From the Cliff Mass Weather Blog
Cliff Mass
The Northwest atmosphere did not get the message about El Nino this week, with colder-than-normal temperatures and substantial snowfall in the mountains.
For example, a veritable army of snowplows moved through Snoqualmie Pass this morning
See the video here.
Stevens Pass was quite snowy this afternoon
The visible satellite image this morning was a classic, showing instability showers offshore, the result of cold Arctic air passing over much warmer water.
The radiosonde sounding (balloon-launched weather instruments) at Forks indicated a freezing level of around 1300 meters above sea level (around 4200 ft). The snow level can be as much as 1000 ft below that.
No wonder the passes got snow.
With the cold/snow conditions over the region, several mountain locations have had above-normal snow amounts the last few days (see below). The blue dots indicate stations with over 150% of normal snow!. That does say much this early in the season.
The colder-than-normal conditions, with more mountain snow, are not over!
The forecast of the temperature anomaly from normal shows for the next day indicates that the whole Northwest will be colder than normal (blue and green colors).
And colder-than-normal conditions will continue over the region for the next week!
The result will be additional early-season mountain snow, as shown by the predicted accumulation through Sunday afternoon (below).
There has been a lot of loose talk about coastal Kelvin waves and warm ocean conditions off our coast, but our water temperatures are actually quite close to normal (see below).
The warmer-than-normal coastal waters are mainly to our south over central and southern California and offshore far to our southwest.
Finally, the models are emphatic that there will be a major weather regime change in a week, when a series of potent atmospheric rivers will aim directly at our region (see below). Should really help to fill reservoirs.
Quite a contrast to classic El Niños that take the moisture plumes into California.
All in all, good news for water resources in the Northwest.
