The good news: Another 6-12″ snow is likely in the Cascades by Saturday morning. The bad news: I don’t see much action for the weather geeks (like me). More good news: For regular people the weather shouldn’t affect your life much over the next 7 days.
The general pattern for the next week will be an upper level ridge just offshore in the eastern Pacific. It allows weather disturbances to plunge down the back side of it. These will be quite weak. The GFS is digging a trough a bit more strongly later Tuesday and Wednesday, the new 00z ECMWF not so much. The ECMWF does have more disturbances following later next week. None of these are cold enough to drop snow lower than 2,000-3,000′ on the ECMWF and 1,500′ on the GFS. Not a whole lot of rain either.
I did notice the 00z GFS ensembles showed quite a few members a little cooler with that Wednesday trough:
Other than that, I’ve got nothing…real slow. Remember, as I posted earlier this week, all it would take is a slight shift of the ridge farther to the west and we’d be in the cold or snow business here in the Pacific Northwest. No models are showing that for now.
I’m headed to the Providence Festival of Trees in Seaside this weekend to emcee, so no postings again until Monday.
Chief Meteorologist Mark Nelsen
FOX 12 Weather Blog 
Frankly speaking, (and I speak to Frank a lot). Hahaah!
“This is going to be a very frank evaluation, perhaps too frank.”
http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2012/12/rebuilding-national-weather-service.html
Well, a big hello to Frank. 🙂 Welcome to the blog! Haa!
If anyone has the time I would like to know what is meant by the statement 500mb height anomalies, might be a stupid questions, but im not sure what that means thanks.
So THAT’S why the gfs sucks compared to the ecmwf!
Thanks for posting that little tidbit!
00z GFS 3 hours
00z ECMWF 5 hours 44 minutes
12z GFS Ensembles
6-10 Day 500mb Height Anomalies
11-15 Day 500mb Height Anomalies
12z ECMWF Ensembles
6-10 Day 500mb Height Anomalies
12z GEM Ensembles
6-10 Day 500mb Height Anomalies
11-15 Day 500mb Height Anomalies
The 18Z GFS looks a lot better than the 12Z did. Everybody, get back on board for some sort of weather excitement at some point in time in the future!
Yeah, I’d say the 18z gfs looks quite similar in the overall pattern as the 12z ecmwf all the way out ten days. But as Paul was saying, no sign of an arctic outbreak, just a cool and progressive pattern. Good for some mountain snows.
I’m always on that train!
Just a reminder. These years that this winter is being compared to 1957-1958 and 1966-1967 were extremely mild followed by two of the hottest summers ever recorded in Oregon. The average high temp in Salem in August of 1967 was 91.0 degrees. With 19 days over 90 in that month. So this might be a short mild winter and a long hot summer of 2013.
Yep, pretty much. If theres also a lot of t’storms next summer thats ALL i care about!
Yes, heat and thunder for me! Not as disappointed anymore in mild winters as I get older. Plus, heading to the Alamo Bowl in a couple weeks and don’t want to miss any excitement here!
C’mon Tim, you know that’s not how it works…
1957-1958 was a El Niño winter, whereas this one is not… 1966 started off as being very strongly El Niño before cooling off to nuetral. This year we are coming from a La Niña start, to a prett darn nuetral winter…. Personally I feel this winter is going to turn out just fine if not really good for snow lovers like myself. But I don’t pretend to know much about this long range type of stuff, so don’t hold me to any of this 😀
During the July/Aug 2009 heatwave there were storms developing along the cascade mountains. So during the hottest months it can still happen Erik. Plus I remember last year in Klamath Falls, on times where I would have like 90+ for 2 weeks straight, and still get t’storms.
Two things… three, actually.
1) 90% of the time when storms build in the Cascades because of monsoonal moisture during our hottest heat waves (thermal trough along the coast or up the valley), they build in the mountains and detach to the East. Great thunderstorm pattern for Central and Eastern Oregon, for the West side not so much.
2) Klamath Falls is East of the mountains. Furthermore, it’s an entirely different climate altogether. Remember, I used to live there. I long for the 3+ feet of snow on the ground that sticks around until march, or April… or early June.
3) I was (mostly) being facetious.
hahaha yeah I wasn’t saying the west side was going to get any! Of course not, heatwaves do the same things every time there 😛
Monday morning weather overview:
Drizzle/low clouds today, not my cup of tea.
Am discounting the 12Z GFS run…much out of line for weather later this week when compared to the other models (Euro, NOGAPS, UKMET, and even the Canadian, as well as the GFS ensembles) as it had us in a wet, mild warm advection pattern with rain in the Cascades to screw up a ski weekend coming up. The other models have 850mb temps mostly below zero C for the end of this week and into the weekend.
Overall it looks like temps will be normal to a bit below normal as we go from the end of this week toward the following week. Looking at the Euro model output last two runs, it looks like a Siberian trainload of arctic air, vodka extending from interior AK across the pole to Siberia. Reading the forecast discussion from Fairbanks AK, it looks like their 3-4 week regime of frigid temperatures has taken a bit of a breather, only to be replaced with a significant snow event. The way I see it, the enhanced snowcover may only set the stage for an even colder cold snap starting this weekend into next week…temps were in the -30s to -50s last week…may well be -40s to -60s next week if the Euro is right.
Only if we start seeing ridging at 145-150W with high heights over AK (not just Gulf of Alaska) are we going to see any really cold temperatures. I like to see models showing 570dm plus 500mb heights over Anchorage, before I believe we will actually have an arctic outbreak (the classic scenario where arctic air pours over the mountain ranges from Yukon/BC). I have seen maybe one or two operational model runs (maybe just a few more ensemble members even) in the past couple months spit out a map showing such a strong ridge over AK…which suggests to me they have been spot on in keeping the cold air up there in the past weeks, and into the next couple weeks.
