January 2024 Weather in the PNW (Part II)

[MR.SNOWMIZER]

3 minutes ago, Requiem said:

U good or...

Looks like that person needs to reboot lol

[Tanis Leach]

Trying to change over to snow. This heavier band made it more sleet again. 

[Kayla]

1 minute ago, Chewbacca Defense said:

What's it looking like for you guys tomorrow?  My son is flying home tomorrow, and it looks like the KSEA/KBZN flight didn't happen today.  the weather OBS was reporting freezing fog a good chunk of the morning, I'm assuming that's what caused the cancellation.  Hopefully it will be clear tomorrow.

From what I heard they had a ground hold all morning because of the cold. De-ice trucks couldn’t start and it was down right dangerous for ground crews all morning with wind chills reaching -68F.

Tomorrow morning should definitely be a bit warmer with the clouds rolling in but we’ll probably still see lows still hovering around -30F. What time is his flight?

[TT-SEA]

5 minutes ago, MR.SNOWMIZER said:

Gfs very close to really good for Seattle again, this run is the far north but it's further south than the 06z, remember compare 06z to 18 and 12z to 00z when looking for trends out a few days.

The GFS sharply trended south with this current system in the last few days.   But there won't be a massive arctic air mass involved with the Wednesday system so the GFS performance with this system is probably irrelevant.    We probably need a weak low on Wednesday because a stronger low will likely trend north in the models per normal.  

[Tyler Mode]

16 degrees here, now my coldest day ever at this station.  Pouing sleet right now.  About 1.5" to 2" of sleet and snow.  Never seen it sleet this hard.

[Perturbed Member]

2 minutes ago, Doinko said:

Shouldn't be long until it changes over here there, still mostly sleet

Yeah shouldn't be long for you either. The rest of this afternoon and evening should be pretty fun. Hopefully we can get in on some of that band setting up north, we might end up being a hair too far south. 

[DeepFriedEgg]

13F 

100% all American sleet!

[Timmy]

The magic mile at timberline 7000’ dropped 4 degrees at the last obs. Upper levels are cooling 

[North_County]

50 minutes ago, TigerWoodsLibido said:

 

Man, I hate ice storms. Stay safe out there.

[Front Ranger]

Looks like the Kelso Longview area might be one of the big winners. 

[MikeInEverett]

15 minutes ago, Olive1010 said:

So is portland gonna snow morer opr qwhatg

Did seattleweatherguy move to Portland?

[Doinko]

1 minute ago, Perturbed Member said:

Yeah shouldn't be long for you either. The rest of this afternoon and evening should be pretty fun. Hopefully we can get in on some of that band setting up north, we might end up being a hair too far south. 

Hoping for a couple inches, that would be really nice. Whatever we have now should stick around for a good few days though, that'll be really nice

[Fircrest]

18 minutes ago, the_convergence_zone said:

Normally the precip would have no problem reaching Seattle with a low that strong tracking where it is. Except the dew point is around 0 in Seattle

So we're a victim of the incredible cold air.  That's why I prefer snow over extreme cold.  But I understand some people really like it cold.  However it appears that areas around Portland are experiencing both.  Maybe we can next time....

[ajreich]

Well on  the good news front, 0 PGE customers without power now!

[TacomaWx]

18 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

I was looking at the radar and think the issue up here is that this is such a tightly wound system.   The events that trend northward and end up north of the models are usually more open wave overrunning events,.   Good information for future reference.

Yeah, hard to overcome the dry air also. Overall should probably be a somewhat wintery weather changeover mid week…but my guess is some brief freezing rain. Mid week is a long period of time for this airmass to moderate. 

[Olive1010]

Sorry, my little brother got on

[MR.SNOWMIZER]

What happened to wx statman?

[GobBluth]

As if the snow level makes a difference when we're getting sleet and 16 degrees.

[MR.SNOWMIZER]

1 minute ago, TacomaWx said:

Yeah, hard to overcome the dry air also. Overall should probably be a somewhat wintery weather changeover mid week…but my guess is some brief freezing rain. Mid week is a long period of time for this airmass to moderate. 

Even with what the gfs just showed there would be a massive dump of wet snow here and not wet to begin with.  A few small tweaks and it could be good.

[DeepFriedEgg]

5 minutes ago, Front Ranger said:

Looks like the Kelso Longview area might be one of the big winners. 

Think I called that yesterday

[Tyler Mode]

My cousins trucks were just smashed by a tree in Yacolt (north of Battle Ground).

