Remember this warm stretch of weather 5 years ago? 4 days at/above 70 in early March! Hard to beat that this time of year. Now it was 66 last Saturday, and next Monday looks warm too. Between now and that time it looks very wet. Nice baroclinic zone (cold front/warm front/occluded front) sits right over us from later tonight through Friday morning. Tomorrow should be just plain wet all day. Then more to showery weather Friday. Weekend still looks much better with mainly dry weather Sunday and Monday.
Not a real insightful post, but I’m just coming off those sickie days answering emails, answering a phone call from a person starting a phone conversation with “what are your days off?” (strange…), and we have some much faster new computers which needed babysitting.
Chief Meteorologist Mark Nelsen
FOX 12 Weather Blog 
** AMS WEATHER MEETING THIS COMING TUESDAY **
Get ready for another “GREAT” AMS meeting next Tuesday, March 16th, 7 pm, at the FOX-12/KPTV Studio, entitled “Recap of Winter 2009-2010 Weather.” Charles Dalton from the National Weather Service and Mark Nelsen, KPTV Ch 12, will present. We hope you can come. Given the snow fall in the West Hills last week, are we really done with winter? Come find out from the experts. This is going to be a great meeting! The general public is also welcome!
For detailed driving directions and meeting flyer, click: http://www.ametsoc.org/chapters/oregon/meetings.html
Steve Pierce
Oregon AMS
Steady rain has stopped, 0.57″ so far since midnight. Temp was up to 54.6°F at 6 this morning. Currently down to 41.1°F.
However, a nice -20°F sunny day in Barrow:
Not bad in Nome either at -11°F:
Wow it’s still a bit nippy there. 😮
…wow, the joys of facebook…..
some here may recall me talking about how the plate glass got sucked out where i was at when the Columbus day storm hit…well, i just talked to one of my childhood friends (for the first time in 50!!!!!…oh crap…years) who was there that day, and we share the same memory….nice to know i’m not imagining the past!!!
…make that 40…oh crap…years…
We should get together one day Larry and swap Columbus Day stories!
Oak Harbor, WA (on whidbey island in the puget sound) G47
Longview, measly 29
Somewhat impressive low off of the northern WA coast:
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~ovens/loops/wxloop.cgi?ir4km+12
Windy in the Puget Sound area currently..
46.2° here with diminishing rain showers..
The wind’s pretty much calmed back down here.
Peak gust 35mph here so far… Looks like last night I was right about it being breezier/gustier than expected. It was just something that caught my eye on IR/WV Loop and I had an instinctive type feeling about it.
Let’s see if we top 40mph.
The clouds are racing by from the S-SW.
So far Salem G 39, McMinnville G 38, and Aurora G 37 are the highest.
I have fir trees swaying (means 40+).
With no split maybe better pressure rise to our south.
Very nice. I noticed pressure was rising quickly as the front passed through on my weather station from 29.56 now at 29.65, but I wonder if it begins to fall again due to the stronger low pressure offshore which is deepening. As it heads towards the north Washington Coast I wonder hmmmm post-frontal winds later? Unsure…
Should get some hail from the stuff off our coast.
Nice low due west of Astoria now. Getting pretty windy here.
It’s curling up nice. I think models are way out to lunch with this low as 06z shows it was to already peak and weaken as it moves towards the Washington Coast. It is evidently doing anything but weakening.
0.47 and light rain from afternoon-current. Nice WV loop! 😮
45.7°…Raining….0.63″ so far
Should I post my weather numbers here or on the new blog Mark has just created?
Until I know I’ll post my once a day or so temperature and rainfall on both topics/threads here unless I see the discussion continue in one of the spots.
PS: I wonder if this will someday be a forum?
Hmmmm that developing wave offshore is looking pretty good. Bit breezier/gustier winds than expected?… It’s actually forming a decent surface low and you have to like all of the cold air feeding into it. hmmmm….
