PNW January 2022, Contact Info for Phil

[snow_wizard]

39 minutes ago, Timmy_Supercell said:

I like to be proven wrong, I'm just saying countless places that annually see a lot more winter have never recorded a snowstorm like that... 

I assume you read my long winded explanations of the January 1880 event?

[snow_wizard]

3 minutes ago, TigerWoodsLibido said:

There isn’t that much to talk about down here. Same warmer than normal conditions.

I think the next cold wave will be better for your guys with more of a -EPO component.

[TigerWoodsLibido]

1 minute ago, snow_wizard said:

I think the next cold wave will be better for your guys with more of a -EPO component.

The ensembles don’t show any cold wave coming. But maybe whenever the next one happens it will be more favorable for down here like in Jan 2017. Might be a couple years tho. We are due for some regional duds.

[Phil]

1 minute ago, SnowHawks said:

February 2nd and 3rd 1916 Seattle two day snowfall 38 inches per Seattle Times. So if you have a large pool of water (Pacific) and the right conditions(not warming the atmosphere as your low pressure lands), then yes large snowfalls can occur in the Puget Sound.  

38” in 2 days is certainly believable. 

Certainly not *impossible* Seattle could’ve seen 6 feet in 3 days. It’s happened in New England despite less of a moisture source, so odds are it can happen in the PNW too.

I just want some details on how/where it was measured. If that info is out there I’ll believe it.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

6 minutes ago, TigerWoodsLibido said:

There isn’t that much to talk about down here. Same warmer than normal conditions.

Yeah no basin cold pool, no east winds with our slightly below normal weather at the end of December. Basically one week of below average temps since early October... Warm hard facts. 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Torching begets torching. We are living that reality. Literally a 3 month torch in progress. Late September and early October were coolish, prior to that months of torching as well. 

[ShawniganLake]

16 minutes ago, Phil said:

It was a s**tload of snow, no doubt. Several feet for sure.

It’ll take more than anecdotes to convince me it was 5-6ft w/ a high liquid water equivalent, though. Give me details on exactly where/how it was measured, and I’ll change my tune 100%.

You’re talking the equivalent of 7-8”+ of rain falling in < 72hrs into a subfreezing boundary layer in downtown Seattle. Not physically impossible, I guess, but very unlikely to be the case.

But again, I’m open to being proven wrong.

How is someone going to prove something like that.   I don’t think people were taking notes on the precise measuring details in 1880. They were probably trying to survive without having their roof fall on their heads.  

[TacomaWaWx]

2 minutes ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

Yeah no basin cold pool, no east winds with our slightly below normal weather at the end of December. Basically one week of below average temps since early October... Warm hard facts. 

Been different up here in western WA as usual lately. Most of the last month has been slightly cooler than average. Have only torched on a couple of days since early December. 

[TacomaWaWx]

Low of 35 this morning. Been dry for about 24 hours here and there’s even some sun mixed in. 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

1 minute ago, TacomaWaWx said:

Been different up here in western WA as usual lately. Most of the last month has been slightly cooler than average. Have only torched on a couple of days since early December. 

That’s nice to hear, but little comfort for our pain. Lol

[snow_wizard]

13 minutes ago, Phil said:

It was a s**tload of snow, no doubt. Several feet for sure.

It’ll take more than anecdotes to convince me it was 5-6ft w/ a high liquid water equivalent, though. Give me details on exactly where/how it was measured, and I’ll change my tune 100%.

You’re talking the equivalent of 7-8”+ of rain falling in < 72hrs into a subfreezing boundary layer in downtown Seattle. Not physically impossible, I guess, but very unlikely to be the case.

But again, I’m open to being proven wrong.

As I say the event involved a 28.20 low taking a flat track across southern WA.  Well documented.  There were two major surface lows with an endless firehose taking place between the time of the two lows making landfall.  There was also a huge amount of backwash snow behind the second low.

It happened.  There is also information on it from the Signal Service which was basically the old weather service.  I do not post stuff that I haven't proven to my satisfaction.  The research I have done is part of the book I've working on for about 25 years now.  Slow I know....

There's a town called Yale in SW WA that had 10 feet of snow BTW.  There are just too many towns that reported these crazy totals to doubt it.  The interesting thing about the Puget Sound area is all of the towns were right on the water.  Can't imagine what traditionally snowier places might have been like.

