Warmest Day in Weeks (or Months) Today!

Today was the warmest day in almost 2 months here in Portland.  The 57 at PDX hasn’t been seen since a few days after Christmas.  In Vancouver, it was your warmest day since before Thanksgiving!  In Troutdale it was the warmest since early January.  This was due to the warm southerly wind advecting in warmer air from south of us.

You might be thinking “wait a minute, what about those sunny and mild days in early February?”.  Good point.  For these three locations was cooler during those sunny periods due to a constant east wind blowing out of the Gorge.  So it’s fair to say that for about 1/2 of the metro area today was the warmest so far this year.

12z ECMWF Ensemble Chart & Weekly Maps

Interesting…looks like much better agreement through Monday morning now, the extremely cold members are gone:

And since I didn’t work yesterday and was all worked up about this coming weekend I didn’t post the ECMWF weekly maps for the next month.  These are based off SUNDAY NIGHT’S RUN when it was still quite chilly on this model.  Interesting to see the upper level ridge retrograde a bit for milder west/southwest flow halfway through March…book it!

Week1:

Week2:

Week3:

Week4:

Quick 12z Update

I’m feeling better forecasting little or no snow in most of the lower elevations this weekend after the 0z & 12z runs.

12Z ECMWF & GFS are almost identical on 850mb temps Saturday through Tuesday, bottoming out around -8 or -9 Monday morning.  Mainly or all dry Sunday-Tuesday morning. 
The ECMWF has a little wave coming down from the north during the day Sunday for snow showers, but then dry after that.

More cold troughs beyond Tuesday on both models, spring is nowhere in sight.

I like how Brian in Battleground sums it up  “not cold enough for snow, but not warm enough to enjoy the outdoors”.  I think he means widespread valley snow, but you get the idea.

Here’s the 12z ECMWF 850mb chart showing the coldest air on Monday morning, almost exactly like last night’s run:

Then again Tuesday afternoon:

You can see the next pool of cold air approaching from the west/northwest (the -8 line again) for Wednesday-Thursday. Again, a maritime cold late winter airmass. More snow for the hills, but tough to get it to sea level here in the Valleys.

Here’s the 12z GFS ensemble chart showing 850mb temps, still a LOT of disagreement after Sunday morning!  Things could still swing back towards colder:

 

Chief Meteorologist Mark Nelsen