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

[TacomaWx]

3 minutes ago, T-Town said:

Still mostly liquid here. Down to 35 though. 

Been all snow for a little bit here but it’s not sticking. 

[snow_wizard]

2 minutes ago, SnowWillarrive said:

For once I want to see Mossman get 1 inch while every other location gets 3 feet #resilience 

We actually got more than him earlier in the week.

[Ice_is_Everywhere]

3 minutes ago, BurienSnowGlobe said:

Dumping rain here at home in Central District. Our manager at the pizza shop called and said it was dumping snow in Burien so we shut down delivery. Any reports over there of sticking snow or did they just want to go home? 

It’s sticking here, a little north, but roads are mostly wet.

[Front Ranger]

23 minutes ago, BLI snowman said:

The low level airmass in the Basin in early January 2016 was definitely colder. On the other hand, the window for snowfall with that was really pretty minor due to the rapid WAA aloft and we basically just cashed in with that first solid band. Sunday appears to at least have a longer window for snow with a steady supply of offshore flow throughout the lower levels throughout the duration and with no real WAA aloft.

I really think it will mostly just come down to precip rates, especially since there is that little warm layer aloft prior to the onset and it will take a little bit to get the whole column back below freezing. I think 31-32 is our best case scenario with it, maybe closer to 33 over at subtropical PDX.

Not much. It's 18/12 currently in Pasco.

[SnowWillarrive]

1 minute ago, snow_wizard said:

We actually got more than him earlier in the week.

Yea. Snow seems to be picking up. Now. 

[MR.SNOWMIZER]

5 minutes ago, KingstonWX said:

People who live in your area can't complain about not getting snow. There's like 57,945 examples of times when you got snow measured in feet when the people closer to the sound had to deal with cold rain. Those are the rules, I don't make them.

Yes I can remember many many arctic air on shore flow deals that people in the cascade foothills get slammed and us over here on kitsap in the rain shadow get nothing.  ZERO.

[Deweydog]

4 minutes ago, Front Ranger said:

I think you're looking too much at current obs and not what they will be on Sunday.

The source air mass in 2016 was not colder than this one.

It was 24 degrees here when snow began on 1/3/16. 

[fubario]

Oly is all rain. Has been since early evening. lame

[KingstonWX]

Fully snowing here now finally. Let's see what we can make happen.

[SouthHillFrosty]

3 minutes ago, TacomaWx said:

Been all snow for a little bit here but it’s not sticking. 

Going to be tough. My street accumulation is actually starting to melt. Only 32 degrees 

[KingstonWX]

1 minute ago, MR.SNOWMIZER said:

Yes I can remember many many arctic air on shore flow deals that people in the cascade foothills get slammed and us over here on kitsap in the rain shadow get nothing.  ZERO.

Yep, definitely seems more common than not, though you guys are in a similar position. You guys get tons of snow when no one else in the entire region outside of the mountains does. 

[TacomaWx]

This has been really fun to track. Had no high expectations for this going in and still don’t…but all the uncertainty and microclimates are all in play. Very cool night on the forum to see all these places snowing or changing over in this very marginal event. 

[SouthHillFrosty]

2 minutes ago, SnowWillarrive said:

Yea. Snow seems to be picking up. Now. 

How much snow does Ravensdale get a year? Probably at least 20

[T-Town]

Just like that it’s mostly snow here. 

[KingstonWX]

I may someday sell my house and move to the hills outside of Shelton for the snow and Mexican food trucks. 

[Front Ranger]

4 minutes ago, Deweydog said:

It was 24 degrees here when snow began on 1/3/16. 

PDX was 32/28 that day. 

Not hard to imagine them being in the upper 20s as precip begins Sunday.

[TacomaWx]

Just now, SouthHillFrosty said:

Going to be tough. My street accumulation is actually starting to melt. Only 32 degrees 

The majority of our snow the past few days has been 32-34 degrees and mostly only sticking on elevated surfaces and not so much on the roads. Only time it really accumulated on the roads was briefly during some heavy snow this morning when it was 31. 

[snow_wizard]

The GFS shows precip picking up substantially for the East Puget Sound Lowlands a bit later in the evening.  Still some potential.

[Winterdog]

4 minutes ago, KingstonWX said:

People who live in your area can't complain about not getting snow. There's like 57,945 examples of times when you got snow measured in feet when the people closer to the sound had to deal with cold rain. Those are the rules, I don't make them.

Thanks for putting me in my place.  I truly am a disgrace to the human race.  I guess I have forgotten those times I have measured my snow in feet.  Thanks for the reminder, I’ll be a better person for it.