[TacomaWaWx]

Just now, SilverFallsAndrew said:

That’s nice to hear, but little comfort for our pain. Lol

Pretty much every winter event since January 2017 has been better up north. I can definitely understand being frustrated by that. 

[snow_wizard]

7 minutes ago, TigerWoodsLibido said:

The ensembles don’t show any cold wave coming. But maybe whenever the next one happens it will be more favorable for down here like in Jan 2017. Might be a couple years tho. We are due for some regional duds.

It will come.  Last night's EPS was pretty promising.

[snow_wizard]

1 minute ago, TacomaWaWx said:

Pretty much every winter event since January 2017 has been better up north. I can definitely understand being frustrated by that. 

I get it too.

[joelgombiner]

1 hour ago, iFred said:

The stupid snow weenies and inexperienced so called "meteorologists" out here think their so-called "Cascade Concrete" is a real thing when we know that that when an HI-AAR event is triggered by a shift in the Polar MJO nodule, the air is simply too warm and it can only snow with an inverse Kuchera where the GLAAM ENSO has to be taken into account for the the dendritic formation of which only a few can properly decipher, I am thankful that you are one of the few, and from there the solar cycle has to be taken into account showing that the Class 69 SOLARSNOW-HEAT index is higher than the flux of -420blazeit. Only experienced people like us, who have personally experienced a real winter and blizzard can understand that the only place in the lower 48 that could see those high snowfall rates are the UP, the Allegheny where you lived, and the Berkshires.

Mind if I plagiarize this for my application to work with Dr. Mass? 

[TacomaWaWx]

Just now, snow_wizard said:

I get it too.

Seems like the last good ones for down in Oregon we’re January 2017 and February 2014 (late February 2019 far south Willamette valley). Every event since then has been much better here. I would not be jealous at all if Oregon had a major event and we just got table scraps at this point. 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

1 minute ago, snow_wizard said:

I get it too.

I don’t care if it’s better up north, 2018-19 was fine, would just be nice to have a winter that doesn’t suck. The snow we had the end of December was nice but to have yet another January fail is frustrating. Maybe February and March deliver bigly, but it would still be hollow and to be honest I don’t really care at this point. 

[snow_wizard]

I think I'll do an in depth look at January 1880 during the more "boring" part of the year.  It really is fascinating and I have scraped a lot of data together over the years.  That includes some of the consequences of the event.  There is even a map that was drawn at the time showing all of the low tracks that month.  The two that nailed Seattle are very obvious.

[snow_wizard]

1 minute ago, TacomaWaWx said:

Seems like the last good ones for down in Oregon we’re January 2017 and February 2014 (late February 2019 far south Willamette valley). Every event since then has been much better here. I would not be jealous at all if Oregon had a major event and we just got table scraps at this point. 

I remember how green with envy we were in the Dec 2013 (don't forget that one) to Jan 2017 period up here.  Different ball game now though.

[joelgombiner]

Just now, snow_wizard said:

I think I'll do an in depth look at January 1880 during the more "boring" part of the year.  It really is fascinating and I have scraped a lot of data together over the years.  That includes some of the consequences of the event.  There is even a map that was drawn at the time showing all of the low tracks that month.  The two that nailed Seattle are very obvious.

It'd be fascinating to put together a coffee table book about all the big snow storms in Pac. NW history. I'd certainly buy a copy. 

[Anti Marine Layer]

47 minutes ago, snow drift said:

The high sun angle does it.

How high is high?

[TacomaWaWx]

Just now, snow_wizard said:

I remember how green with envy we were in the Dec 2013 (don't forget that one) to Jan 2017 period up here.  Different ball game now though.

Even during events that heavily favor Oregon…we will still manage to do decent here just being north of the cold air obviously. Think the only time we really got nothing but dry cold while Oregon got nailed was January 2017. We did decent in December 2013 and February 2014 here. Even with the January 2017 event…we still managed a pretty decent snowstorm less than a month later so that winter ended up well. 

[snow_wizard]

3 minutes ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

I don’t care if it’s better up north, 2018-19 was fine, would just be nice to have a winter that doesn’t suck. The snow we had the end of December was nice but to have yet another January fail is frustrating. Maybe February and March deliver bigly, but it would still be hollow and to be honest I don’t really care at this point. 

The end of January is very much on the table, but I agree January falling flat again is disappointing.  The first week will go down as pretty cold up here and even more so in Whatcom County / southern BC, but still...

