March 2024 Weather in the PNW

[MossMan]

BBQ’ing on this fine spring evening! 
Currently 31.6 degrees. 

[Frontal Snowsquall]

3 hours ago, Randyc321 said:

Time for Spring.  Just my opinion.  Downvote away.

For me the cutoff point is the spring equinox. Once it hits I’m ready for the warm/hot season. And vice versa. Once the fall equinox hits, I’m ready for the cool/cold season.

[MossMan]

21 minutes ago, Frontal Snowsquall said:

For me the cutoff point is the spring equinox. Once it hits I’m ready for the warm/hot season. And vice versa. Once the fall equinox hits, I’m ready for the cool/cold season.

Likewise, though I will never pass up an opportunity if snow is a possibility after mid month! 

Edited March 6 by MossMan

[MV_snow]

I was hoping the sloppy inch we got last night would stick around given the chilly temps, but the March sun angle did its thing today. Was a pretty awesome morning, however! Looks like a decent mountain snow pattern for the weekend and early next week before Tim’s ridge starts building in.

[MossMan]

I just found concrete evidence! 

[LowerGarfield]

8 hours ago, BLI snowman said:

So it seems like with this week virtually everyone in the I-5 corridor has now avoided a goose egg this winter, save perhaps for some sea level locales near the Sound. 

Good work guys!! 

and Tiger's house. Although other places in Eugene got snow as did Medford and Ashland to the south.

[snow_wizard]

Down to 30 in BLI already.  That's cold for March.  35 here.

[snow_wizard]

35 minutes ago, Frontal Snowsquall said:

For me the cutoff point is the spring equinox. Once it hits I’m ready for the warm/hot season. And vice versa. Once the fall equinox hits, I’m ready for the cool/cold season.

I had snow IMBY after the equinox in 2008.  A lot of places in the Puget Sound area did.

[Brian_in_Leavenworth]

Interesting article about the Euro.  And some changes for later this year.  

"On August 1st, 1979, the first operational Deterministic forecasts from the European Center for Medium range Weather Forecast (referred to ECMWF hereinafter) were released at low spatial resolution (210 km) using Spectral Transforms out to 120 hours (5 days) with further upgrades to 168 hours (Seven days) on August 1st, 1980. [1]

Ensemble forecasts were first created on November 24th, 1992 at 210 km horizontal resolution with 32+1 members 3x a day while the deterministic model was 200km, this difference in resolution gave the deterministic its name, HRES. Incremental horizontal resolution increases have occured since 1992 with 41r2 in 2016 featuring the last horizontal resolution increase to the HRES and a new grid (Octahedral Gaussian, 16 km-->9 km HRES, 36 km--> 18 km ENS). Improvements to many surface, upper level variables including track & intensity of hurricanes were noted. [2]

In 2021 brought 2 upgrades to the IFS model with one in particular was 47r2 which brought Single Precision (32 bits) from Double Precision (64 bit) to the IFS HRES & ENS, this helped reduce computational cost to increase the vertical layers in ENS to 137L to match the HRES. [3]

In October 18th, 2022, a major supercomputer upgrade took place from the Cray XC40 cluster to the ATOS BullSequana XH2000 in Bologna, Italy. This has allowed ECMWF to introduce another significant step in unifying the ENS with HRES by introducing 48r1. With this upgrade came the increase in horizontal resolution to the ENS from 18 km to 9km. This is now in sync with the HRES and makes the ENS control meteorologically identical to HRES with the only changes being HRES runs before ENS control and that ENS Control goes out to 15 days to match the 50 Perturbed ECMWF EPS members. Significant improvements to track & intensity of hurricanes/typhoons were well noted as well as many surface, upper level. The analysis of HRES/ENS are exactly the same with differences in model outputs appearing with increased lead time. [4] The former twice a week ECMWF-Ext ENS changed to once daily with 101 members starting from day 0 instead of 15 which was an extension of the medium range forecast..the reforecast were also separated to be consistent. [5]

 

Plans For the Future?

In 49r1 (set to be implemented in October 2024) will still feature 2 separate deterministic systems 'HRES' 'ENS control' but the HRES will be extended from 10 days-->15 days and still come out earlier than ENS. [6]

In 50r1 (set to be implemented in June 2025) the 'ENS control' will be retired while the 'HRES' will be renamed to 'ENS control' but still come out earlier than the ENS 50 perturbed members. This will remain at least until 51r1. [6]"

[Slushy Inch]

57 minutes ago, Cold Snap said:

Had a low of 27 this morning. Will probably be a bit colder tonight.

Did you get any accumulating snow this winter?

[SilverFallsAndrew]

43 minutes ago, SouthHillFrosty said:

A photo of my kids first snow yesterday. I think he enjoyed it

That's awesome! What a handsome fella! 

 

32 minutes ago, MossMan said:

Another reason why I love my location! It retains the snow so well during these setups! I even have snow on my roof still. 
Currently 33.8 with a DP of 26. 

