For fun, take a look at the 6z GFS run. It’s the blue line, probably the coldest airmass ever seen in early March here just 13 days away! This is why it’s so nice to have access to ensembles of forecast models; it’s quite clear that this run was way “out of whack” with all the others, but it sure was eye candy.
Here is the fresh 12z version, much more reasonable. Still huge disagreement beyond Saturday afternoon (26th and beyond):
The main message for later this week is that snow levels are going to come down quite low over the weekend, but we don’t know how low and who exactly could see snow. At this point it looks very similar to what we had last February when we had a couple mornings of wet snow that melted in the afternoons with little impact on traffic. The lowest elevations of the metro area had a trace to 3″ at that time. We don’t see a cold arctic blast coming in, just really cold showers (of snow) off the Pacific.
I’m not working today, just puttering around home (maybe clean the garage out if it rains too much). I’ll post this evening after the 00z GFS comes in.
FOX 12 Weather Blog 
Those who expect to wake up to snow this weekend will be sorely disappointed. Unless you live above about 1500 to 2000 feet all you will see is a cold rain. The sun angle is just too high for snow this time of year. Mark was right on when he called the winter over. Now let’s see about getting some baseball weather going.
Weatherdan, I assume you are trying to be sarcastic. The atmosphere is going to be well supportive of snow down to basically sea level both days, you made a post like this yesterday, I know you have lived in Salem a long time, I have lived her my entire 37 years, and you know we have seen snow much later than this, and not just snow in the air but sticking snow.
Is it gonna matter if u live at sea level or 300′ or 500???
Keep going…
Saturday night and Sunday night it would be all the way to sea level.
Nice i geuss all get my snow shovel out early;))
Really starting to look cold and snowy for this weekend and beyond! Models are coming into more of an agreement now. The big question in my mind will be how much moisture will we have to work with.
Yeah the moister is killing us here in portland! but i think anyone will see a trace or more for sure!
Mark or anybody else out there. Who on average gets more snow each year? Portland Metropolitan area or the Longview/Kelso area?
Good question…might be about the same. But Longview almost always seems to score better on the westerly onshore-flow type showers.
Both the 12Z GFS and Euro DO show an arctic blast for what it’s worth.
You must be REALLY regretting calling Winter over now huskywea – I mean Mark!
The GFS doesn’t, but the ECMWF is pretty close to last year for Sunday-Monday. I’ll agree with you on that.
IF we don’t get extreme cold (below 20 degrees) or a widespread 2″+ snowfall, I’m still fine. If either of those occurs, it’ll be either a partial or total bust.
I clearly said last Wednesday that we could still see snow, but no arctic blast.
Im pretty sure we wont get temps any lower than 28 and 2”+ inches of snow only if we r in luck! So ur good mark:)
Yeah, yous is good Mark………
I guess what we REALLY need to be watching this weekend are the HIGH temps and overall temps during the day. If we see any sub-40 highs, and/or sea level locations get anything more interesting than 0.5-1.0″ of brief wet AM snow, I will consider Mark’s winter eulogy back on Wednesday to be an epic fail. I’m sorry but a high of 38 for PDX at the tail end of February counts as a winter blast in my books!
Solid snow in Boardman with trace accumulation, wet roads 45 mins ago, now changed over to all rain.
Looks like my “just rain” forecast was a little off haha. oops
Prediction: Molalla will get nada once again.
But what about Canby?!
It’s 8.5 miles between my house in Molalla and my business south of Canby… I’ll give Canby a better chance of getting trace accumulations based on past history. But my confidence is very low based on the 12z GFS — this pattern ends up hit or miss for all of pdx.