Windy Saturday, then another close call with snow Sunday morning in the lowlands

We’ve got a few light showers outside this evening as a weather system offshore heads south toward California. That cold northwesterly jet stream will bring California a nice round of rain and mountain snow this weekend, leaving us DRY in NW Oregon and SW Washington Saturday.

That leaves us with a gusty easterly wind blowing out of the Gorge Saturday. High temperatures in the lower 40s will feel colder than that! That breezy east wind will also be blowing colder and drier air into the metro area from Eastern Washington/Oregon. That leaves us with a problem; clouds and precipitation move back north over the region tomorrow night and Sunday morning. The view from our GRAF model at 9am Sunday

Temperatures will be very marginal for snow to stick Sunday morning, and we really won’t have a good handle on that until we see how warm/cold the airmass is east of us later tomorrow. So will it be cold enough? We don’t know yet. And how much precipitation will fall? Right now models are having real trouble and in some disagreement. In normal (above freezing) weather most of us wouldn’t know the difference between .05″ and .25″. But when converted to snow, that’s the difference between a dusting and 2-3″!

Those numbers convert to these snow forecasts for Sunday, most of it in the morning. They do all agree on that timing

Summary

• I don’t see a setup for a snowstorm or widespread sticking snow Sunday morning, but watching it closely!
• At the least, we should see mixed showers Sunday morning and midday
• At most, part of the metro area gets sticking snow the first few hours or Sunday, but temperatures remain at/above freezing
• Don’t cancel any plans, because even if we do get a brief morning snowfall AND it sticks to roads in some areas (worst case scenario), it would melt quickly midday & PM

My gut feeling is that this could end up as a non-event, partly because I’m not sold the air coming through the Gorge will be cold enough to support any sort of widespread sticking snow. I’ll try to do a quick post after tomorrow morning’s model runs.

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