A Wet & Windy Night Ahead

9:15pm Thursday…

A very quick update this evening, I’m busy on-air until 11:30pm, you can find me there!

Everything is still on track for a gusty south wind tonight west of the Cascades as I posted about last night. Notice graphics are about the same

Several of today’s models continued to show strong wind gusts spreading onto the coastline. I think the 00z HRRR surface pattern shows what’s going on. As a strong cold front moves inland, a “wave” or open low pressure area tracks northeast, making landfall around Astoria in the early morning hours. You can see the small circle in the isobars (equal pressure lines) over the mouth of the Columbia River around 3am.

This tightens the southerly pressure gradient nicely during the wee hours of the morning.

Others were a bit weaker (GFS), but now they have come into line with the stronger solutions. The ECMWF and IBM’s GRAF model have been most aggressive, sending gusts up to 70 mph along the coastline and 50 mph in the valleys

Once the front passes and that wave moves north we go to a much more reasonable southwesterly breeze.

We’ll see how it goes…again, not a big windstorm, but many of you will wake up to rain pelting your south-facing windows. We recorded a podcast discussing the overnight setup early this evening as well. You can find it already dropped into your Apple Podcasts

Or listen at this link: https://www.kptv.com/podcasts/weather/

We’ll see how it goes!

Chief Meteorologist Mark Nelsen