Spots of sticking snow to sea level early tomorrow morning, but “sleddable” snow very unlikely

Today’s forecast turned out well with 5-10″ snow in the Gorge and big snow in the Cascades. More on that in a moment. Let’s get right to the important stuff.

Key Points

Cold showers continue off/on through early Friday morning. As temperatures drop tonight and again tomorrow night, it’ll be cold enough for snow to stick just about ANYWHERE west of the Cascades. That includes the coastline.

• This isn’t any sort of widespread snow situation, just scattered showers roaming around as we are seeing today.  A real “marginal” event, but it could be exciting for some of us.
• It’ll be cold enough late tonight through early morning, then AGAIN tomorrow evening after sunset, for snow to stick to sea-level in heavier showers.
• My gut feeling is that 70% of us in the lowlands/coastline will not see enough sticking snow to affect our daily life tomorrow.
• We’ll call tomorrow a “First Alert Weather Day” for this possibility. Again, most of us will see life proceed as normal tomorrow. And even spots that get light snow in the morning will see roads all clear at midday.
• Elevation helps a little (colder up high), but more important is whether a heavy shower passes over your area during the late night and early morning hours
• At best, some of us in the lowest elevations could see an inch...at best. Leave the sled in the garage.

And don’t make the mistake I did as a sophomore. Heavy snow started falling one February evening, dumping a quick 2″. I was living in Chehalis at the time. I had a biology test the next day and assumed school would be cancelled. Then it partially melted during the night; I flunked the test. Poor choice. So study up kids!

This is a very marginal event both temperature and precipitation-wise. Take a look at several different models. Several give us NO snow tomorrow morning

Tomorrow night the showers taper off, but there could be icy spots after sunset with some clearing overhead. And once again Friday morning a few snow showers may be lingering around the area. Keep an eye out commuting then too

Big Cascade Snow

It’s November 30th and there is a LOT of snow on the ground up in the Cascades. Approximately 15-30″ fresh snow has fallen up there since Tuesday morning. 2 to 5 feet is on the ground around Mt. Hood.

Compare that to previous years on the same date...Wow!

That 55″ depth at the Mt. Hood SNOTEL site is the 2nd highest since the late 1990s; a very good start to the ski season. Mt. Hood Meadows and Timberline are open, and now you’ll have some night skiing this weekend. Skibowl opens for the season on Saturday, 1pm-10pm.

That’s it for now, it does appear much slower weather-wise next week, but more on that in the next few days

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