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PNW February 2023 Weather Discussion - Meteorological winter finale


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Just now, Cold Snap said:

Based on this map looks like I average 10-12”. But since that is going only off winters since 2008 that doesn’t shock me that much. I’ve pulled off 10”+ IMBY every winter since 2018-2019. As well as in 2016-2017, 2011-2012, 2010-2011 and 2008-2009.

Yeah those averages are probably a bit higher than long term climo based on some big snow events in recent years but still very cool maps to look at. They definitely illustrate the snow hole around Olympia so far this winter. 

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47 minutes ago, SouthHillFrosty said:

 

I like reading all the comments critiquing people’s driving.  
 

Yes, the bus was going too fast,  because it’s a steep hill and it’s icy AF so it couldn’t slow down.  

Why was the bus breaking in the corner?  Because there were cars all the way across the road and he had nowhere to go.  He was desperately trying to slow down and not kill anybody.  

Why can’t people on the west coast drive when there is only 1” of snow?  I can’t think of anything worse to drive in than 1” of wet snow with a layer of ice underneath. Snow itself has pretty good traction.  Driving through 6 or 8” of snow is pretty D**n easy compared to a layer of ice with slush on top. 

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7 minutes ago, ShawniganLake said:

I like reading all the comments critiquing people’s driving.  
 

Yes, the bus was going too fast,  because it’s a steep hill and it’s icy AF so it couldn’t slow down.  

Why was the bus breaking in the corner?  Because there were cars all the way across the road and he had nowhere to go.  He was desperately trying to slow down and not kill anybody.  

Why can’t people on the west coast drive when there is only 1” of snow?  I can’t think of anything worse to drive in than 1” of wet snow with a layer of ice underneath. Snow itself has pretty good traction.  Driving through 6 or 8” of snow is pretty D**n easy compared to a layer of ice with slush on top. 

Feel better now that you got that off your chest?  😀

**REPORTED CONDITIONS AND ANOMALIES ARE NOT MEANT TO IMPLY ANYTHING ON A REGIONAL LEVEL UNLESS SPECIFICALLY STATED**

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6 minutes ago, ShawniganLake said:

I like reading all the comments critiquing people’s driving.  
 

Yes, the bus was going too fast,  because it’s a steep hill and it’s icy AF so it couldn’t slow down.  

Why was the bus breaking in the corner?  Because there were cars all the way across the road and he had nowhere to go.  He was desperately trying to slow down and not kill anybody.  

Why can’t people on the west coast drive when there is only 1” of snow?  I can’t think of anything worse to drive in than 1” of wet snow with a layer of ice underneath. Snow itself has pretty good traction.  Driving through 6 or 8” of snow is pretty D**n easy compared to a layer of ice with slush on top. 

Yeah many people from the Midwest or east coast usually enjoy the fluffy dry snow that falls on already frozen pavement which actually gives you pretty darn good traction. They also don’t know hills are all about. Wet sloppy Cascade Concrete and hills do not mix! 

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Elevation 580’ Location a few miles east of I-5 on the Snohomish Co side of the Snohomish/Skagit border. I love snow/cold AND sun/warmth! 

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6 minutes ago, ShawniganLake said:

I like reading all the comments critiquing people’s driving. 

Yes, the bus was going too fast,  because it’s a steep hill and it’s icy AF so it couldn’t slow down.  

Why was the bus breaking in the corner?  Because there were cars all the way across the road and he had nowhere to go.  He was desperately trying to slow down and not kill anybody.  

Why can’t people on the west coast drive when there is only 1” of snow?  I can’t think of anything worse to drive in than 1” of wet snow with a layer of ice underneath. Snow itself has pretty good traction.  Driving through 6 or 8” of snow is pretty D**n easy compared to a layer of ice with slush on top. 

You left out some big ones:

  1. Equipment for dealing with snow and ice. In snow country, roads are MUCH more thoroughly plowed, sanded, and salted than they are on the West Coast. That was one thing that shocked me when I first moved to this region. It makes a huge difference in how easy it is to drive during a snowfall.
  2. Practice, or lack thereof. West Coast drivers don’t get much practice driving on snow and ice. Even in snow country, with the far better winter road maintenance, the first significant snowfall of the season always results on chaos on the roads, as drivers relearn all the skills they forgot over the summer. Here, they never get proficiency.
It's called clown range for a reason.