[Deweydog]

28 minutes ago, Perturbed Member said:

Any thoughts on this not so believable looking mechanism driving the precip on Sunday? The low is far away and looks fairly anemic. Seems a bit hard to believe you can get a widespread area of 0.4+ in QPF seemingly out of nothing.

From a distance, the circulation is similar to a summertime thunderstorm pattern with quite a bit of deep divergence, slowly lowering heights and the weak frontogenesis near the gorge.  I don’t think the low position is a big factor.

[Randyc321]

58 minutes ago, HoodCanalBridge said:

It's interesting.  We had snow this morning at work - in Kingston - and no snow at home.   But these hood canal events seem to be favorable for my neighborhood.   I grew up and bought my first house in Kingston, and the microclimates just in North Kitsap are crazy!

Include Central Kitsap in there.  Silverdale to Seabeck is less than 8  miles.  You can go from a mild beach to a foot of snow in those 8 miles.  Then there is @MR.SNOWMIZER's neighborhood. Snowmageddon.  Kitsap is super varied.  I one time drove less than a mile on HWY 3 coming up from the auto center and the temp dropped 10 degrees and the rain changed to full snow.  

[Deweydog]

1 minute ago, Front Ranger said:

PDX was 32/28 that day. 

Not hard to imagine them being in the upper 20s as precip begins Sunday.

That…. will not happen.

[BLI snowman]

2 minutes ago, Front Ranger said:

Not much. It's 18/12 currently in Pasco.

It's trying, but the 2016 cold pool got very well rooted and firmly established throughout the entire Basin rather than just the northern half. Pasco was 22/12 on 1/2/2016, Pendleton was 21/17, and The Dalles was 27/24.

Granted, the WA stuff will bleed south and westwards over the next 36 hours so I do think it should be sufficient by Sunday morning to feed the Portland area with appropriately deep outflow.

[Front Ranger]

Just now, Deweydog said:

That…. will not happen.

Ok 

May not, but I bet the forecast for 1/3/16 didn't show that either.

[KingstonWX]

2 minutes ago, Winterdog said:

Thanks for putting me in my place.  I truly am a disgrace to the human race.  I guess I have forgotten those times I have measured my snow in feet.  Thanks for the reminder, I’ll be a better person for it.

[KingstonWX]

2 minutes ago, Randyc321 said:

Include Central Kitsap in there.  Silverdale to Seabeck is less than 8  miles.  You can go from a mild beach to a foot of snow in those 8 miles.  Then there is @MR.SNOWMIZER's neighborhood. Snowmageddon.  Kitsap is super varied.  I one time drove less than a mile on HWY 3 coming up from the auto center and the temp dropped 10 degrees and the rain changed to full snow.  

Tbh, that's just part of the fun. I love it.

[Deweydog]

Just now, BLI snowman said:

It's trying, but the 2016 cold pool got very well rooted and firmly established throughout the entire Basin rather than just the northern half. Pasco was 22/12 on 1/2/2016, Pendleton was 21/17, and The Dalles was 27/24.

Granted, the WA stuff will bleed south and westwards over the next 36 hours so I do think it should be sufficient by Sunday morning to feed the Portland area with appropriately deep outflow.

More importantly, the cold pool in the valley itself was very well established. 

[MR.SNOWMIZER]

3 minutes ago, KingstonWX said:

Yep, definitely seems more common than not, though you guys are in a similar position. You guys get tons of snow when no one else in the entire region outside of the mountains does. 

The thing that sucks out here is a bunch of our snow ends with rain. I wish we got more going into cold air. That's why this is a special event because even though we don't have arctic air we are not going into a warm wet pattern. We will have snow on the ground maybe till Christmas now. 

[WeatheringLoyalHeights]

Love watching this transition in real time. Heavy drops and splats to near silence. More snow than rain here, and our forecast also went from all rain to 3”+. Just needs to drop a degree or two. 

[Front Ranger]

2 minutes ago, BLI snowman said:

It's trying, but the 2016 cold pool got very well rooted and firmly established throughout the entire Basin rather than just the northern half. Pasco was 22/12 on 1/2/2016, Pendleton was 21/17, and The Dalles was 27/24.

Granted, the WA stuff will bleed south and westwards over the next 36 hours so I do think it should be sufficient by Sunday morning to feed the Portland area with appropriately deep outflow.

Yeah, temps tomorrow in the basin should be telling.

[skywatcher]

East wind is really picking up here, temp has dropped down to 35 now as the dew point rises. Definitely getting some flurries now, pretty light stuff though

[SnowWillarrive]

5 minutes ago, SouthHillFrosty said:

How much snow does Ravensdale get a year? Probably at least 20

Well last Christmas season we had probably 20 inches over the course of a week. I’m not exactly sure what our seasonal average is. We can do pretty decent though at times. 

[GHweatherChris]

32 degrees, snow is sticking for now, still somewhat small flakeage.

