February 2024 Weather in the PNW

[Hawksfan2008]

Control 

[snow_wizard]

So many legit snow chances on the models tonight it makes your head swim.  Looks really good for a lot of forum members to see snow over the next week.

[TT-SEA]

58 minutes ago, BLI snowman said:

Kinda think at this point that you gotta throw out anything that shows only 19" in Newport.

Just over the next 90 hours almost the entire WA and OR coast is buried in pepto per the ECMWF.    Even offshore in the ocean.   Guess time will tell.

[TT-SEA]

3 minutes ago, Hawksfan2008 said:

Control 

2-3 feet along most of the OR coast.   Guessing that must be pretty common.

[snow_wizard]

3 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

2-3 feet along most of the OR coast.   Guessing that must be pretty common.

Maybe 20,000 years ago or so.

[Sunriver Snow Zone]

2 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

2-3 feet along most of the OR coast.   Guessing that must be pretty common.

It's quite a bit below average, if this verifies the Astoria Glacier might be melted out soon. Pretty sad considering the Glacier there supplies fresh drinking water for the dry area called the "pacific ocean".

[snow_wizard]

Between the ECMWF and GFS we have multiple runs showing snow for the Central Puget Sound in the early morning hours on at least one day in the Friday through Monday period.  Some of the runs show it snowing with temps in the 30 to 32 range.  Pretty exciting.

[TT-SEA]

Also interesting that the WA and OR coast gets absolutely buried considering we only have half of each day to get accumulating snow with highs consistently in the mid-40s across the region per the same model.

[SnowWillarrive]

10 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

Just over the next 90 hours almost the entire WA and OR coast is buried in pepto per the ECMWF.    Even offshore in the ocean.   Guess time will tell.

The year without a spring has begun

[Snowlova]

1 minute ago, SnowWillarrive said:

The year without a spring has begun

70 degrees 4 weeks from now

[SnowWillarrive]

4 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

Between the ECMWF and GFS we have multiple runs showing snow for the Central Puget Sound in the early morning hours on at least one day in the Friday through Monday period.  Some of the runs show it snowing with temps in the 30 to 32 range.  Pretty exciting.

If we don’t get a little snow in the next 5 days I might cry.

[snow_wizard]

3 minutes ago, SnowWillarrive said:

If we don’t get a little snow in the next 5 days I might cry.

Some of these threats look very legit.  Pretty unusual to get such consistent moisture with such a cold air mass.  A lot of well organized moisture bands are at night as well.  Weak offshore flow at times could also help our cause.  The GFS actually has one day with decent north winds making it well south of us.

[snow_wizard]

Just amazing how fast that cold air got wiped out from yesterday's trough.  Even east of the Cascades.

[Cascadia_Wx]

10 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

Just amazing how fast that cold air got wiped out from yesterday's trough.  Even east of the Cascades.

I blame wolves.

[Deweydog]

9 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

Just amazing how fast that cold air got wiped out from yesterday's trough.  Even east of the Cascades.

Disco and inversion season: two things that live FOREVER.

[snow_wizard]

I was thinking about how well Whatcom County and Vancouver BC have been doing in recent years with some degree of jealousy I must admit.  It might surprise people that even that area can go through pretty long periods of pathetic winters.  The period from 1940-41 through 1945-46 is the all time worst period for them with a 6 winter average of only 6.6" per winter.  Add 1939-40 and the number is 7.1" for a 7 year average.  Second place is the infamously horrible 1997-98 through 2005-06 where they averaged 6.7" for the period.  Pretty amazing to think even that area can have such runs of futility.

The data is from Clearbrook which is even snowier than Bellingham.

[Cascadia_Wx]

1 minute ago, Deweydog said:

Disco and inversion season: two things that live FOREVER.

Not the best example. Even in the dead of winter this type of pattern would be pretty efficient at scouring out cold air quickly. 

[snow_wizard]

Now we wait and see if any these snow threats emerge as the most likely candidates.

[snow_wizard]

I think I'll drop dead from shock if the ICON ever has a run that shows actual lowland snow.  That is the most stingy azzz model I've ever seen.  Never showed anything in the areas that actually got snow last night either.

[Deweydog]

8 minutes ago, Cascadia_Wx said:

Not the best example. Even in the dead of winter this type of pattern would be pretty efficient at scouring out cold air quickly. 

Surely you can’t be serious…

[Cascadia_Wx]

6 minutes ago, Deweydog said:

Surely you can’t be serious…

Boomer pleasing “Airplane” reference in 3…2….

[ShawniganLake]

35F and raining here.  The upper levels have warmed now.  I was down in Victoria earlier this evening and there was some sticking snow around the south end of the Lake.  It was all rain on my way home though. 

[Meatyorologist]

1 hour ago, bainbridgekid said:

I swear they changed some parameter that completely messed that up. It never used to throw out massive foot+ snowstorms for the Coast and lowlands but now that happens regularly when nothing close to that has any chance of happening. 

