PNW February 2023 Weather Discussion - Meteorological winter finale

[MossMan]

3 minutes ago, Cold Snap said:

I’m back onboard!! 

[FroYoBro]

5 minutes ago, Perturbed Member said:

Yeah it was predictable. They got caught asleep at the wheel for the big one and now issue warnings and advisories for even a trace. Rest of these "events" are almost certainly 0 snow in the city itself and an inch or two of wet snow in outlying areas or hills. Conversational snow.

Hopefully the NWS actually pays attention next time and also focuses on meteorology instead of pure statistical analysis of their 2 favorite ensemble models the SREF and NBM. 

The setup actually looks decent for Portland tonight. That low is to our west to allow some weak offshore flow to build this evening and it lifts a possible band of snow through the metro area late tonight. Lowest elevations could pick up some sticking snow. The rest of the week looks meh for the actual city. 

[MillCreekMike]

Welp I definitely got the strong CZ I’ve been wanting… Too bad it’s not cold enough

[Meatyorologist]

Mesoscale models are growing happy about bringing in another round of snow this evening to the Sound. Offshore radar is juicy and the profile is convective... Could get real interesting. These are the kinds of snow events that when they work out, they can dump quite a bit of unexpected snow.

[Phishy Wx]

 

[MWG]

They added another WSA on top of the WSW for 1500'. I hope we get something for us 1400' plebs! 

[TT-SEA]

17 minutes ago, MossMan said:

I’m back onboard!! 

It shows like 8 inches for you and only 2 inches for me!   

I was really expecting to get decently buried up here this week.   But the next system on Thursday and Friday appears to be too warm even for my area... so it all comes down to Tuesday.  

[TT-SEA]

21 minutes ago, Meatyorologist said:

Mesoscale models are growing happy about bringing in another round of snow this evening to the Sound. Offshore radar is juicy and the profile is convective... Could get real interesting. These are the kinds of snow events that when they work out, they can dump quite a bit of unexpected snow.

Seems like focus will be right over the Seattle area too.

[WildrootParable]

After all day of full sun and bluebird skies, in the last 10-15 minutes we've completely clouded over and we're in a snowglobe! We had a lot of melting but there's still a few inches on the grass and gravel, so I'm curious to see how things go tonight when the temperature drops. 

[joelgombiner]

16 minutes ago, Phishy Wx said:

 

Euro 

[Phishy Wx]

4 minutes ago, joelgombiner said:

Euro 

I don't really get excited about any of the other Globals.  I monitor them all but yeah, King Euro indeed.

 

Interesting enough UKMET is 2nd.

[T-Town]

Incoming again maybe. 

[bainbridgekid]

18 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

Seems like focus will be right over the Seattle area too.

Pretty skeptical on tonight for Seattle with shadowing. WSW flow looks like it’ll bring scattered accumulations in the South Sound but I have a hard time imagining much makes it North of Seattle. Tomorrow night has my full attention though for sure. Temps look a couple degrees cooler than last night. 

[The Cats Meow]

Absolute down pour of rain and 41.

 

[SnowySeeker50]

Boring rain. Next blob please

[MossMan]

Currently 38.8 degrees, DP 30 degrees. 
.12” of melted snow on the day, 4.79” for the month, 9.55” for the year. 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Today over achieved like crazy, our biggest calendar day snowfall of the year, quite possible we can add the inch or two necessary to get to 10” on the day. Some sunbreaks now and a little late afternoon melting, currently 33 on a 34/31 day. 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

53 minutes ago, Cold Snap said:

This looks like a roided up version of the NAM. 

[TT-SEA]

2 minutes ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

Today over achieved like crazy, our biggest calendar day snowfall of the year, quite possible we can add the inch or two necessary to get to 10” on the day. Some sunbreaks now and a little late afternoon melting, currently 33 on a 34/31 day. 

What is your snow depth?

[GHweatherChris]

The feature off shore will definitely be impacting well before tomorrow night.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

7 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

What is your snow depth? 

About 12-14”. We peaked at a 10” depth Thursday, by yesterday evening it had melted/settled to about 5-6”. So we have more than doubled it today. This has been very wet snow so there has been a little melting and some settling this afternoon too. 

Edited February 27 by SilverFallsAndrew

[T-Town]

17 minutes ago, T-Town said:

Incoming again maybe. 

This one looks headed for @TacomaWx

[lowlandsnow]

Cliff Mass's article is very confusing did he accidentally put cm for the ECMWF?

[VancouverIslandSouth]

Wow the Tofino area is a mess:

 

[Cold Snap]

3 minutes ago, GHweatherChris said:

The feature off shore will definitely be impacting well before tomorrow night.

Some models are showing it rotating a band of moisture up from the south tomorrow morning.

[TT-SEA]

Here is a good view on the system coming in.  First band reaches the coast early tomorrow morning but that splits apart as it moves inland.   Then the surface low comes inland on Tuesday morning and that is where the focus of attention has been on here in the Puget Sound area.

[Requiem]

Hmmm fairly juicy precip coming offshore-- might be good for some hillier areas.

