We’ve seen east wind blowing through the Columbia River Gorge most of the past week. Now a cold airmass is sitting below about 1,500′ at the west end of the Gorge and 4,000′ at the east end. The air moving in overhead has a freezing level around 8,000′!
As a result, a mix of freezing rain at the west end of the Gorge and freezing rain, ice pellets, and snow will fall once precipitation arrives later tonight. It won’t be a lot, but just a few minutes of freezing rain can make I-84 an icy mess. There will be no switch to a warming westerly wind tomorrow, which means temps will only climb a notch or two above freezing. The good news is that the wind should turn gusty westerly on Wednesday, so temps may jump to around 50 at that time.
Here in the metro area we sure had a gray day today! Quite a change from the bright sunshine over the past few weeks.
I don’t see a whole lot of rain coming up, maybe 1/2″ to 3/4″ before we dry out Thursday morning. Still, we’ll take what we can get since it’s been such a dry winter!
Chief Meteorologist Mark Nelsen
FOX 12 Weather Blog 
12z GFS not the greatest, a little warmer with the operational and the ensemble mean. 12z GEM is bad as well, as is the 12z ECMWF. The 18z and 00z GFS runs and the 00z GEM and ECMWF runs should probably clarify whether this cold will really happen or not.
00zGFS looks cold until hr240 after that looks like mild ridge reappears… May be an outlier tho… Waiting for ensembles:)
So not for nothing, but what happened to this?!
“The pressure gradient will gradually decrease this weekend, allowing more reasonable windspeeds to return in the Gorge. In fact by Sunday the wind should be just breezy to light out there”
Still sitting around 21 degrees here in Redmond and dry. Freezing rain advisory just went up for over here til ten am. As cold as it is I would think a sleet advisory would be more appropriate but I know its what they mean by the zr advisory. I’ll keep u guys posted in case snow falls instead.
Just saw the Crown Point, OR footage of the crazy east winds on Inside Edition!
Curious what clips they used. They contacted me this morning about the videos I shot.
They used the one of the two women falling down the steps and the car door one. Nice ..
They actually used a three.
Wunderfulground lol has snow for me Thurs Fri Sat Sun Mon. how mean!!!
And of course nothing for us, here in PDX. It’s been to our North, it’s been to our South, it’s been to our West, now to our East…
I give up completely. I’m moving, just as soon as I can afford to. This place sucks bawls. >_<
We’re protected 🙂
Erik, you crack me the heck up! You’re not moving — who will watch your neighbor’s chickens if you go away???
hahaha Erik only says what we all pretty much want to say, I swear I am saying half the stuff if not more in my mind after reading the blog updates and before getting to the comments. He is right about this stupid place, it drives me absolutely crazy EVERY winter. The famous saying “we dodged another bullet” has been used so many times by our local weather folks that I feel like we are in Iraq. I miss snow so much I actually watch all the Alaska shows just to see their snow. I pull out the old copies of the Oregonian (I know this reeks of pure desperation) just to read the build up in the days before the 2008 storm. We are all desperate fools, in a winter so boring we are actually excited to have the east wind for days on end. I don’t blame him one bit.
I swear all those old historical photos of barns and farmland being buried in feet of snow here in the valley during the 1800’s and early 1900’s must be fake. I mean they have to be fake. I don’t even know how that used to happen here. I don’t believe it anymore!
But it is a nice place to visit in August!
Only freezing rain / pellets, or is there a chance of brief snow east of Cascade Locks?
It didn’t look too good, but you get ANY excitement out your way, don’t be afraid to share. Pics are great, and I’m happy if anyone on this blog gets to see/enjoy winter like conditions. I’m going to go sweep the tumbleweeds out of the driveway. Those darn east winds, always making a mess…lol