[TT-SEA]

Just now, SnowWillarrive said:

Well last Christmas season we had probably 20 inches over the course of a week. I’m not exactly sure what our seasonal average is. We can do pretty decent though at times. 

How much did you have in February 2019?

[Doinko]

2 minutes ago, Front Ranger said:

Yeah, temps tomorrow in the basin should be telling.

Hoping for an overperformance of the cold pool

[Front Ranger]

1 minute ago, Deweydog said:

More importantly, the cold pool in the valley itself was very well established. 

With deep offshore flow, I'm not sure how much that matters?

[Deweydog]

2 minutes ago, Front Ranger said:

Ok 

May not, but I bet the forecast for 1/3/16 didn't show that either.

Temps were absolutely not in question with that event. It was much more about precip type based on the approaching warm layer behind the shortwave.

[Perturbed Member]

00z IBM GRAF is interesting.

Good news is the GRAF agrees with GFS/GEM/NAM/RGEM on precip amounts. Shows 0.37 in for PDX on Sunday. 

It is a bit warmer than the Euro and GFS. 37F with a DP of 23F before the precip arrives. East winds gusting 25-30 mph. It only shows ~1 inch for PDX because the surface temps never drop below 34F. A bit surprising since there really isn't any WAA with this setup and it isn't clear how the surface temp will barely budge given the solid east winds are maintained the entire time. 

Even if PDX ends up at 34F and wet snow the whole time, I suspect at least some parts of the PDX metro will probably hit 32F in this scenario. 

[Requiem]

9 minutes ago, TacomaWx said:

This has been really fun to track. Had no high expectations for this going in and still don’t…but all the uncertainty and microclimates are all in play. Very cool night on the forum to see all these places snowing or changing over in this very marginal event. 

Here's hoping to actually see it next time instead of just tracking it 

[SnowWillarrive]

Just now, TT-SEA said:

How much did you have in February 2019?

We did very well out here back than. Snow on the ground for a few weeks. I didn’t measure it, but definitely one of my most memorable snowfalls in recent history.  There was a very sharp cut off though just west of here. 

[BurienSnowGlobe]

4 minutes ago, WeatheringLoyalHeights said:

Love watching this transition in real time. Heavy drops and splats to near silence. More snow than rain here, and our forecast also went from all rain to 3”+. Just needs to drop a degree or two. 

Waiting for that silence here

[VancouverIslandSouth]

3 minutes ago, MR.SNOWMIZER said:

The thing that sucks out here is a bunch of our snow ends with rain. I wish we got more going into cold air. That's why this is a special event because even though we don't have arctic air we are not going into a warm wet pattern. We will have snow on the ground maybe till Christmas now. 

How do you normally do going into Arctic events. It seems like your area has a lot of similar dynamics to East Vancouver Island. The Shawnigan - Parksville almost always gets snow going into an Arctic event.

[TT-SEA]

Its 37 in North Bend right now and it looks like there is liquid precip at the Snoqualmie Ridge exit.    Nothing falling here.   Not sure what is happening with the east wind... but North Bend was the coldest spot in the lowlands on Tuesday night and is one of the warmer spots tonight.   I think its precip intensity dependent to the west.   

 

[BLI snowman]

7 minutes ago, Deweydog said:

More importantly, the cold pool in the valley itself was very well established. 

True. Station of the Gods pulled off a lucky 13 that morning.

[SnowWillarrive]

1 minute ago, TT-SEA said:

Its 37 in North Bend right now and it looks like there is liquid precip at the Snoqualmie Ridge exit.    Nothing falling here.   Not sure what is happening with the east wind... but North Bend was the coldest spot in the lowlands on Tuesday night and is one of the warmer spots tonight.   I think its precip intensity dependent to the west.   

 

That is shocking to me. 

[Deweydog]

6 minutes ago, Front Ranger said:

With deep offshore flow, I'm not sure how much that matters?

Call me old fashioned, but I always feel a tad better about frozen precipitation chances when temperatures are well below freezing.

[bainbridgekid]

Dumping and roads went from wet to white in 10 minutes here. Still have 4” on the ground too so it’s been a really snowy feeling week.

 

[TT-SEA]

2 minutes ago, SnowWillarrive said:

That is shocking to me. 

Update... there is some very light snow here now.

[TT-SEA]

1 minute ago, bainbridgekid said:

Dumping and roads went from wet to white in 10 minutes here. Still have 4” on the ground too so it’s been a really snowy feeling week.

 

Wow!    Very cool.

[Weiner Warrior]

32.4 with a DP 31.1. Light snow. 

 

Sat for an hour watching the light earlier waiting for it to start. Gave up and turned on Gold Rush. Started 5 mins later.