Right on!

[Sunriver Snow Zone]

15 minutes ago, MossMan said:

I just found concrete evidence! 

I better be alive in 2060. I give it a solid 10-20% chance I make it age 95.

[GHweatherChris]

A nice long wet and chilly spring would be amazing!!

[snow_wizard]

59 minutes ago, Cold Snap said:

Had a low of 27 this morning. Will probably be a bit colder tonight.

Low 20s are probably going to happen for some tonight.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Just now, snow_wizard said:

I had snow IMBY after the equinox in 2008.  A lot of places in the Puget Sound area did.

We've had SIGNIFICANT snow here in April the past two years. We also had a lot of snow in late March last year. 

[snow_wizard]

3 hours ago, TT-SEA said:

For sure... but will the EPS cave to the 18Z GFS and evolve from that to an arctic blast?     Time will tell.  

The latest major blast we had was mid March in 1870.  Major snow, Fraser blast, the whole enchilada.  Would love to see it happen again.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

20.8" of snow so far this month. Already our 3rd snowiest March (2012-;present) behind 2012 and 2023. 39" on the season which is about exactly at our 2012-present average. 
 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Still mostly cloud here, but down to 32. 38/29 day. 5th straight sub-40 day. Would have been 6th except for a midnight high on the 29th. 

Edited March 6 by SilverFallsAndrew

[LowerGarfield]

4 hours ago, bainbridgekid said:

It makes a big difference everywhere in the Pacific Northwest. I've always figured that each 100 feet in elevation gain makes about a 15% increase in average snowfall. That means each 500 feet pretty much exactly doubles expected snow in a given year.

The reason it makes such a huge differnece here compared to most of the rest of the country is the temperature is almost always right around freezing for our potential snow events. That's just as true in the Willammete Valley as around Puget Sound. Only exception really is up the Fraser River Valley North of Bellingham and well East of Portland deeper into the Gorge where there is more contintental influence during snow events and elevation often doesn't matter.

100 ft starts making a difference. For example, I took another look at my elevation, which is actually higher than I thought. About a 15 min walk from here, the elevation is 1850 ft (and it's deceptively flat so I thought mine was the same. It is posted on a sign at an old train depot. According to USGS, my elevation is actually about 1890 ft. My father-in-law's is at about 1835ft on the lower side of town. So there's not much difference here in 60 ft, but 150 ft is a very noticible. There's an unincorperated place 5 mins away on the mostly flat road but because they are 150 ft higher than my location, they will often have more snow on the ground and perhaps on the road too.

[RentonHill]

22 minutes ago, Brian_in_Leavenworth said:

Interesting article about the Euro.  And some changes for later this year.  

"On August 1st, 1979, the first operational Deterministic forecasts from the European Center for Medium range Weather Forecast (referred to ECMWF hereinafter) were released at low spatial resolution (210 km) using Spectral Transforms out to 120 hours (5 days) with further upgrades to 168 hours (Seven days) on August 1st, 1980. [1]

Ensemble forecasts were first created on November 24th, 1992 at 210 km horizontal resolution with 32+1 members 3x a day while the deterministic model was 200km, this difference in resolution gave the deterministic its name, HRES. Incremental horizontal resolution increases have occured since 1992 with 41r2 in 2016 featuring the last horizontal resolution increase to the HRES and a new grid (Octahedral Gaussian, 16 km-->9 km HRES, 36 km--> 18 km ENS). Improvements to many surface, upper level variables including track & intensity of hurricanes were noted. [2]

In 2021 brought 2 upgrades to the IFS model with one in particular was 47r2 which brought Single Precision (32 bits) from Double Precision (64 bit) to the IFS HRES & ENS, this helped reduce computational cost to increase the vertical layers in ENS to 137L to match the HRES. [3]

In October 18th, 2022, a major supercomputer upgrade took place from the Cray XC40 cluster to the ATOS BullSequana XH2000 in Bologna, Italy. This has allowed ECMWF to introduce another significant step in unifying the ENS with HRES by introducing 48r1. With this upgrade came the increase in horizontal resolution to the ENS from 18 km to 9km. This is now in sync with the HRES and makes the ENS control meteorologically identical to HRES with the only changes being HRES runs before ENS control and that ENS Control goes out to 15 days to match the 50 Perturbed ECMWF EPS members. Significant improvements to track & intensity of hurricanes/typhoons were well noted as well as many surface, upper level. The analysis of HRES/ENS are exactly the same with differences in model outputs appearing with increased lead time. [4] The former twice a week ECMWF-Ext ENS changed to once daily with 101 members starting from day 0 instead of 15 which was an extension of the medium range forecast..the reforecast were also separated to be consistent. [5]

 

Plans For the Future?