[snow_wizard]

1 minute ago, TacomaWaWx said:

Even during events that heavily favor Oregon…we will still manage to do decent here just being north of the cold air obviously. Think the only time we really got nothing but dry cold while Oregon got nailed was January 2017. We did decent in December 2013 and February 2014 here. Even with the January 2017 event…we still managed a pretty decent snowstorm less than a month later so that winter ended up well. 

Dec 2013 and Feb 2014 were impressively cold alright.

[SilverFallsAndrew]

Down here this winter could

end up like 1980-81. Nice December event, but otherwise disappointing. Don’t get me wrong I loved the last week of December, but the next couple weeks look extremely disappointing.

[TacomaWaWx]

Just now, snow_wizard said:

The end of January is very much on the table, but I agree January falling flat again is disappointing.  The first week will go down as pretty cold up here and even more so in Whatcom County / southern BC, but still...

First week of January here was much better than some years. We had snow in the air on several days and the 35/20 temp spread on New Years was fairly impressive. Still though it’s been a decade since anything serious here unless you count January 2020 north of Seattle…only had a bit of snow that time. 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

I remember a lot of whining from

Washington posters in February 2014 and January 2017.

[ShawniganLake]

32 minutes ago, SnowWillarrive said:

This recent event was amazing, but I still want to see a season like 1916 or 1950.

I can’t imagine what 1916 was like in my area.  135” of snow in 40 days with very little thawing between snowstorms 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

February 2013 and 2015 were the only ones since I’ve lived here we didn’t have any snow. We even had an inch in the otherwise torchy February 2016. 

[AlTahoe]

11 minutes ago, snow_wizard said:

I think I'll do an in depth look at January 1880 during the more "boring" part of the year.  It really is fascinating and I have scraped a lot of data together over the years.  That includes some of the consequences of the event.  There is even a map that was drawn at the time showing all of the low tracks that month.  The two that nailed Seattle are very obvious.

As I also posted above. Something crazy was going on with that winter. Sacramento's 24 hour and storm total precip records were set in late April! Those records really haven't been approached since. It was well documented and recorded in Sacramento and up in the Sierra. I am thinking the polar vortex setup shop right off of the coast of Washington that Jan. Then again further south on the last week of April. How else would truckee at 5900' get 130" of snow in the last week of April! Extraordinary winter all around. 

[GHweatherChris]

Got up briefly around 5 this morning and had a trace of snow on my truck.

[North_County]

31F and light snow. 16 straight days with snowcover. Gonna be tough, but hoping to make it to 3 weeks 

[AlTahoe]

9 minutes ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

Down here this winter could

end up like 1980-81. Nice December event, but otherwise disappointing. Don’t get me wrong I loved the last week of December, but the next couple weeks look extremely disappointing.

Long range is looking terrible. My snow depth in my yard could realistically go as follows. 

Dec 8th 0

Dec 28th 72"

Feb 1st back to 0" after 30 straight days of sun and above average temps. 

[TacomaWaWx]

4 minutes ago, North_County said:

31F and light snow. 16 straight days with snowcover. Gonna be tough, but hoping to make it to 3 weeks 

Really impressive run up there the last couple weeks. We only had 10 days with snow on the ground here. 

[RentonHill]

Signs of life in the final frames here?

[TacomaWaWx]

Next couple days look nice. Would probably have gone camping this weekend had I not come down with covid. 

[SilverFallsAndrew]

5 minutes ago, TacomaWaWx said:

Next couple days look nice. Would probably have gone camping this weekend had I not come down with covid. 

Hope you get well soon. 

[Phil]

23 minutes ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

Down here this winter could

end up like 1980-81. Nice December event, but otherwise disappointing. Don’t get me wrong I loved the last week of December, but the next couple weeks look extremely disappointing.

You just had 2 feet of snow, right? That’s more than I’ve seen in the last 23 months combined.  

And the pattern turns much more La Niña like towards the end of the month or early in February. -PNA/SE ridge, cold west/warm east. You’ll get plenty of snow then.

[MossMan]

34 minutes ago, SilverFallsAndrew said:

I remember a lot of whining from

Washington posters in February 2014 and January 2017.

I was one of the whining leaders. It was truly horrific! The thought of going through that again makes me want to . 
 

[MR.SNOWMIZER]

Insane amount of snow for Oroville.  Max depth in the dry climate is usually 4 or 5 inches on the ground. Looks like about 14 -16 inches.