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~ovens/loops/wxloop.cgi?wv_enhanced+12
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~ovens/loops/wxloop.cgi?ir4km+12
http://sat.wrh.noaa.gov/satellite/loopsat.php?wfo=pqr&area=nw&type=wv&size=4
Nice observation Rob….keep us informed…
Here’s an excerpt from the NWS AFD.
SHORT TERM…WATER VAPOR IMAGERY THIS EVENING SHOWS A CLASSIC BAROCLINC ZONE EXTENDING FROM SWRN WASHINGTON TO THE CENTRAL OREGON COAST…THEN OUT TO ABOUT 30N AND 140W. SECONDARY LOW PRESSURE AREA WITH PLENTY OF COLD AIR FEEDING INTO THE SOUTH PART OF THE BAROCLINIC BAND. NICE INFLECTION POINT WITH SOME DARKENING AT 42N 133W.
So they too are watching it. Of course the rest of the AFD isn’t impressive for winds.
It just keeps raining, raining, raining and it has been poring all day long! Quite a soaker…
It’s raining it’s pourint the old man is…ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Low level cool air coming out of the gorge. TTD is 41, Rooster Rock 39, but Corbett is 47.
49 out here in Hazel Dell.
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/mesowest/mwmap.php?map=portland
We got some snow in the Hood River area this morning. Nothing accumulating in town, but around Parkdale they had a couple inches of wet snow for a while.
One of the weather terms used frequently at last weekend’s weather workshop was the term “Atmospheric River”. Today’s 16km WV loop offers a good example of just that.
http://sat.wrh.noaa.gov/satellite/loopsat.php?wfo=pqr&area=west&type=wv&size=16
Looks like a pineapple express that doesn’t quite reach the pineapples.
I’m not much of a model reader but I see -10 C on March 24 at 850. What would that hold if it stands?
http://wxweb.meteostar.com/sample/sample.shtml?text=KPDX
IF that happened, and IF there were moisture, it would be all snow, and very, very cold. It could easily overpower the March sun for some very interesting weather.
The problem is, there’s hardly any chance it will verify.
Also, if you are going to be looking at those extracted numbers, for anything after the resolution change, use KTTD instead. The point where it extracts data for KPDX starting at hour 192 is out over the ocean, so it’s going to give you completely incorrect surface temperatures.
OK, thanks for the info. At the very least it looks like the cool spring hangs on.
OK, I entered KTTD in the box and now it shows even coler 850 temps with the coldest being -12 C. Did I do something wrong?
http://wxweb.meteostar.com/sample/sample.shtml?text=kttd
No you did it exactly right. 12C is actually what the 06Z had been showing for the Portland area. The 10C was out over the ocean.
Of course, the 12z run has completely removed the cold as expected.
Still gets us down into the 20s overnight with a 850s getting down to -6c in a continental airmass.
Thanks for the knowledge.
Where in the heck was all this cold air back in Jan/Feb dangit!!! If we could have had what the models are spitting out now just a month or two ago it would be a wall-to-wall snow fest. -6 to -8 will net you snow at the valley.
…anything the models spit out 13 days from now ain’t worth getting to excited about, other than the joy of speculation in that magical place known as lala land!!!!!…
Oh, now wouldn’t this be nice…
7.2 mag earthquake in LIBERTADOR O’HIGGINS, CHILE.. the Chili area sure has been rockin and rollin the past couple of weeks….
whered this windstorm come from? shootin pool all night in the neighbors garage, and come outside to 30mph winds. what?!
Oak Harbor, WA:
winds: SSE 38G54 haha. i miss that place.
Oh i remember that! It was so nice in March/April, I recall in one of my classes, my math teacher had us all outside during class. That was an unusually warm spring. But not extremely hot like July 2006 or July 2009.
i am guessing the snow is over till nov.
I’ll take somewhere between 86 (30c) FOR You British and 92F but no where above that or 😛
I remember that week like it was yesterday. Good times.
Mark, you still don’t “sound” too good!
42.7°