January Weather In The PNW 2024 (Part III) - The Warming Shot

[Slushy Inch]

3 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

The pattern gets pretty weird.  Some Nino aspects, but some not.

It’s a mean so it could be reflecting two distinct possible outcomes 

[Meatyorologist]

1 minute ago, snow_wizard said:

One thing I really like is the cold wave took the warmest winter on record off the table for us.  The cold wave wiped out almost all of the excess December warmth.

Actually running below the 30yr average at KSEA going back to November. The big cold snap, as well as favorable inversion setups in November, have made the winter quite tolerable for a strong El Niño.

[Sunriver Snow Zone]

Another good day at Mount Bachelor. Temp at the base is 32°, so the snow conditions are holding on by a thread. Wish it was a bit more powdery but oh well, still doing good for an el nino.

[Phil]

37 minutes ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

Basically Phil is asking us to suspend belief and agree whatever the pattern is at day 10 will lock in for the rest of winter. I guess this is like December because it was the same thing he was saying then…

Where did I say rest of winter?   Come on, man.

And what do you mean “suspend belief”? Belief in what? The D15 GFS? That sounds more like blind faith to me.

I won’t tell you what/how to think, but don’t get upset at me for choosing to avoid contaminating my forecasts with my personal desires and blind faith. I’ve never gotten anywhere in life doing that.

[Meatyorologist]

4 minutes ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

It looks Nino-ish to me, but that's not necessarily a disaster for us. At face value I think it's generally a cool/dry pattern for us. 

Unfortunately the realistic part of me knows we are probably done with subfreezing highs and fluffy snow for the rest of the winter; not that we got any of the latter here.

But can we sneak in a cooler than normal FMA, or at least one of those months? That'll be hard to do with the current ENSO situation. It would be a true blessing to get a healthy snow pattern into the Cascades again after the recent rains.

[AbbyJr]

1 hour ago, Phil said:

I wouldn’t say that yet, but February is probably a lost cause now. Unless there a massive, systematic error in guidance over Eurasia during week-2.

It’s extremely rare but March has sometimes performed in the PNW. 1951 and 2002 are a couple examples. Though they were both cold neutral. This year we have a strong El Niño making a cold outcome much less likely.

[CliffMassYelledAtMe]

Disclaimer: Pure fallible memory here since I don't keep personal stats and am too lazy today to go look up actual data. 

 

Seems like most years the third week in February we get a "false spring" for a few days. It's a weird sunny and warm and people buy flowers from Costco. Then we head back to cool rain. Would be interesting if the warmth being modeled for next weekend is that typical interval just a few weeks early, especially after we had the cold in Janaury that we have typically been getting in Feb. 

 

We're not going to torch all late winter. Too many people in this area (not on this forum) would love it and start prepping their gardens only to have their hopes dashed by unseasonable cold and perhaps slushy snow in late March or even April.

 

It's not over yet.

[Sunriver Snow Zone]

2 minutes ago, CliffMassYelledAtMe said:

Disclaimer: Pure fallible memory here since I don't keep personal stats and am too lazy today to go look up actual data. 

 

Seems like most years the third week in February we get a "false spring" for a few days. It's a weird sunny and warm and people buy flowers from Costco. Then we head back to cool rain. Would be interesting if the warmth being modeled for next weekend is that typical interval just a few weeks early, especially after we had the cold in Janaury that we have typically been getting in Feb. 

 

We're not going to torch all late winter. Too many people in this area (not on this forum) would love it and start prepping their gardens only to have their hopes dashed by unseasonable cold and perhaps slushy snow in late March or even April.

 

It's not over yet.

Agreed. Personally I think we're in for a decent setup starting groundhogs day, probably the first week of that it will just be a setup that everyone above 1500 ft will get dumped on, below that will be cold rain, then after that we get a shot at lowland snow. No arctic outbreak but cold enough for a couple days of fun in the lowlands.

Whatever happens, happens. What I REALLY care about is it being sunny in Texas on April 8th for the solar eclipse.

[Sunriver Snow Zone]

The Ensembles are looking improved in Portland. Back to work I go, hope yall have a great day!

[MossMan]

36 minutes ago, TacomaWx said:

Yeah, we could see some type of event like we saw on Super Bowl Sunday 2017. Quick heavy wet snow dump. We can definitely score something like that over the next few weeks without Arctic air. 

Had two nice little events up here that month. 

[Meatyorologist]

8 minutes ago, CliffMassYelledAtMe said:

Disclaimer: Pure fallible memory here since I don't keep personal stats and am too lazy today to go look up actual data. 

