the West Hills with some orographic flavor on 1/10/17. PDX and points east had some dry air mixing in during the latter stages of that and only had 8", but downtown had 12" and there were reports of 20" in the West Hills. I live in a pretty ideal location within the metro and got nailed with both, 15"+ in February 2021 and 12"+ in January 2017. I like this area because downsloping and gorge outflow really doesn't hamper us as much as a bit further to the east, but we still benefit from the low level cold air being near the gorge.

The inner west metro (Hillsboro/Tigard/Beaverton) really needs strong gorge outflow to get the bigger totals. Like with the Willamette Valley to the south, they'll often end up on the wrong side of the equation when there's a shallow gorge outflow or warm air bubble aloft type of event like January 1980, January 1998, and February 2021. Once you get west of Hillsboro that issue is negated more by the cold air damming you get by being closer to the Coast Range. So Gaston, Forest Grove, Banks, and North Plains can do pretty well with the more borderline overrunning events when Portland doesn't.