PNW December 2022 - Part II

[SilverFallsAndrew]

1 minute ago, snow_wizard said:

The GFS is kind of interesting.  Pretty cool for a lot of the run and trying to shut off the Pacific.  This might be going somewhere.

It is going somewhere, just not yet. 

[snow_wizard]

1 hour ago, TT-SEA said:

Power just came back on after 26 hours.   The Snoqualmie Valley was just pounded with this system.    It would be interesting to understand the dynamics because we are often completely missed by windstorms that hit the Puget Sound.    

I guess there was major damage to main transmission lines.   They were using helicopters today to look for damage.   

What worked in our favor this time was that most areas were not hit hard so PSE could focus all their resources out here.   In 2006 we had to wait 10 long days.

I have no idea why your area got hit so hard and yet barely touched us here.  Wind is such a tricky thing.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Just now, snow_wizard said:

I have no idea why your area got hit so hard and yet barely touched us here.  Wind is such a tricky thing.

I guess people on the ridge above us are still without power. We got lucky here only being out about 15hours. 

[snow_wizard]

40 minutes ago, ShawniganLake said:

Warming originates over Siberia.  Remains to be seen if it evolves into a full blown SSW or just a weakened PV. A definitely don’t think an SSW is a necessity to PNW blasts but I do think it could help prevent the pacific from overwhelming the pattern 

 

It can't hurt.  There are already signs of the Pacific influence shutting down sooner than later.

[snow_wizard]

1 minute ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

I guess people on the ridge above us are still without power. We got lucky here only being out about 15hours. 

It does seem like there was a huge elevation factor with this one.  Maybe that's it.  Even with SEA it is higher than lot of the surrounding areas and they had some of the strongest winds right around Seattle.

[snow_wizard]

Models are insisting on a mini cold snap for early January.  Highs upper 30s to low 40s and frost for a lot of places.

[SouthHillFrosty]

Wow!

[CliffMassYelledAtMe]

19 minutes ago, SouthHillFrosty said:

Wow!

Make it so!

[Slushy Inch]

Interesting increase in heights in Alaska towards the end.

[Slushy Inch]

Pacific getting shutdown.

[Deweydog]

How’d the ICON look?

[Slushy Inch]

1 minute ago, Deweydog said:

How’d the ICON look?

I'm more interested in EPS right now.

[Skagit Weather]

Starting to look kind of dry for the next 10-14 days, especially once we hit the new year. Kind of continues the boom-or-bust cycle we've been in since...

[Brian_in_Leavenworth]

EPS shows no sign of shutting down the Pacific.  

 

[Slushy Inch]

Control.

[Slushy Inch]

1 minute ago, Brian_in_Leavenworth said:

EPS shows no sign of shutting down the Pacific.  

 

Feels like control has been out of step with EPS a lot lately.

[TigerWoodsLibido]

Uncle AL is gonna be there for 4-6 weeks or so. He'll be gone by Feb 1.

[VancouverIslandSouth]

4 hours ago, TT-SEA said:

Power just came back on after 26 hours.   The Snoqualmie Valley was just pounded with this system.    It would be interesting to understand the dynamics because we are often completely missed by windstorms that hit the Puget Sound.    

I guess there was major damage to main transmission lines.   They were using helicopters today to look for damage.   

What worked in our favor this time was that most areas were not hit hard so PSE could focus all their resources out here.   In 2006 we had to wait 10 long days.

Barely even noticed the wind up here. We haven't lost power in awhile. The last few outages were back in the summer and not even weather related. 

[NWbyNW]

Storm front coming in tomorrow could cause some strong wind gusts along Oregon's southern coast!  There will be a first hit early in the morning, but the stronger hit will be Thursday night, and into Friday.  This will effect the Washington Coast going into early Friday morning as winds howl up the Chehalis Gap.  By around 5am, the Peninsula and Strait could see strong gusts and it could effect coastal areas of the North Puget Sound. Possibly 30-40mph gusts. It should calm down by mid morning and be back to normal completely by noon.  

These winds, especially for Oregon, could impact the region yet again, such as Tillamook County which has just recently got their power back, and Josephine County which is still struggling to get power back.

The first batch of wind hits late Thursday, after 10pm.

The Washington Coast gets it's turn around midnight and into the early hours.  Winds and gusts remain for the Oregon Coast as well.

Things slow down for Oregon and now focus on the Olympic Peninsula.  Winds could travel through the straight and make for a gusty early morning for Skagit, Whatcom, and Snohomish Counties.  Depending on localized wind travel, it could be gusty for all of Clallam, Jefferson, and Kitsap Counties.  The strongest gusts will end by the time most people actually wake up and by 9am, it should be mostly all calm. 

[NWbyNW]

Oregon

Oregon remains with outages in Josephine, Clackamas, Washington and Yamhill Counties.  Pretty slow going, especially for those PDX metro counties.  A huge fix occurred this afternoon for Tillamook County.  15,000 residents got their power back within the past few hours and now only ones and twos remain fixing.  Still around 17-20k without power in Oregon.  As posted above, another round of gusty winds is going to hit the Oregon Coast Thursday night and into Friday.  This could further compound areas still dealing with outages or just punch people back into the dark again...