 

Seems like most years the third week in February we get a "false spring" for a few days. It's a weird sunny and warm and people buy flowers from Costco. Then we head back to cool rain. Would be interesting if the warmth being modeled for next weekend is that typical interval just a few weeks early, especially after we had the cold in Janaury that we have typically been getting in Feb. 

 

We're not going to torch all late winter. Too many people in this area (not on this forum) would love it and start prepping their gardens only to have their hopes dashed by unseasonable cold and perhaps slushy snow in late March or even April.

 

It's not over yet.

I've heard this before so I did some number crunching. Since three out of four Februaries can be broken down into four even weeks, I decided to split the month into those weekly chunks, and took note the average temperature and precipitation for each weekly chunk:

2/1 - 2/7: 42.0°F, 0.99"

2/8 - 2/14: 42.8°F, 1.03"

2/15 - 2/21: 43.1°F, 1.05"

2/22 - 2/28: 43.1°F, 0.98"

Conclusion: February is a wet winter month that slowly warms. Exactly what you'd expect from a seasonal sinusoid graph line. If anything, temperature change reduces as we head into March, since access to Arctic air becomes increasingly difficult, so extreme cold anomalies (on the order of -10F or more) become less of a factor.

[snow_wizard]

32 minutes ago, Meatyorologist said:

Unfortunately the realistic part of me knows we are probably done with subfreezing highs and fluffy snow for the rest of the winter; not that we got any of the latter here.

But can we sneak in a cooler than normal FMA, or at least one of those months? That'll be hard to do with the current ENSO situation. It would be a true blessing to get a healthy snow pattern into the Cascades again after the recent rains.

The Nino is about to collapse so who knows.  I started an ENSO thread that goes into it a bit.  The recent SOI behavior would be impressive even for a Nina.  One thing I also noticed this morning is the MEI has only been in moderate Nino territory instead of strong.  This didn't come close to making super Nino status.

[snow_wizard]

11 minutes ago, MossMan said:

Had two nice little events up here that month. 

We had a big one here in Feb 2017.  Kind of made up for the cold January being a dud for snow.

[TacomaWx]

3 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

We had a big one here in Feb 2017.  Kind of made up for the cold January being a dud for snow.

That snow kind of gets overlooked compared to 2019 and 2021. Was a pretty big snowfall…the biggest we had in like 5 years at the time. It was like 6-10” across the south sound. 

[Slushy Inch]

I spy a cooldown.

[MossMan]

Mid to late February has featured many great events! 
February 2010 (or 11 can’t remember) was epic but I don’t have any pictures due to Samsung sucking (was my first smart phone that crashed all the time and ended up killing all my pictures from 2010 and 2011) and even though late February 2019 didn’t feature anything big i still had snow on the ground and then got dumped on again in March! 

[Phil]

1 hour ago, Meatyorologist said:

I get the crux of what Phil is trying to say... Deep Arctic air will be scoured out of Canada later this month, that is a given and I think we can all agree on that. We aren't going to get a 22/15 day at KSEA again during the first week of February.

That may mean #wintercancel on his end of the mound, but out here we have cool maritime conduits to snow that don't require pepto from Santa's workshop. And we've seen how quickly cold air can be reintroduced to the continent... If we roll "snake eyes"

I think I framed my perspective poorly. I’m specifically referring to the larger scale pattern across North America and the western hemisphere in general. Not considering my backyard or anyone else’s backyard..that’s all secondary to me.

The pattern advertised across guidance could easily produce snow here and many other places, even with warmer than average temps aloft (don’t need negative 850mb anomalies to get snow here). But that’s not the perspective I take when making LR forecasts. Whatever happens at the regional/subregional level is not something I can foresee in a LR forecast, thus is not something I take into account. Because it can’t be done.

[snow_wizard]

55 minutes ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

It looks Nino-ish to me, but that's not necessarily a disaster for us. At face value I think it's generally a cool/dry pattern for us. 

The below normal height anoms are too far east as we get into week two.  That why it's chillier than you would normally expect in a Nino Feb.

[Phishy Wx]

so no one learned their GFS lesson yet.  got it.  LOL

 

 

[snow_wizard]

6 minutes ago, TacomaWx said:

That snow kind of gets overlooked compared to 2019 and 2021. Was a pretty big snowfall…the biggest we had in like 5 years at the time. It was like 6-10” across the south sound. 

Feb has just been insane in general since 2016.  Either cold, snow, or both in nearly every year.

The 2017 snow was the second biggest of the bunch for me though.

[snow_wizard]

3 minutes ago, Phishy Wx said:

so no one learned their GFS lesson yet.  got it.  LOL

 

 

What is this referring to?  Even the EPS shows it getting cool in early Feb.  The GFS is just a bit more pronounced with it.

[Rubus Leucodermis]

14 minutes ago, Slushy Inch said:

I spy a cooldown.

