A Cold, Snowy Start to Fall

 Fall so far has been much cooler and snowier than normal in the Northwest.

To "warm-up"  this discussion, take a look at the snow coverage at Crystal Mountain and at Mt. Baker Ski resort--enough to motivate a search for the hot chocolate mix.



A more quantitative view is provided by the NOAA snowpack analysis today (actually the snow-water-equivalent--the amount of water in the snowpack), compared against the last year (see below).  A lot more snow this year!




The temperature departure from normal over the past two weeks is chilling:  western Washington and Oregon have been much cooler than normal (by 3-6F).  So have much of the West.


And plotting the temperature at Sea-Tac versus the normal highs and lows over the past two weeks is startling: Only ONE day had a high temperature reaching the normal values and MANY days had low temps plunging well below the normal lows:

 Fall so far has been much cooler and snowier than normal in the Northwest A Cold, Snowy Start to Fall

Yesterday morning, a number of western Washington stations dropped to freezing and below, and some low-temperature records were achieved (see below)


It looks like we will warm up a bit during the next few days, with a high in the mid-60s on Saturday, but then we slide back into the mid-50s (see European Center forecast for Seattle).  Sorry.     My zucchinis are dying and my tomatoes are remaining green.  Not good.



Depressingly, the latest European Center extended forecast for the next month is going colder than normal (blue colors).   You might find your sweaters.....






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