Part II- January 2020 Obs and Discussion

[El_Nina]

Snowing in Woodburn now. 30 here

[Perturbed Member]

Snowing here as well and through a lot of fog.

[MikeInEverett]

Hope you all see snow down there this morning!! You guys are a bit overdue for something.

[El_Nina]

Beginning here now

[umadbro]

Still have about half hour to an hour here. Sitting at 33 which is probably a benefit. Fog is still thick surprisingly.

[FroYoBro]

The leading edge weakened a bit as it pushed north. Some light snow is finally falling here now though!

[FroYoBro]

Very wet 34 degree snow, but it is snow!

 

Big beautiful flakes now!

[umadbro]

Light snow just started in Ridgefield. Fog is still thick. 33 degrees.

[El_Nina]

31 now with some big heavy flakes.

[FroYoBro]

Down to 33 and starting to stick a bit. Nice late night treat.

[umadbro]

Raining now.

[umadbro]

I'm convinced that I'm never going to see any appreciable snow for another decade at this point. 33 degrees with moderate rain.

[MikeInEverett]

06z GFS doesn't want us to see the sun ever again.

[umadbro]

Heavy 33 degree rain. Not even a positive splat.

[TT-SEA]

Update from Cliff...

 

 

The meteorological bounty extended beyond snow.  There has been lots of rain that has helped to fill local reservoirs.   For example, consider Seattle's reservoir system (see below).  Its reservoirs have surged--not only WAY above normal (blue line), but as high as typical as the normal high in June.  Seattle will have plenty of water in the future.

 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Looks like we picked up another 2" of snow.  Pretty much a best case scenario according to what the models were showing. This did not turn out too bad for snow up here. 

[BLI snowman]

Sloppy dusting here now, heavy wet flakes starting to wind down.

[Gradient Keeper]

Looks like I ended up with a colossal 1/2" of snow. It started out as moderate sleet, then mixed with ZR, then turned to snow, then to a ZR/snow combo, then heavy snow with big flakes, then back to a ZR, snow mix combo thingy, then rain/snow mix, then who ******* cares! I can't speak for everyone, but for my area this 'event' for PDX metro was very similar to the brief November 30th snow with a weak shortwave moving up from the southwest and not a lot of moisture, with marginal temps and no cold air support. The next two weeks look like pure .

[TT-SEA]

Schools closed again here today... a little bit of snow overnight and temperature right at 32.   The pendulum has swung the other way here with a new superintendent responding to parents complaining if there is school on any day when there is any snow anywhere.   It won't last long in this area where winter weather is pretty common.

 

If we were get another extended period of cold and snow this winter... people are just going to have to learn to deal with the snow.    Or have the school year go until August and run up against the next school year.  

 

You can't close school every time the temperature drops to 32 or lower or there is a skiff of snow in this area.  

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Schools closed again here today... a little bit of snow overnight and temperature right at 32.   The pendulum has swung the other way here with a new superintendent responding to parents complaining if there is school on any day when there is any snow anywhere.   It won't last long in this area where winter weather is pretty common.

 

If we were get another extended period of cold and snow this winter... people are just going to have to learn to deal with the snow.    Or  have the school year go until August and run up against the next school year.  

 

You can't close school every time the temperature drops to 32 or lower in this area.  

 

Yeah kind of silly. In those kinds of situations the roads are not typically a concern. We had 1.5" yesterday morning, the local school appeared to be carrying on as normal. 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

06z GFS was slightly more interesting...

[Gradient Keeper]

If you're like me you're probably saying to yourself, "WTF is wrong with these models?" The past month or so I've never seen such poor model performance, lack of run to run consistency or any model continuity. Mesoscale models can't even get any details correct within just 12-18 hours. Pure s**t. Even the holier than hour Euro. Garbage. Upper level pattern recognition has been badger . Why? I don' t know. Do I look like the f***** Shell answer man? Yeah well. Nope!

[Omegaraptor]

Chunky rain here. 34°F

[Chewbacca Defense]

Looks like we got another 1” or so in Bellingham, it’s been hovering between 29-32 after being in the mid 20’s last night before midnight.  The roads are really crappy again this morning, almost got taken out by a plow truck (private business) bombing out of a driveway between 2 buildings without even looking.  I about jumped out of the car to rip him a new one but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt since he’s probably worked 60-70 hours at this point.

 

I-5 through the canyon is utter garbage according to a few co-workers.

 

Glad to see parts of Oregon/ SW Washington getting some flakes in the air!

[FroYoBro]

We actually had a trace of wet snow on the ground at 4:30 or so.

 

I just woke up again to rain and absolutely everything melted. A lot of people probably have no idea that we had brief sticking snow last night. 

[antipex]

Woke up at 4:30 this morning and it was 31 outside with heavy freezing rain on top of snow. Now it’s still frozen in the backyard with freezing rain but the road is melted.

[ShawniganLake]

22F with about 1/2” of snow overnight.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

My wife said Mt. Angel had a dusting, Silverton had nothing. 

[Phil]

Gargantuan WWB cycle has established of late..this latest one features healthier convergence east of the dateline to help depress the thermocline further, perhaps triggering a stronger downwelling OKW.

 

So maybe we finally get that stronger niño in 2020/21 to finish draining the warm pool and prime the multiyear Niña thereafter.

 

http://www.atmos.albany.edu/student/ventrice/real_time/timeLon/u.anom.30.5S-5N.gif

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Ended up with 5 of the past 6 days seeing accumulating snow. Not a bad stretch even if the cold didn't work out.

[Phil]

Downwelling easterly shear/-QBO (associated with raised/cool tropical tropopause and reduced static stability over the Pacific) as we approach the equinox also favors El Niño growth, as does the extended IPWP/solar min, as all of these will want to help contract/intensify the Hadley Cell with time.

 

Of course, a 2005/06 or 2007/08 outcome is also within the realm of possibility, albeit less likely.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Requiem should be seeing snow this morning. 

[Blizzard777]

31* icy

I’m assuming the same that Pdx got if this band holds together 

[Phil]

If nothing else, I’ve learned a lot about how to forecast seasonally in regimes like this.

 

I way underestimated the QBO/IOD —> NAM/PV connection that would want to keep things more zonal. My hunch is usually to weight these factors higher than the “consensus” so I’m not sure why I didn’t this year. Even during solar minimum, this connection would hold with westerlies at/below 40mb. Just a dumb move on my part.

 

I also put too much weight on the IPWP structure and seasonality/modern climatology of forcing dynamics, which would have favored more -EPO. But in hindsight there are decadal/multidecadal oscillations involved that aren’t always stable/predictable, and we appear to be approaching another “flip” in one (or many) of those.

[TT-SEA]

My son at UW wanted to know if our snow was melting... he was hoping it was not. I sent him this on Snapchat.

 

Snow seems to get put back on the trees every night... here is the view this morning.

 

[ShawniganLake]

[Phil]

This month could have been one for the ages in the PNW.

 

Unfortunately, this motherf**ker ruined it. Just too much zonal momentum at the wrong latitudes at the wrong time.

 

Next window for an Arctic blast is February 10th-20th. In the meantime..the PV is gonna climax, then the -AAM propagation begins to attack from the top-down.

 

[Rubus Leucodermis]

some 2AM snow in Bellingham tonight! (Meridian neighborhood) https://i.imgur.com/EQD1g48.mp4

 

So that's when it fell. Noticed a dusting of new stuff on the walk this morning.

[Phil]

[Rubus Leucodermis]

Clear and 17 here. Had a dusting of new snow overnight. Downtown Bellingham (just a few miles away) is getting some marine influence and is 32 right now.