Superfront Brings Snow to Western Washington in Unusual Conditions

 It is snowing around Northwest Washington....from the northern Olympic Peninsula, to Victoria and the San Juans to Whatcom County....and central Puget Sound is next.

And you can thanks an extraordinarily strong front for the white action.  This is very good example of how precipitation intensity can bring the snow level down to the surface when temperatures are right on the edge for snow.

But first some pictures to "warm up".

Here is a snowy scene near Bellingham from a WSDOT cam looking at I5.


And definitely some snow around the Peace Arch near the international border.


Plenty of snow at the WSDOT site on the northwest Olympic Peninsula


And there are many reports of snow around Port Angeles...some folks have an inch already.
            Picture courtesy of Rick Sistek in Port Angeles    

An extraordinarily strong front is moving through the region right now with an INTENSE temperature gradient and driving rain.   Rain is hitting my windows in waves and there is practically no visibility.  My little dog is getting scared from it.  

Here is the latest radar image (from Radarscope).  Wow.   Red is intense rain...and I can assure you I am observing that right now.


There is an extraordinary temperature change across is front.   As it crossed the WA coast near Forks, there was first a warm frontal passage (temperatures zoomed up) and then as the front went through the bottom dropped out.  

And now it is happened here in Seattle.  I can't believe this is happening....the temperatures are dropping so rapidly the windows in my office are clouding up....I have never seen this (see image).


And look at the observations on the roof of my building (below).  During the past few minutes, as the winds switched from southerly to northerly, the temperatures dropped from around 14 C (57 F) to 5 C ( 41F)...and it is still dropping.  You just don't see that around here very often.


An hour-old map shows the contrast: 56 F a the UW, but 41F near Edmonds...with a 180 degree difference in direction.  Impressive.


The last NOAA HRRR forecast for total snowfall by 8 PM tonight is shown below:


Even near sea level, some wet snow could well mix in.   But I must stress that snow accumulation will be much less, particularly since temperatures are so warm.  Here is the predicted snow depth at the same time.


Anyway, a really exciting situation.  And keep in mind that only because intensity is high--resulting in mega cooling from melting and evaporation, is snow able to get to near the surface for these marginal temperatures.

Thank the superfront.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why so little lightning in the Pacific Northwest? And a very nice weekend ahead.

Image
During the past 24-hours, there have been a few lightning strokes over the region (see below) but nothing to write home about (see below). It turns out that the Pacific Northwest and the remainder of the West Coast have some of the lowest frequencies of thunderstorms in the entire country (see below). But why?    My podcast provides the answer. And I also give the weekend forecast....and I think most will like what I have to say. To listen to my podcast, use the link below or access it through your favorite podcast service. Some major podcast servers:     Like the podcast? Support on Patreon 
Read more

The Time of Year You Can See the Air Move

Image
  Most of the time, you can not see the air move.   You can feel it, but the complex, turbulent motions are invisible to you, except when it interacts with leaves and branches on trees and plants. But for a few weeks of the year, the sky is full of small, cotton-like tuffs that like a natural MRI machine reveals the complex three-dimensional motions of the atmosphere.   Cottonwood season.  And we right in the middle of it.   Being cottonwood aware is of particular value this year.  It reveals the active dispersion and movement of air that makes the outdoors essentially COVID safe, and thus should be of some comfort for those nervous about transmission outside. Cottonwood seeds are embedded in small cotton-like fibers.   A million seeds weigh about 3 pounds.  Yes, each seed and tuff weights about .000003 pounds.   And that fact, plus the cottonwood tuff, means that these seeds fall VERY, VERY, VERY slowly.   So slowly that they are excellent markers for the three-dimensional flow of the
Read more

A Much Colder Than Normal April: But How Unusual?

Image
  April was a chilly month over the Northwest, but how chilly?     It turns out the answer depends on where you are located. The difference between this April's temperatures from normal across Washington State (below) shows that the entire state was well below normal.  The eastern side of the state was particularly frigid:  some areas were more than 6 degrees below normal.   Considering the west side of the state, the April mean temperatures at SeaTac Airport are plotted below.   This April was the coolest since 2011. April 2020 was in 15th place for the coolest April since the mid-1940s and was a bit more than 4F below normal.  So if you felt that you were cheated out of normal spring warmth...you are right. But if you really wanted to experience extraordinary April cold you had to be east of the Cascade crest. Consider Yakima.  Wow.  It had the third coldest April temperature since the mid-1940s.   And the all-time record in 1955 was only slightly colder. If you want a longer-te
Read more