There are hints of a pattern change starting the middle of next week. I see the GFS, ECMWF, and GEM ensembles from the 12z runs all show higher heights and a disappearance of the cold East Pacific upper level trough. This would at least bring temperatures up to average. The GFS would give us temps near 70 next Wednesday and into the 70s next Thursday! We’ll see what happens, but even in the coldest springs we DO get periods of warmer weather inbetween the consistently chilly weather. Remember in 2008 we had a historic mid-May heatwave…surrounded on both sides by unusually cool weather. Between now and then (the next 6 days) cool and wet weather will continue.
I’ll be off on vacation now through the end of next week. The next post PROBABLY won’t be until April 4th, unless some exciting weather event appears on the horizon.
I had a change of heart at the last minute. Some of you asked if I could allow discussion to continue here…so I’ll leave the comments on. If your comment gets moderated (for whatever reason), it might be several days before it gets approved. I’ll check in only occasionally.
Chief Meteorologist Mark Nelsen
FOX 12 Weather Blog 
Official high for the DLS airport today was 53. Surprising as to how much sun we got, but for most of the day, the wind was horrible.
As of 7:30pm it was already down to 45 at the airport, and the past couple hours the wind has eased off a lot. And there are very few clouds. If it stays mostly clear with little wind, the second half of the night will be downright cold, because we have the chilly overhead temps to support it. I bet we get down to at least 34 or 35 by morning, and 30-32 is within reach. Hard to believe that just over 24 hours ago we were in the 70s with almost no wind!
I would’ve been up at Sorosis Park playin’ 18 holes of disc yesterday in The Dalles.
I know this is a bit late, but an 8th floor room at St V hospital with a lovely view around 12:45 today, there was a rain/snow mix that turned to hail and back to just rain. The snow was surprising. I don’t know the elevation.
Sunny and… raining? 47.4
18Z GFS..Rain 15/16 days on this run and zero 60+ days. More records that we all don’t want may fall this April.
Actually this is drier and warmer then the last run.
I know i’m in the minority, but the cold storms are pretty cool.. today was the snowiest day at the mountain I’ve seen all season long, and it’s April. Pretty amazing.
Seven consecutive days where they never make it to 50….average of all the forecast highs is 46.7….twice the normal precip for the entire month of April in only the next 16 days. Suuuuure.
Back during winter, at least the silly temps were confined to the bottom half of the 16-day chart. But now the insanity has crept up to the 5-day mark, and the first four days are bordering on insanity (a 48 degree high, or even 46, isn’t out of the question, but getting several such days in a row is.
Oh well, at least it’s good for a laugh.
Speak for yourself, Brian, I like seeing cold records fall. I know of a lot of people on here who do, in fact. 😀
Well looks like you are the only one right now. Its April and 95% of us would like a few nice day.
Cap made a comment about liking cold storms too. I was up on the mountain today as well and I agree, it was incredible up there. Government Camp got about a foot over the course of the day, and the snow was sticking all the way down to Welches on the drive home.
We just had a few nice days anyway – Thursday and Friday. Today had plenty of sun as well. I think you just like to complain.
We’ve had sun, snow, hail, snow hail. In that order. Hi 39
Any decent chances to ride the 50 cent albino donkey ride today?
Any chance for T-storms?
1-2% chance at best. Most you’ll see is a few brief hail/heavy rain showers throughout the afternoon. Maybe if someone is lucky there may be one or two claps heard.
Up to 48.1, was 40.7 45 minutes ago
Nice little hail shower here despite the radar not looking too impressive…
Cold upstairs however…-5°C at 850mb and -32°C at 500mb currently..
Nothing too crazy, but here are 2 pics I took of my back yard with the dusting of hail.
Very impressive squall just hit here. Winds 35mph and pea sized hail.
Just had hail to rain/snow! At 400′ elevation
Guess I picked the wrong month to start growing cactus and Avacodo trees in the Willamette Valley!
With this kind of satellite imagery, weather changes FAST and forecasts become fudged up.
Although Mark always nails it pretty good, I’m he’ll make an A++ on today.
Darn whats with the typos?
“I’m sure he’ll make an A++ on today.”
Yay! Popcorn! haha. Alot of instability, love it
What do you call it when April is colder then January?
You call it April 2011
I can live with that. 😮
A light hail type shower moving through.
Shower is bout over, and the heat is back on, good! Been nearly 3 days since I last used the heater.
We just had a rain/snow shower. This is nuts. Where’s SPRING?
11:11 again? NO WAY! 😮
PrivatePilot I sworn you could’ve been the person which had had it happened earlier this week as well.