Keep the snow coming in the mountains. They need more than have now (in Oregon).
I took at the CPC 6-10d, 8-14d 500mb analog maps. Based on looking at the analog years…if the maps end up being reasonably correct 1-2 weeks from now in terms of large scale features, then if you follow the observed weather that happened during the following weeks in those years, you will find that arctic air (if any) did not occur for at least a few weeks afterward.
I still think some cold weather may come in January, but it may not be until the middle of the month of you use the above “logic”.
If I can just get the Siberian trainload of arctic air, vodka , to pull into the land of gravelly plains!
I’ll throw a blog party when I get the vodka thawed out! Hahaah!
I Thank some thing big with the weather is going to happen maybe not now but soon.
Well, here we are at the 10th, 18 days after the Thanksgiving Day snowstorm that I totally nailed. Crazy winter wonderland out there right now… 😆
Hahaha! Yeah, not quite… 😆
Saddest part is, if this scenario actually panned out, a low tracking onshore just South of Astoria would likely pass right over Vancouver (at best) dumping epic snow on their side of the river, but leaving PDX with a Southerly wind, 35F and rain — a repeat of last January — but instead of missing us by 12 miles, it would be more like 5 or 6.
There are only so many of those “near misses” a snow lover can take before they just… snap. 😦
Hahah! I know… But it’ll happen one of these days! The perfect snow scenario….
12z ECMWF
http://www.cascadeaccess.com/~mnelsen/Models/ecmwf500mb_ecmwf.html
Almost….. after day 8 ridge axis is much better, but lacking amplification. If we see even 5 degrees of it bulging north into Alaska just look at the bitter air mass on the doorstep ready and waiting to surge south. It could have been worse.
Makes me think the GFS was an outlier. This Euro run is pretty consisent with previous runs. The GFS run at 12Z was not consistent with previous GFS runs. And the GFS is the inferior model, unless we like what it shows, of course 😉
I really liked the ECMWF run. We still have a ways to go, but that’s the coldest I’ve seen it in BC for the lady few runs…. Let’s see if the GFS catches on.
*last
Does anybody if the Foss Rd. Bridge has been repaired/opened up? It’s the bridge along the Nehalem River that collapsed in 2007.
yup…at least according to this article in the Tillamook newspaper……..At long last The Salmonberry Bridge on Foss Road at m.p. 13 has been rebuilt and opened to traffic May 14. The bridge washed out in the 2007 storm.
Hmm.. Alright, cool! I’ve been waiting to get down the Nehalem to the lower river, this makes it A LOT easier (don’t have to take highway 6 all the way to Tillamook and then halfway back up the Nehalem). Thanks for the info!
12z GFS was awful and the worst part of all is la-la land didn’t even deliver. In fact it featured the worst pattern and highest 500mb heights/850mb temps. When our magical la-la land can’t even give us the goods I mean what do we do then? Talk about a poke in the eyes and kick in the man area. Jeez.
Our only hope is that it was an outlier, but I doubt it for some reason lol.
Even la-la land didn’t deliver… It HAS to be an outlier 😀
What about the 12z GFS ensembles? Do we know if this was a really warm member or one of the average ones?
When uber long-range forecasts show bad news, then that means it’s probably going to turn out great for us. You know, when the weatherman says no snow, count on it snowing…
Wow, completely insulted and called names for making an innocent comment! And the person cruelly insulting me (Josh in Sherwood) can’t even back it up with a link. So not cool.
Here’s a link to an ensemble graph for PDX that I discovered last year. The lines at the bottom is for precip chances in Millimeters.
Here’s the same graph for Seattle, WA, Vancouver, CA, and Yakima, WA
Meanwhile ….
in Western Oregon
6z GFS was SLIGHTLY colder a real snow teaser!
00z GFS Ensembles
6-10 Day 500mb Height Anomalies
11-15 Day 500mb Height Anomalies
00z ECMWF Ensembles
6-10 Day 500mb Height Anomalies
00z GEM Ensembles
6-10 Day 500mb Height Anomalies
11-15 Day 500mb Height Anomalies
Not ideal placement yet, but this is improvement.
Hey, ERIK …..
Remember this?
😀 Think it will apply to this Winter too? 😆
12/09/2012 Oregon (All) Temperature Summary
Warmest:
High:61 at Brookings (US 10( 150 ft)
Low: 45 at BROOKINGS(79 ft) & CW9314 Florence(23 ft) & Florence Municip(52 ft) & CW5709 Corvallis(239 ft)
Coldest:
High:24 at SCHNEIDER MEADOW(5400 ft)
Low: 3 at ANEROID LAKE #2 (7300 ft )
Largest Diurnal Change: 29 degrees
CRAZYMAN FLAT (42/13 ) (6100 ft )
Heaviest Rainfall:
0.75″ at MEARES Cape Mear(1421ft)
It sure would be nice if Mark would post some fresh spaghetti charts tomorrow. I wish there was a way for the rest of us to access those, but I guess there is not. I will give the GFS some credit. It may not be quite as cold as we all want, but quite a number of runs now with a decent amount of consistency through the whole 16 days compared to its usual habit of being all over the place.
There are plenty of ways to access the charts you desire. You just choose to not put the effort into aquiring them. Google works well last i checked. brianschmit.com also works well. But like I said. Don’t make any effort, you yourself looks like the a-hole.
I would go with “you look misinformed” but jeez lay off Mountain Man.
Wow! Totally uncalled for. Who pssed in your cheerios this morning. I really dont think Mark intends for this blog to be a place of disrespect and rude comments. Try getting some sleep.
Get real, Josh.