I wonder if they adjusted some boundary layer issues in an attempt to improve snow forecasts in continental climates but it messed up snow forecasts here near the Coast. Seems especially egregious in cold onshore flow patterns like this where the models just assumed nearly all precip in the mid-upper 30's will fall as accumulating snow. 

If I had to wager a guess as to what the issue stems from, I'd argue that the models have recently been toyed with as to allow for higher snowfall accumulations through moist-saturated near-sfc columns. This error seems to show up almost exclusively in the immediate vicinity of the coast, exactly where you'd find enhanced lift via the sudden onset of terrain, and the most saturated lower troposphere, right from Pacific onshore winds in a lightly unstable environment.

Wouldn't doubt it would be a useful tweak given recent marginal snowfall busts in the Northeast, but since the greater Northwest sits in a gradual transition between a subarctic and subtropical maritime climate zone, where snow can fringe on the hair of dewpoints and Chris' 925mb temp maps and how badly you pray at night, subtle tweaks can wreak havoc on our beloved #snowmaps, as pretty as the colors may be nowadays.... 

[Deweydog]

10 minutes ago, Cascadia_Wx said:

Boomer pleasing “Airplane” reference in 3…2….

They Arctic aired sooooo much better than us.

[Front Ranger]

1 hour ago, bainbridgekid said:

I swear they changed some parameter that completely messed that up. It never used to throw out massive foot+ snowstorms for the Coast and lowlands but now that happens regularly when nothing close to that has any chance of happening. 

I wonder if they adjusted some boundary layer issues in an attempt to improve snow forecasts in continental climates but it messed up snow forecasts here near the Coast. Seems especially egregious in cold onshore flow patterns like this where the models just assumed nearly all precip in the mid-upper 30's will fall as accumulating snow. 

Agreed.

Fortunately, it doesn't invalidate everything inland.

[Front Ranger]

40 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

I think I'll drop dead from shock if the ICON ever has a run that shows actual lowland snow.  That is the most stingy azzz model I've ever seen.  Never showed anything in the areas that actually got snow last night either.

That's not entirely true. Showed snow around the general area that got it, albeit not as much as areas with elevation scored.

[ShawniganLake]

11 minutes ago, Front Ranger said:

That's not entirely true. Showed snow around the general area that got it, albeit not as much as areas with elevation scored.

Dead on for here. We got exactly 1” as shown.  

[TT-SEA]

Wind woke me up... so now I can post the 06Z GFS.   Most of this falls next Monday and Tuesday.

[TT-SEA]

3 hours ago, snow_wizard said:

I think I'll drop dead from shock if the ICON ever has a run that shows actual lowland snow.  That is the most stingy azzz model I've ever seen.  Never showed anything in the areas that actually got snow last night either.

It showed lowland snow on all the runs leading up to the last event in mid February.   Just didn't show much for our area which might be why you don't remember... but then we didn't actually get snow with that event. 

Here is one of the ICON maps I had on my phone that I had posted 2 weeks ago.

[MossMan]

14 minutes ago, TT-SEA said:

Wind woke me up... so now I can post the 06Z GFS.   Most of this falls next Monday and Tuesday.

Woke me up as well, the wind chimes are working hard! 

[Jbolin]

1 hour ago, TT-SEA said:

Wind woke me up... so now I can post the 06Z GFS.   Most of this falls next Monday and Tuesday.

Lol

[the_convergence_zone]

12Z HRRR goes brrrrr on Friday morning 

[TacomaWx]

Well there’s atleast a chance we get our first accumulating snowfall in the month of March since 2019. We will see though will be a close call on temps here. Need precip the right time too most likely. 

[MossMan]

WIND! 

[Snownerd3000]

3 hours ago, TT-SEA said:

Wind woke me up... so now I can post the 06Z GFS.   Most of this falls next Monday and Tuesday.

Will be an interesting period to watch. Friday through early next week will either drop a wet snow hammer or bust. 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

We should switch to snow here by sunrise tomorrow, stay that way for several days. Hopefully we get a sloppy inch or two. Could be a lot more. 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Looks like SLE will end the month with around a +1 departure. Not bad. 

[umadbro]

10 minutes ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

We should switch to snow here by sunrise tomorrow, stay that way for several days. Hopefully we get a sloppy inch or two. Could be a lot more. 

My wife knows all about a sloppy inch or two.

[TT-SEA]

Saw an interesting article about leap year... if we didn't have leap years our seasons would be totally opposite in 700 years with the longest days in late December and the shortest days in late June.  

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Looks like the best chance for snow tomorrow morning is in the south valley. Looking like we could switch over by 3-4am. If we do I'd expect a few inches on the back end of the front, and then a lot of non sticking slush through the day. I'll go with 1-3" tomorrow morning, and then that amount Thursday night, maybe more, will just depend on precip rates.