In 49r1 (set to be implemented in October 2024) will still feature 2 separate deterministic systems 'HRES' 'ENS control' but the HRES will be extended from 10 days-->15 days and still come out earlier than ENS. [6]

In 50r1 (set to be implemented in June 2025) the 'ENS control' will be retired while the 'HRES' will be renamed to 'ENS control' but still come out earlier than the ENS 50 perturbed members. This will remain at least until 51r1. [6]"

Omg 15 day euro runs!!!! YES!!!!!!!

[RentonHill]

Just now, RentonHill said:

Omg 15 day euro runs!!!! YES!!!!!!!

Actually what really matters is that we need the 6 and 18z runs to be full crackhead and not the wimpy limp noodle 90 hr runs they are now. 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Just now, RentonHill said:

Actually what really matters is that we need the 6 and 18z runs to be full crackhead and not the wimpy limp noodle 90 hr runs they are now. 

4 Reelz Playa

Edited March 6 by SilverFallsAndrew

[MossMan]

36 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

I had snow IMBY after the equinox in 2008.  A lot of places in the Puget Sound area did.

I’ve had very late snows the last few years! 

[Slushy Inch]

Nice mountain snow pattern on gfs so far. Snowpack should be good.

[TT-SEA]

20 minutes ago, RentonHill said:

Actually what really matters is that we need the 6 and 18z runs to be full crackhead and not the wimpy limp noodle 90 hr runs they are now. 

Eh.   Even the ECMWF is a crapshoot after day 7.   Don't need 15-day runs 4 times a day.   Just meaningless data.  

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Just now, MossMan said:

I’ve had very late snows the last few years! 

We had 17" with the 2022 event. Unreal.

[snow_wizard]

44 minutes ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

We've had SIGNIFICANT snow here in April the past two years. We also had a lot of snow in late March last year. 

Your location is just on an entirely different level than the rest of us with very late winter / early spring events.  You might even get more than Kayla.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Just now, snow_wizard said:

Your location is just on an entirely different level than the rest of us with very late winter / early spring events.  You might even get more than Kayla.

We are blessed in the late season. 

[Frontal Snowsquall]

28 minutes ago, RentonHill said:

Omg 15 day euro runs!!!! YES!!!!!!!

 

27 minutes ago, RentonHill said:

Actually what really matters is that we need the 6 and 18z runs to be full crackhead and not the wimpy limp noodle 90 hr runs they are now. 

The ECMWF just recently released its AIFS (Artificial Intelligence/Integrated Forecasting) System. It’s a deep learning-based system developed by ECMWF. It is initialized with ECMWF HRES analysis. It runs 4 times a day and goes out to 15 days. Here’s what the 18z showed. You can find it now on Tropical Tidbits and Pivotal Weather.

 

[snow_wizard]

Just to show what is possible after March 10.  I just happen to have records for Seattle for March 1870.  Really lucky because there are only 6 months in this time frame where records are available.  Very impressively the records for San Juan Island show a 2pm temperature of only 17 during the heart of the blast.

 

[snow_wizard]

Already down to 32.  I'll have to check what my coldest night is for this century.

[TT-SEA]

3 minutes ago, Frontal Snowsquall said:

 

The ECMWF just recently released its AIFS (Artificial Intelligence/Integrated Forecasting) System. It’s a deep learning-based system developed by ECMWF. It is initialized with ECMWF HRES analysis. It runs 4 times a day and goes out to 15 days. Here’s what the 18z showed. You can find it now on Tropical Tidbits and Pivotal Weather.

 

What a lovely image there.

[snow_wizard]

3 minutes ago, Frontal Snowsquall said:

 

The ECMWF just recently released its AIFS (Artificial Intelligence/Integrated Forecasting) System. It’s a deep learning-based system developed by ECMWF. It is initialized with ECMWF HRES analysis. It runs 4 times a day and goes out to 15 days. Here’s what the 18z showed. You can find it now on Tropical Tidbits and Pivotal Weather.

 

Much better graphics than what I've been viewing for this model.

[FroYoBro]

34 degrees here. Rumor has it that there is a Guinness world record judge in town for the possible coldest night ever. 

[Cold Snap]

59 minutes ago, Slushy Inch said:

Did you get any accumulating snow this winter?

Yes! Half an inch on the 17th of January that stuck around for about 48 hours. Then another quarter inch last week though that was mostly graupel but I’m counting it anyways.

[snow_wizard]

7 minutes ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

We are blessed in the late season. 

Yup.

[TT-SEA]

25 minutes ago, MossMan said:

I’ve had very late snows the last few years! 

Pretty sure it's going to be a warm summer again.    Same regime continues unabated.

[TT-SEA]

Wow... GFS and GEM both look great at 10 day.   Nice improvements.

[Slushy Inch]

2 minutes ago, Cold Snap said:

Yes! Half an inch on the 17th of January that stuck around for about 48 hours. Then another quarter inch last week though that was mostly graupel but I’m counting it anyways.

Figured you got some but not much. Our area south of Everett and north Seattle did not do great this winter. We are due.

[MossMan]

29.8!