PNW December 2022, winter might be coming; but mostly canceled.

[MossMan]

16 minutes ago, Deweydog said:

We had a couple hours of rain/snow mix!

Hope your roof (and Snoopy) survived it! 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

10 minutes ago, Doinko said:

44/30 at PDX today, not bad. 

-6 departure at PDX and SLE today. Sub-40 highs at SLE and EUG. 

[snow_wizard]

1 hour ago, Olive1010 said:

Snow isn't very rare in the western Washington areas and Willamette valley during winter. Depends if La nina or el nino

I wouldn't call it rare at all actually.

[MossMan]

Just now, T-Town said:

I remember that forecast change as well. We lived in Renton at the time. We got several inches of snow, a legit ice storm that knocked power out for two days, another ten inches of snow, and then the deluge that caused all the mayhem. Definitely one of the most memorable weather events of my lifetime. 

I still have local news footage of that event…I might need to pull the VCR out of the attic and relive the madness! 

[snow_wizard]

1 minute ago, MossMan said:

Hope your roof (and Snoopy) survived it! 

Snoopy was having problems with less than an inch it appeared.

[joelgombiner]

2 minutes ago, Snownerd3000 said:

This must have hurt to publish. 

Their clients probably paid a lot of money for these insights lol. Reminds me of stock analysts who have zero track record of being right but make top dollar. 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Silver Falls had 47" snow depth at the end of January 2008, so our location was probably closer to 60". I heard people got concerned about roofs with that. 

We had about 3' of snow build up on our shop roof in February/March 2019, it caused a minor cave in. Our shop isn't in the best condition. It would probably take at least 4-5' of snow for me to start worrying to much about our roof on the house. 

[snow_wizard]

5 minutes ago, Snownerd3000 said:

This must have hurt to publish. 

Huge change from their earlier forecasts.  I think the last 5 or 6 weeks have left them kind of speechless.

[Doinko]

1 minute ago, snow_wizard said:

Huge change from their earlier forecasts.  I think the last 5 or 6 weeks have left them kind of speechless.

But what about Judah's machine learning model and the polar vortex about to destroy the east coast???

[MossMan]

3 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

I wouldn't call it rare at all actually.

Big snow events in my area every winter now starting back in December of 2017…That is a great stretch! 13-16 were bummers though. 

[Canadian guy]

16 minutes ago, Brian_in_Leavenworth said:

Bellingham and the surrounding area had snow beginning the evening of the 21st.  After Christmas the original forecast was for rain, but suddenly they changed the forecast to all snow.

Same here in Victoria. The snow started the evening of 21st. We then had a decent dump of snow on the 23rd. Temperatures did climb above freezing (barely) on Christmas Eve and the forecast was to moderate after Christmas. I woke up Christmas morning and the forecast changed to much colder temps and chance of snow for the coming week. All hell broke loose the evening of the 26th through the 29th. Over 3 feet fell that period and everything shut down for days. It was awesome. 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

CFS is trending towards a cold January again. 

Edited December 6, 2022 by SilverFallsAndrew

[Snownerd3000]

6 minutes ago, joelgombiner said:

Their clients probably paid a lot of money for these insights lol. Reminds me of stock analysts who have zero track record of being right but make top dollar. 

The thing is I actually agree with a lot of what they have to say regarding using analogs for long term general pattern expectations for a given season. Ie forecasting energy needs for given regions for the upcoming winter. The problem is pivoting that idea and pattern recognition into short term forecasting skills.

[Deweydog]

4 minutes ago, Doinko said:

But what about Judah's machine learning model and the polar vortex about to destroy the east coast???

PV unfortunately looks pretty stout a getting stouter for the foreseeable future.

[Snownerd3000]

4 minutes ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

CFS is trending towards a cold January again. 

Real question, since the CFS runs multiple times per day, how accurate is that system? It has to run at such a low resolution to come out multiple times daily, right? 

[AlTahoe]

26 minutes ago, TacomaWx said:

I was pretty worried about our roof here in 2019. Snow got as deep as 20” at the end and I was actually starting to get worried if it didn’t switch over it would’ve been bad. Can’t imagine getting 3 or more feet of snow here id be shoveling the roof. 

Last December here in town. I also shoveled my roof cause of an ice dam. 

[TacomaWx]

11 minutes ago, T-Town said:

I remember that forecast change as well. We lived in Renton at the time. We got several inches of snow, a legit ice storm that knocked power out for two days, another ten inches of snow, and then the deluge that caused all the mayhem. Definitely one of the most memorable weather events of my lifetime. 

There’s a lot of events that I wish I’d have been alive to see. The winter of 1950, January 1969 , November 1985, February 1989 and December 1996 all sound like they were insane. My grandparents all have stories of a lot of those events. 

[Snownerd3000]

9 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

Huge change from their earlier forecasts.  I think the last 5 or 6 weeks have left them kind of speechless.

We went to endless dry smoke heat dome to colder than normal for the last 6 weeks. I think we're all a little shocked amd thankful for the drastic turn around. 

[Snownerd3000]

man i really hope the is does transition back east like is modeled. 

 

[snow_wizard]

I have a copy of the map drawn in 1880 which shows the track of the two lows that caused all of the snow.  Anecdotal evidence suggests there was probably an AR event between the two lows.  The first low is the one that tracked from the NW and second one bottomed out around 28.40 inches.  Simply an astounding event.

I'm not sure what happened to the vast majority of the map but the important part is there.