And I spy a KSEA 60-burger.

[ShawniganLake]

54 minutes ago, Meatyorologist said:

Unfortunately the realistic part of me knows we are probably done with subfreezing highs and fluffy snow for the rest of the winter; not that we got any of the latter here.

But can we sneak in a cooler than normal FMA, or at least one of those months? That'll be hard to do with the current ENSO situation. It would be a true blessing to get a healthy snow pattern into the Cascades again after the recent rains.

Yea. I agree.  I think the odds of arctic air going forward is very low.  Even with ENSO dropping off, there is going to be some seasonal lag.  Some mountain snow would be nice. Sort of reminds me of 2005 right now.  The mountains here have about as much snow at 3000-4000ft as we do near sea level.  

[Rubus Leucodermis]

10 minutes ago, Phishy Wx said:

so no one learned their GFS lesson yet.  got it.  LOL

The GFS was actually one of the more accurate models for snow amounts IMBY last week.

[snow_wizard]

7 minutes ago, ShawniganLake said:

Yea. I agree.  I think the odds of arctic air going forward is very low.  Even with ENSO dropping off, there is going to be some seasonal lag.  Some mountain snow would be nice. Sort of reminds me of 2005 right now.  The mountains here have about as much snow at 3000-4000ft as we do near sea level.  

It will probably take another SSW to give us an Arctic blast.  We'll see when that actually happens.

[snow_wizard]

6 minutes ago, Rubus Leucodermis said:

The GFS was actually one of the more accurate models for snow amounts IMBY last week.

It did have some successes with the cold event.  Some real screw ups too.

[Phishy Wx]

its consistency is second to none!

[Rubus Leucodermis]

19 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

It did have some successes with the cold event.  Some real screw ups too.

It’s probably more of a case of being accidentally right, but it was right when it went crazy with the snow amounts here. And it was pretty consistently so.

[TigerWoodsLibido]

Feb gon be the snow month again.

[lowlandsnow]

Some people are acting like it's March. It's only January 20th and long-range forecasts have terrible accuracy. Way too early to write off February. 

[Andstorm]

Mark Nelson, one of our foremost weather experts in Portland area, used to always post on his blog how legit cold/snow events are virtually impossible after Feb 15. The data largely supports his assertion but recent years have majorly bucked that trend. Last year was especially damning to the theory since we had a couple days in late Feb that didn’t make it out of 20s, which Mark and many others claimed was a near physical impossibility with longer days and higher sun angle. I think it takes a particular pattern for mid to late Feb cold/snow but it can definitely happen. I read somewhere that there are certain conditions that are better for cold/snow in feb - colder upper levels, better snow cover - than earlier in winter but the longer days and sun angle tend to offset. Perhaps others cal elaborate. 

 

[TigerWoodsLibido]

2 minutes ago, Andstorm said:

Mark Nelson, one of our foremost weather experts in Portland area, used to always post on his blog how legit cold/snow events are virtually impossible after Feb 15. The data largely supports his assertion but recent years have majorly bucked that trend. Last year was especially damning to the theory since we had a couple days in late Feb that didn’t make it out of 20s, which Mark and many others claimed was a near physical impossibility with longer days and higher sun angle. I think it takes a particular pattern for mid to late Feb cold/snow but it can definitely happen. I read somewhere that there are certain conditions that are better for cold/snow in feb - colder upper levels, better snow cover - than earlier in winter but the longer days and sun angle tend to offset. Perhaps others cal elaborate. 

 

[MossMan]

Mark Nelson is turning into Cliff Mass. 

[Deweydog]

Looking GREEN out there again!

[Phishy Wx]

the melt is officially on.  35 and raining

[Phishy Wx]

Don't see this often in Great Britain, and in the winter no less.

 

 

 

[bainbridgekid]

Looks like remarkably deep snow at Multnomah Falls in the Gorge.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/wfThKfrNRDX6Vpxz/?mibextid=CYgPv5

[Andstorm]

30 minutes ago, MossMan said:

Mark Nelson is turning into Cliff Mass. 

In all fairness to Mark, he has since backed off his February shut off stance and has also retired his infamous “put a fork in winter” post, which was his typical mid Feb proclamation that winter was essentially over in lowlands. The data does suggest after mid-Feb major snow events are very rare around Portland. But I think last year proved they definitely can happen

[bainbridgekid]

2 minutes ago, Phishy Wx said:

Don't see this often in Great Britain, and in the winter no less.

 

 

 

947mb low just North of there currently. Breezy.

 

[MossMan]

1 minute ago, bainbridgekid said:

947mb low just North of there currently. Breezy.

 

We need one of those plowing into Vancouver Island!