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Just now, MossMan said:

Yeah many people from the Midwest or east coast usually enjoy the fluffy dry snow that falls on already frozen pavement which actually gives you pretty darn good traction. They also don’t know hills are all about. Wet sloppy Cascade Concrete and hills do not mix! 

Yeah it’s different here since the majority of our snow falls right around the freezing mark. Many times it starts out as rain too and then freezes. Doesn’t matter much how good of a driver you are at that point. Ice and frozen slush are bad for driving. 

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5 minutes ago, RentonHill said:

Interesting..

index (2).png

EPS is definitely more meaningful than the GEFS.    Unfortunately it trended worse in the mid range with more focus on CA.    Sort of feels like a chasing the carrot situation right now.   Two weeks ago we thought early February was going to be the time to shine.   Sometimes it's a delayed not denied situation though.   And other times it's just ends up being denied.  

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**REPORTED CONDITIONS AND ANOMALIES ARE NOT MEANT TO IMPLY ANYTHING ON A REGIONAL LEVEL UNLESS SPECIFICALLY STATED**

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1 hour ago, TacomaWx said:

I don’t get some people saying this is the most boring winter ever (western WA folks) Do you guys even remember 2012-2013 or 2015-2016? Even 2019-2020 was worse than this one…maybe a little better in PDX with the mid March event. 

2019-2020 was a bit snowier than this winter but I'd take this winter, the high of 25 degrees in December was pretty great.

I kind of liked 2015/2016. PDX topped 15" of rain in December 2015 and it was their wettest month ever. Then in January we had a subfreezing high with a small snow event. Nothing else besides that but November to January was fun.

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1 minute ago, TT-SEA said:

EPS is definitely more meaningful than the GEFS.    Unfortunately it trended worse in the mid range with more focus on CA.    Sort of feels like a chasing the carrot situation right now.   Two weeks ago we thought early February was going to be the time to shine.   Sometimes it's a delayed not denied situation though.   And other times it's just ends up being denied.  

Agree...SW first..then maybe some sliders for us starting to show up in the long range

index (6).png

index (5).png

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2 hours ago, BLI snowman said:

Might be they’re one and only. Nothing else in sight and the pattern looks pretty unfavorable as a whole as we move deeper into February. Of course they can occasionally get pounded in March so they have a little more time to play with.

Oh I’m sure it’ll be March. Textbook La Niña/+QBO evolution w/ IPWP MJO blowtorching the entire east coast mid/late Feb while W1 strat ongoing, then flip to cold/stormy 1st week of March.

Last 3 -ENSO/+QBO w/ W1 dominant Feb (2016/17, 2013/14, 2008/09) all had March as the dominant “winter” month out here.

But before that, mid/late Feb is gonna blowtorch massively out here. Possibly record breaking. 🔥 

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Just now, Phil said:

Oh I’m sure it’ll be March. Textbook La Niña/+QBO evolution w/ IPWP MJO blowtorching the entire east coast mid/late Feb while W1 strat ongoing, then flip to cold/stormy 1st week of March.

Last 3 -ENSO/+QBO w/ W1 dominant Feb (2016/17, 2013/14, 2008/09) all had March as the dominant “winter” month out here.

But before that, mid/late Feb is gonna blowtorch massively out here. Possibly record breaking. 🔥 

Sounds like a nice SE ridge in mid/late February then. Let’s see how that works out for us.

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Summer ☀️ grows while Winter ❄️  goes

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🌦🌨 Welcome to February 🥶🐛(The green thing is supposed to be Fred the Yard Slug)

Fox12 7-Day Forecast

Well, it looks like Fred the Yard Slug(c)Rob 2022 may see his shadow yet again this year. Just like last year I have no idea what this means in terms of a late Winter or an early arrival of Spring. Why a Yard Slug you might ask? Well there aren't any Ground Hogs in my back yard. I did copyright it though, but I will allow permission for you to use it. Neat.
https://webpubcontent.gray.tv/kptv/weather/7DayForecast.jpg
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2 hours ago, Skagit Weather said:

The lack of snowfall, especially on the East Coast, inspired a discussion earlier this week about whether or not parts of the country have had a "good" winter. I was intrigued to see if I could visually represent how much snow had fallen, especially compared to average.

NOAA through the National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center (NOHRSC) has a product available for the last few years that estimates the amount of snow that falls each season.