Washington

Power outages are all fixed in Washington State.  Crew finally fixed the Snoqualmie outage which was quite significant. They had crews in helicopters looking for the issue and finally fixed it.  Lots of trees and branches down. 

The outages from BC and California mentioned yesterday are all dealt with.  Humbolt County has power again in California after dealing with the wind storm and the earthquake. Some spotty outages in BC around Langley and on Vancouver Island still, but most have power again.

[Slushy Inch]

Big differences not too far out.

[Slushy Inch]

954 mb...

[TT-SEA]

5 hours ago, NWbyNW said:

Washington

Power outages are all fixed in Washington State.  Crew finally fixed the Snoqualmie outage which was quite significant. They had crews in helicopters looking for the issue and finally fixed it.  Lots of trees and branches down. 

 

 

Amazing age we live in!  

Throughout almost all of human history they did not even have electricity and now we can fix major damage in a day and quickly return us to all of our creature comforts.

Makes you wonder what would happen if we have a Carrington Event type of geomagnetic storm again.     That could literally happen at any time.  

[Terreboner]

Dumping out there this morning.  Over an inch already. 

[Terreboner]

7 minutes ago, Chris said:

Anecdotally I believe SSWs significantly increase the PNW odds in a Nino winter. 

Well yeah.  Something has to punch that air down here.  I think the rocky mountains still play a huge factor in cockblocking it though no matter what the forcing is.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

I never heard about the SSW having any impact on us, or even mentioned on this forum until the 2018 shebang. Then it happened again leading up to February 2019 and everyone went hog wild with it. 

[LowerGarfield]

32F and cool.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

GFS rolling out slow. Does not seem as if we are missing much. 

[LowerGarfield]

10 hours ago, SouthHillFrosty said:

Wow!

My parents had 4 inches of rain in less than 24 hours like 2-3 days ago.

[Hawksfan2008]

Hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and time with friends and family. That was about as wild a stretch of weather I’ve experienced as @TT-SEAsummarized up here. Time to bring in a dump truck to clear the branches in the yard, fix the damage to the fence, probably have some trees removed and install a generator. Excited for some quiet as well. Cheers all! 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

The warm rain nuked the base at Hoodoo. They were down to around 30", back up to 34" now, hopefully they can get some more snow out of this. 

[TacomaWx]

42 here after a low of 40. 5.67” of rain MTD. 

[Meatyorologist]

1 hour ago, Terreboner said:

Well yeah.  Something has to punch that air down here.  I think the rocky mountains still play a huge factor in cockblocking it though no matter what the forcing is.

The pacific ocean is pretty warm too

[TacomaWx]

Not sure how the last few triple dip Nina’s have performed over the last 150 years or so…but this one’s gotta be at or almost the top of the list. Had 15.5” in 2020-2021….11.3” in 2021-2022 and 6.0” so far in 2022-2023. Definitely better than the last one. 

[TT-SEA]

6 minutes ago, TacomaWx said:

42 here after a low of 40. 5.67” of rain MTD. 

SEA has now locked in a wetter than normal calendar year for 2022.   SEA needs another .45 before Saturday night to reach 40 inches for the year.    The fact that 2022 will end up wetter than normal using the increased annual rainfall average with the 1991-2020 base period is pretty amazing given that we had almost 5 months of drought in the middle of the year.  That speaks to how wet this spring was compared to normal.    

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Next week looks seasonably cool on the GFS. Thursday its only showing highs in the mid-upper 30s. 

[Doinko]

Temps look reasonable as well

[TacomaWx]

4 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

SEA has now locked in a wetter than normal calendar year for 2022.   SEA needs another .45 before Saturday night to reach 40 inches for the year.    The fact that 2022 will end up wetter than normal using the increased annual rainfall average with the 1991-2020 base period is pretty amazing given that we had almost 5 months of drought in the middle of the year.  That speaks to how wet this spring was compared to normal.    

I haven’t even looked at where we’re at YTD here in a bit but I’m sure it’s above normal. This month won’t end up very wet still but it’ll be our first above normal month since June. Definitely crazy considering how dry it was from late June-late October. 

[TacomaWx]

5 minutes ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

Next week looks seasonably cool on the GFS. Thursday its only showing highs in the mid-upper 30s. 

At this rate if we keep the below normal weather as the default this winter just might be the coldest since 2016-2017. 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

4 minutes ago, TacomaWx said:

At this rate if we keep the below normal weather as the default this winter just might be the coldest since 2016-2017. 

Down here I don't think that would even be difficult. There was a pretty significant N/S temp gradient for a lot of last winter, so it might be tougher in the Seattle area. The period next week is sort of reminding me of the late January 2021 period, at least from what we might expect with an observed weather standpoint.