Showers are starting to intensify as weak instability begins to develop. Look for heavier showers possibly hail from now until around 1 PM and a chance of some thunder from 1 – 6 PM. Convective temp of 50 is reachable and lapse rates are quite steep. As always sun breaks will be key if we are to see stronger activity.
Are stray albino donkeys more likely at the beach or inland with this pattern?
now bright blue sky & sunshine 🙂
must be Spring
Squall? came thru….very gusty winds & chunky rain…temp still 40
sun break & 40 here
06Z GFS – Looks like record cold and record rains on this latest run. Not good!
Could be another run coming from La La Land… Very extremely rarely would there be a high of 37F anywhere in April.
Places in the mountains and the east side can see highs in the 30s in April. Unheard of in the Western Lowlands, though.
Obviously these numbers are not legit for KTTD. The screaming message though is no change to the pattern we saw in March.
Snowing hard and a trace. Temp. 34 degs.
Could’ve sworn I saw splat in the rain around 8 AM in Beavertown today, at least I wasn’t imagining it, thanks Cgavic.
Am I right that it is showers for today rather than one huge green blob?
Guess what? We got snow!!
Spring! Lasted one day. Winter’s last hurrah…pt 2!
I’ll say this…if it’s going to get cold, then let’s get a couple of inches
We have to put up with this through may.
Mt St Helens cam is covered with snow 🙂 24 & dumping snow at Govt Camp
After last year’s wet and cool spring, it’s hard to realize it wasn’t nearly as bad as this one so far!
Last March at my Vancouver station featured 8 days at or above 60
Precip was 3.04″, which is below normal.
The temp for the month actually averaged almost a degree above normal.
But I recall that the heavy rain and cold was mostly April and May last year, March was still El Niño-ish. I would not stand for another late spring like last year!
And August had its own April Fools, thunderstorms kept developing but never made as far as Portland!
As I remember last spring was great through most of April, then May/June brought back winter like temps and rainfall. Hopefully we are just going to get this now and not Junuary.
March 2011 summary for The Dalles:
Warmest – 64F on Mar 30 & 31
Coldest – 27F on 3/3
Avd. High – 54F, 3 below norms
Avd. Low – 36F, 1 below norms
Precip – 1.61″, or about 134% of average
# of days with measurable rain/snow: 15
# of days with frost: 5
# of days 60 or warmer: 3
So it really wasn’t dramatically cold or wet here, definitely on the cool and damp side but nothing to get excited about.
Too bad – if the weather is going to be unpleasant, I’d at least like to get some interesting numbers out of it. But I’m not sure how much cold is realistic. In April 2008, despite the latest snow shower ever, very few really warm days and plenty of bitterly cold ones, Eugene ended up only 3F below historical norms for the month as a whole.
4/1/2011 Oregon (All) Temperature Summary
Warmest:
High:78 at ILLINOIS VALLEY(1389 ft)
Low: 53 at Union Jct(2700 ft) & WA7ZVY-4 Newport(128 ft)
Coldest:
High:40 at Timberline Lodge(7001 ft) & Mount Hood Meado(6601 ft)
Low: 19 at CRAZYMAN FLAT (6100 ft )
Largest Diurnal Change: 43 degrees
LaPine (70/27 ) (4600 ft )
Pine Ridge (68/25) (4220 ft)
Heaviest Rainfall:
0.56″ at MEARES Cape Mear(1421ft)
0.45″ at HEBOWX Mt. Hebo(3160ft)
Hottest day of the spring so far in Southern California. Here is a list of the hottest stations today. 106 degrees in Buttercup in the Mohave Desert was the hottest spot.
Hottest day here too. I got to 70.5. OK, so not so hot but really nice. Then the rains came back…..
SO could someone please post the difference in mean average and actual March 2011 mean temp? Very interested how much below normal we actually were.
Means
Not all that cold really. Due to all the cloud cover at night mostly as daytime highs were much cooler for the most part.
PDX – 46.1, -1.1
HIO – 44.6, -2.1
SLE – 47.0, +.5
AST – 45.1, -.9
Heres a graphic you can look at Nate comparing March 2011 at PDX to normals.
Ya, the mean can be kind of deciving as you can have somewhat extreme variations in highs/lows but the man can be closer to normal.
My average high: 51.6, 3.7 degrees below average
My average low: 38.6, 1.2 degrees ABOVE average
That leaves my mean: 45.1, 1.3 degrees below average
Thanks all for the info. I guess the daytime highs were much cooler but the lows were higher which balanced every thing out, somewhat.