National Map

Interactive (zoomable) Map

I'm not exactly sure everything that goes into the algorithm, but it sounds like it uses a combination of official station snowfall records, CoCoRahs observations, radar estimates, and an algorithm that accounts for terrain and historic precipitation. I imagine the estimates aren't perfect, but in my experience that actually do a pretty good job at snowfall estimations in Western WA. I believe the resolution of the data is around 3km, but it may be slightly higher than that.

I don't love the color bounds presented by the official data, so one of the first things I did was make the bins finer so that we could see snowfall differences between 6" and 12" and changed the color scheme slightly. Here's the map of the snowfall up to Jan 29th for the PNW:

PNW_seasonalsnowfall.thumb.png.763839922f6e792faaa18568a4dec9c8.png

You can see how much of Washington north of Everett has picked up above 8" of snow this winter while PDX to SEA has seen 1-4" and there's not much south of PDX.

NOHRSC has data for every winter from 2008-09 to 2022-23. Obviously that's not completely representative of historical climate norms, but 15 years should be relatively representative of the current climate state. I took the data from all 15 years and averaged it together to get both an average seasonal snowfall (how much snow usually falls during the water year (Oct 1-Sept 30) and how much snow falls usually during the season to date (Jan 29 was when I first got my data).

Here is the average season to date snowfall for the PNW (so 9/30-01/29):

pnw_avgS2Dsnowfall.thumb.png.f92ccdda754f8b59fe00650a30e7f1b9.png

And here is the average seasonal snowfall (total) for the PNW:

pnw_avgseasonalsnowfall.thumb.png.b737f683235d8a96c0d73aac78cd0491.png

For the entire season the Seattle area averages 6-8", BLI averages 8-12", PDX averages 4-6". I also highlighted the max average value (both in this image and nationally) which to no-one's surprise is Mount Baker with 835" of annual snowfall (look for the star). There might be specific locations that receive greater snowfall, but they were not detected with this resolution of data.

And here's the national average seasonal snowfall:

national_avgseasonalsnowfall.thumb.png.01bd0def156e146558165a7171391668.png

Those maps really underscore how much snowier this winter has been IMBY than in the region as a whole

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It's called clown range for a reason.

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3 minutes ago, Gradient Keeper said:

🌦🌨 Welcome to February 🥶🐛(The green thing is supposed to be Fred the Yard Slug)

Fox12 7-Day Forecast

Well, it looks like Fred the Yard Slug(c)Rob 2022 may see his shadow yet again this year. Just like last year I have no idea what this means in terms of a late Winter or an early arrival of Spring. Why a Yard Slug you might ask? Well there aren't any Ground Hogs in my back yard. I did copyright it though, but I will allow permission for you to use it. Neat.
https://webpubcontent.gray.tv/kptv/weather/7DayForecast.jpg

If Fred sees his shadow he gets afraid of drying out, he heads back underground, and it portends an early summer dry season.

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It's called clown range for a reason.

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34 minutes ago, Gradient Keeper said:

🌦🌨 Welcome to February 🥶🐛(The green thing is supposed to be Fred the Yard Slug)

Fox12 7-Day Forecast

Well, it looks like Fred the Yard Slug(c)Rob 2022 may see his shadow yet again this year. Just like last year I have no idea what this means in terms of a late Winter or an early arrival of Spring. Why a Yard Slug you might ask? Well there aren't any Ground Hogs in my back yard. I did copyright it though, but I will allow permission for you to use it. Neat.
https://webpubcontent.gray.tv/kptv/weather/7DayForecast.jpg

If PDX stays at 55 or lower the next 7-days it will be their longest such stretch since 2016-17.

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Summer ☀️ grows while Winter ❄️  goes

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49 minutes ago, Phishy Wx said:

black ice from previous events with a skiff of snow on top, the worst.

 

we had that yesterday and this morning.  wrecks all over town.  glad I work from home.  wife's commute is usually 7 min, took 30 this morning

Bet you can’t wait until you can move to a place with colder and snowier winters/milder winters.

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Summer ☀️ grows while Winter ❄️  goes

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1 hour ago, RentonHill said:

365541271_14-kmEPSGlobalNorthAmerica850hPaTempAnom(8).gif

That block over the Beaufort Sea/Western Arctic plays a crucial role insofar as continental cold is concerned.

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