 

[T-Town]

5 minutes ago, TacomaWx said:

There’s a lot of events that I wish I’d have been alive to see. The winter of 1950, January 1969 , November 1985, February 1989 and December 1996 all sound like they were insane. My grandparents all have stories of a lot of those events. 

 December 1990 was awesome too. 1950 was before my time and I was too young to really remember 1969, but the others on your list were all great. 

[Blizzard777]

13 minutes ago, MossMan said:

I still have local news footage of that event…I might need to pull the VCR out of the attic and relive the madness! 

Lol….got my 1996 vcr tape as well. Frozen water pipes to raging floods! Lived in Troutdale at the time.  

Lol, what a depressing day out there….yikes!  Drizzle mist, dark, cold, wet and depleting snowpack   
40/34 and currently 39* 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

5 minutes ago, Snownerd3000 said:

man i really hope the is does transition back east like is modeled. 

 

Well at least we aren’t totally torching either. Could end up pretty chilly at the surface too. Could all this be priming the system for an epic January? 

[Brian_in_Leavenworth]

17 minutes ago, Canadian guy said:

Same here in Victoria. The snow started the evening of 21st. We then had a decent dump of snow on the 23rd. Temperatures did climb above freezing (barely) on Christmas Eve and the forecast was to moderate after Christmas. I woke up Christmas morning and the forecast changed to much colder temps and chance of snow for the coming week. All hell broke loose the evening of the 26th through the 29th. Over 3 feet fell that period and everything shut down for days. It was awesome. 

I think you set a 24 hour snow record for Canada IIRC.

[TacomaWx]

1 minute ago, T-Town said:

 December 1990 was awesome too. 1950 was before my time and I was too young to really remember 1969, but the others on your list were all great. 

My grandpa was I think 7 years old at the time of 1950 and there was several feet of snow everywhere. Lots of drifting too. They had a huge igloo in their yard too he says. He also remembers the Columbus Day storm very well too apparently. 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

How did the euro weeklies look? I may have missed them. 

[snow_wizard]

4 minutes ago, Jginmartini said:

Lol….got my 1996 vcr tape as well. Frozen water pipes to raging floods! Lived in Troutdale at the time.  

Lol, what a depressing day out there….yikes!  Drizzle mist, dark, cold, wet and depleting snowpack   
40/34 and currently 39* 

I was surprised how much melting took place with a high of only 40 today.  Probably because it was so damp.  Looks like this dreary pattern won't last long though.

[MossMan]

5 minutes ago, Jginmartini said:

Lol….got my 1996 vcr tape as well. Frozen water pipes to raging floods! Lived in Troutdale at the time.  

Lol, what a depressing day out there….yikes!  Drizzle mist, dark, cold, wet and depleting snowpack   
40/34 and currently 39* 

Wow! We topped out at 34 today. Currently cloudy and 32.4. Didn’t really lose any snow today luckily. 

[T-Town]

2 minutes ago, TacomaWx said:

My grandpa was I think 7 years old at the time of 1950 and there was several feet of snow everywhere. Lots of drifting too. They had a huge igloo in their yard too he says. He also remembers the Columbus Day storm very well too apparently. 

Yeah my dad talked about the Columbus day storm. He wasn’t that impressed with January 1950 having lived in North Dakota until he was 12. 

[snow_wizard]

2 minutes ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

How did the euro weeklies look? I may have missed them. 

Very good cold signal for late Dec / early Jan.  PNA and EPO both solidly minus.

[snow_wizard]

1 minute ago, T-Town said:

Yeah my dad talked about the Columbus day storm. He wasn’t that impressed with January 1950 having lived in North Dakota until he was 12. 

Yeah....coming from there it was kind of business as usual for him.  He had no way of appreciating how epic that was for here.

[Terreboner]

Just now, snow_wizard said:

Very good cold signal for late Dec / early Jan.  PNA and EPO both solidly minus.

As long as the goods get here before the 25th!!!

[TT-SEA]

1 minute ago, MossMan said:

Wow! We topped out at 34 today. Currently cloudy and 32.4. Didn’t really lose any snow today luckily. 

Soupy air is on its way north.    

ECMWF shows dewpoints in the mid to upper 30 up there tomorrow as well.   It was very gunky and drippy here today.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Just now, Terreboner said:

As long as the goods get here before the 25th!!!

Foggy Christmas? 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

We never cleared out today in South Salem. Back at the house it was sunny. Looks like a 37/29 day. 

[snow_wizard]

21 minutes ago, Snownerd3000 said:

Real question, since the CFS runs multiple times per day, how accurate is that system? It has to run at such a low resolution to come out multiple times daily, right? 

They run it 4 times a day and usually you look at a composite of multiple runs to get a mean.

[TigerWoodsLibido]

Looks like it was 38F/33F today. Should we stay below 40F til midnight then it will be our 1st sub-40F of 22-23.

[snow_wizard]

4 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

Soupy air is on its way north.    

ECMWF shows dewpoints in the mid to upper 30 up there tomorrow as well.   It was very gunky and drippy here today.

Very gross for sure.  I got so used to the continental flavor of the past several weeks this is kind of a downer.

[High Desert Mat?]

1 hour ago, snow_wizard said:

Shocking lack of snow east of the Rockies.

I find it hard that western New York doesn’t have snow cover. 

[Phishy Wx]

1 hour ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

Nice inversion coming while I'm gone. Arctic air coming after Christmas!

arctic outbreak out here will be while I'm in NYC 12/27 - 1/2.  lock it in