7pm Tuesday
If you are a gardener like me there’s a decent chance you are staring out the window at a relatively green garden as we head toward December 1st. I have only had a low temperature of 30 degrees at my home and the banana trees barely look touched by frost and the annuals are rotting, but still alive due to no significant freezing action. See the lows so far this fall around the metro area.
The temperature needs to drop down into the upper 20s to really kill off many annuals and very few of us have seen that. Not on the map is downtown Portland which has only seen a 37 degree temperature. This is a bit late, but not too unusual.
And having a first frost in early December sure is not indicative of the winter to come. Last year it didn’t happen until December 6th and we know how winter (brrr!) turned out. It’s more an indication of the weather pattern from Halloween into December. For frost we need clear nights and a relatively dry airmass to allow temps to drop. When we have constant rain that doesn’t happen.
But fear not, I expect frost for almost all of us at some point next week. An east wind pattern is coming much of next week (after Monday). The result should be widespread freezing for just about all of us west of the Cascades. Dry offshore flow in December means fog and/or frost west of the Cascades. It’s likely downtown Portland and a few windy spots in the western Gorge still won’t drop to freezing.
Speaking of dry, the big change is still on for next week. Bad news for ski areas that are only going to pick up a maximum of 2 feet new snow the next few days, then dry out.
But it’s good news in the lowlands, a chance to hang your Christmas Lights and not get soaked maybe?
Chief Meteorologist Mark Nelsen
FOX 12 Weather Blog 
A clear day here, but look at these two aircraft observations:
http://koosah.info/WxAloftUi/obs_demo_detail.jsp?area=1&id=13668
http://koosah.info/WxAloftUi/obs_demo_detail.jsp?area=1&id=13670
3°C warmer in just over 300 vertical feet.
The web site snow flakes are back! I think Mark is hinting at a future forecast 🙂
A few days’ stretch without rain will be nice for drying out the yard. It makes sucking up the leaves with my mulching mower so much easier!
After that you can clean up your bedroom, mom will thank you, I’m sure.
Which bedroom should I clean? If it’s my own, my mom has no bearing over its cleanliness. So then my guest bedroom, maybe? It’s mostly storage right now, not a whole lot of “cleaning” to be done in there. Or perhaps you mean I should drive over to my Mom’s and clean her bedroom? Though she’d appreciate the visit, I don’t think she’d be too keen on me rifling through all her stuff.
If you’re making a sad, lame attempt at a “mother’s basement” jab, then I guess you missed the part where I moved out of my parents’ house when I left for college… almost 20 years ago. 😆
Time to catch up, rookie!
Hey W7, I’ve got a strong feeling that ‘Nahtalkin’ (a misnomer if I’ve ever seen one) is a Farmer Ted sock puppet…..
Apparently Kyle’s got company.
Kinda what I’ve been thinking for a while. I mean, they both live out near the Barton area, and I don’t believe in coincidence, so I wouldn’t be surprised.
Can hardly wait for the “non-La Nina” weather next week. This dreary drizzly dark damp stuff over us has outstayed it’s welcome for me!
Mark, please loose the corny graphics especially the silly reflections at the bottom or your conditions graphic. Who buys these childish animations anyway. The goofy turkey was kind of funny though!
*lose
+r
Ha!
The models do NOT reflect our new climate regime. Whatever the old ways were you can count on them being thrown out due to various causes. Garbage in-garbage out.
Models only show what humans input.
The models have never been more accurate than they are now.
Kyle, did you forget to take your pills?
Bingo!
Telemetry at Timberline shows 9-10″ of fresh snow. Long range models are very dry and on the mild side… bummer.
Welcome to our new climate regime. Do you like it? During the 1,000ad global warming (which actually lasted several hundred years) Lake Tahoe went dry. We are in the baby phases of it.
The models have the old patterns imputed which no longer apply. The models eventually catch up as we get closer into forecast reality but are only as good as the human operators that input/feed the data in.
I also forgot to mention grapes could be grown in parts of Canada. That’s when Greenland had subsidized farming until several hundred years later the climate cooled forcing mass evacuation.
Hi Kyle!
This is shaping up to be a classic early December dry spell like I have seen so many times in my life living here in western Oregon. The Dry and Cold times are almost here.
Get ready for something special in either late December or early January guys…
I like the thinking! Gotta get through the winter dulldrums to reap the rewards!
I wouldn’t bet the house of a repeat of last January……………..
This is a la niña year, and the pattern we’re going into isn’t niña-esque. I feel like once the pattern snaps back, it’ll be a dramatic change.
I wouldn’t bet the house on a winter comparable to last January….
Last January was only special in certain areas, like Portland proper. But I think this year we get a region wide event, that will at least match the big one Portland got last year.
So you’re telling me there’s a chance………for not much going into December, lol. Disappointing for a lot of us kids, but as always I’m glued to your blogs, ready for the winds of change!