[Skagit Weather]

4 hours ago, TT-SEA said:

The 12Z EPS is pretty emphatic about the block lifting away later in the run... seems like this would lead to a wet pattern.

A wet pattern sounds good to me! We're still significantly behind precip on the year (I'm at 4.70" which is about half of normal), although February seems to have been closer to average for the mountains and the snowpack is starting to approach average (still pretty low for a la niña year though).

 

[MillCreekMike]

That CZ is so thin lol. It’s hanging on though! It’s about a mile, maybe even less than a mile north of me

[TacomaWx]

8 minutes ago, T-Town said:

This one looks headed for @TacomaWx

Heavy ice pellets/snow right now. Grounds white. 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

4 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

Here is a good view on the system coming in.  First band reaches the coast early tomorrow morning but that splits apart as it moves inland.   Then the surface low comes inland on Tuesday morning and that is where the focus of attention has been on here in the Puget Sound area.

Too bad it splits like that. Do you have a precip total map for this time period?

[GHweatherChris]

Yep, like I said earlier the system offshore will be impacting sooner than tomorrow night.

[T-Town]

2 minutes ago, TacomaWx said:

Heavy ice pellets/snow right now. Grounds white. 

Nice. Looks like more on the way. 

[TT-SEA]

1 minute ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

Too bad it splits like that. Do you have a precip total map for this time period?

This is from now through Tuesday evening.

[Olive1010]

Will Portland get anything tonight 

[FroYoBro]

Just had a heavy graupel shower here from a little shower. Covered the ground in white. Hoping for some wet snow showers tonight. Down to 37 degrees. 

[TacomaWx]

1 minute ago, T-Town said:

Nice. Looks like more on the way. 

These showers are going to have an easier time moving in now…the flows more SWerly as opposed to straight westerly like it was this morning/early afternoon. Bodes well for places south of Seattle tonight. 

[SnowWillarrive]

4 minutes ago, TacomaWx said:

Heavy ice pellets/snow right now. Grounds white. 

Really wish these showers were more uniform. Getting a good snow shower now but only lasts for 20 mins at a time.

[TT-SEA]

1 minute ago, Olive1010 said:

Will Portland get anything tonight 

Certainly seems possible... this is the next 12 hours.

[MR.SNOWMIZER]

Much colder today than I anticipated.

Already down to 32.2

[SilverFallsAndrew]

2 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

This is from now through Tuesday evening.

The Siskyious and Trinity Alps are going to get buried. 
 

This confirms what I saw on the loop, the focus of the moisture is more south. This does explain the Kuchera numbers we saw, as well. Looks like the EURO blesses us with around 1.2” of precip in this period. 

[T-Town]

5 minutes ago, TacomaWx said:

These showers are going to have an easier time moving in now…the flows more SWerly as opposed to straight westerly like it was this morning/early afternoon. Bodes well for places south of Seattle tonight. 

This is a good one and missing me by a few blocks. 

[SnowySeeker50]

Rain/graupel mix on the edge. These keep on coming in slightly too far north or south of me.

[TacomaWx]

2 minutes ago, T-Town said:

This is a good one and missing me by a few blocks. 

The real interesting stuff probably holds off until that next round over SW WA moves in. This precip moving in now is helping drop the temps though which helps set the table for tonight. 

[VancouverIslandSouth]

Getting a burst of snow in Victoria now. I figured we might get sleet or ice pellets but the only shower that's come through has been all snow.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Shower activity really picking up again across NW Oregon. 

[Meatyorologist]

46 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

Seems like focus will be right over the Seattle too.

Yep. Might actually get more snow tonight than last night. We wasted a good chunk of the event on virga and rain.

I'm actually more interested in this evening than I was at any point about early this morning. Tonight's convective nature yields a much higher potential than last night's vanilla stratoform event.

[Requiem]

14 minutes ago, Olive1010 said:

Will Portland get anything tonight 

Yes, no, maybe so

[bainbridgekid]

3 minutes ago, Meatyorologist said:

Yep. Might actually get more snow tonight than last night. We wasted a good chunk of the event on virga and rain.

I'm actually more interested in this evening than I was at any point about early this morning. Tonight's convective nature yields a much higher potential than last night's vanilla stratoform event.

What makes you think there will be so much more moisture around the Central Sound than modeled? 18z Euro was basically totally dry North of Tacoma. 
 

I’m not sure the flow have enough Southerly component for the showers to push that far North, but I could be wrong. I’d feel pretty good living between about SeaTac and Olympia and especially out toward the foothills of South King and Pierce Counties.

[Meatyorologist]

3 minutes ago, bainbridgekid said:

What makes you think there will be so much more moisture around the Central Sound than modeled? 18z Euro was basically totally dry North of Tacoma. 
 

I’m not sure the flow have enough Southerly component for the showers to push that far North, but I could be wrong. I’d feel pretty good living between about SeaTac and Olympia and especially out toward the foothills of South King and Pierce Counties.

Looks like a southerly component to the flow is added ahead of the incoming disturbance seen drifting a few hundred miles offshore on satellite. Perhaps its low center is stronger than projected, and as such cyclonic flow ahead it is enhanced. The lift in the Sound is caused by speed shear/sfc convergence.