[Frontal Snowsquall]

The Happy Valley and Sandy weather stations just went offline. I’m guessing wind damage?

[TT-SEA]

3 minutes ago, MR.SNOWMIZER said:

Even with what the gfs just showed there would be a massive dump of wet snow here and not wet to begin with.  A few small tweaks and it could be good.

GFS originally under-estimated the arctic air... that is why it put the battle ground over western WA and not Oregon earlier in the week.   And then the system created in that battle ground is wound up too tightly for a general spread north of precip. 

[Roman-Dallas Snow-Zone]

Looked like a glitch, now showing 200k out of power 

[TacomaWx]

3 minutes ago, MR.SNOWMIZER said:

Even with what the gfs just showed there would be a massive dump of wet snow here and not wet to begin with.  A few small tweaks and it could be good.

The 850mb temps seem kinda suspect to me on that run. Overall it looks like it would be freezing rain. 

[the_convergence_zone]

11 minutes ago, Fircrest said:

So we're a victim of the incredible cold air.  That's why I prefer snow over extreme cold.  But I understand some people really like it cold.  However it appears that areas around Portland are experiencing both.  Maybe we can next time....

Portland has a big geography advantage with the source of cold air being right there and not being as rainshadowed as Seattle is. It more than compensates for the latitude difference. 

[MR.SNOWMIZER]

4 minutes ago, TacomaWx said:

The 850mb temps seem kinda suspect to me on that run. Overall it looks like it would be freezing rain. 

There would be a good cold pool built up over here, nws is talking about it already. 

[Hawksfan2008]

Flashbacks to last winter…that was my first ice storm and wow are they damaging. 

[Perturbed Member]

Astoria up to 28F but they have been under moderate to heavy precip for a long time. The ice accumulations there have to be getting a bit absurd. 

[Front Ranger]

3 minutes ago, the_convergence_zone said:

Portland has a big geography advantage with the source of cold air being right there and not being as rainshadowed as Seattle is. It more than compensates for the latitude difference. 

Both cities average very similar snowfall, though. Pros and cons to both.

[Tyler Mode]

3 minutes ago, Perturbed Member said:

Astoria up to 28F but they have been under moderate to heavy precip for a long time. The ice accumulations there have to be getting a bit absurd. 

Over half that county is out of power now.

[ajreich]

Seems to be switching back to snow. 

[snow_wizard]

Just an incredibly hard freeze here.  I have a bucket outside that was about 1/3 full of water and it froze so hard the bottom of bucket is fully bulged out, a gallon of water in my car froze solid, and a large creek near here already has ice along the sides.

Looks like my high will either be 19 or 20.

[MR.SNOWMIZER]

1 minute ago, snow_wizard said:

Just an incredibly hard freeze here.  I have a bucket outside that was about 1/3 full of water and it froze so hard the bottom of bucket is fully bulged out, a gallon of water in my car froze solid, and a large creek near here already has ice along the sides.

Looks like my high will either be 19 or 20.

If we would of had more snow with this the temps would of been record breaking

[DeepFriedEgg]

A couple flakes mixing back in. Come on need to switch before precip moves out and sets up north.

[TT-SEA]

10 minutes ago, Hawksfan2008 said:

Flashbacks to last winter…that was my first ice storm and wow are they damaging. 

ECMWF shows something similar but much less extensive and short-lived.   I know the GFS has major issues with surface temps so not too worried yet.   The system last year was overrunning an arctic air mass.  This will not be the same as the air mass and surface moderates significantly between now and Tuesday.   The precip last year was directly pushing out the arctic air at the surface.   The ECMWF shows it will be around 40 on Monday and Tuesday.   And freezing rain at 30-32 degrees is much less of a problem than when it's 28 or colder.   I think we had rain and low 20s at one point last December.  I can't envision that happening on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning with such cold temps.   

But yeah... that map is a nightmare for us at face value.

[Tyler Mode]

Pressure rising a little now.  Snow and sleet continue to fall!

[Olive1010]

I really hope we can pick up on a couple of more inches before this ends. REALLY hope, seems like all the juicy moisture that would’ve gave us inches of snow is being wasted on sleet. 

[snow_wizard]

6 minutes ago, Front Ranger said:

Both cities average very similar snowfall, though. Pros and cons to both.

Actually Seattle far out performed Portland during the period from 1945 through 1975.  I chose that period as an example because I have an old book that has all of that info in it.

[DeepFriedEgg]

All models except the overly bullish gfs pretty much nailed it here.