Winter is over in the lowlands west of the Cascades, what that means and why snow can still fall heading into spring

7pm Wednesday…

Every year, at some point between late February and early March, it becomes obvious to weather forecasters that we’ve crossed the threshold from WINTER to EARLY SPRING in our mild climate west of the Cascades. That has now happened. Looking ahead at our maps/models over the next two weeks it’s clear you can take these actions.

I took my snow tires off three weeks ago when there was no sign of cold arctic air ahead…good move this year. Most late winters/early springs in El Niño years are mild and that’s going to be the case this year. So what are we done with for this year?

  1. PORTLAND HAS NEVER SEEN AN ALL-DAY-LONG SNOW/ICE EVENT AFTER THE FIRST WEEK OF MARCH. You know, an event that shuts down the city. That’s through 84 years of weather records! So that’s an easy call.
  2. WE’VE NEVER SEEN A DAMAGING ARCTIC BLAST AFTER THE FIRST WEEK OF MARCH
  3. WE CAN GET A MORNING LOWLAND SNOWFALL IN MARCH, OR EVEN EARLY APRIL. But life continues as normal with highs in the 40s or even 50. Just like this past weekend.

We all remember April 10/11th 2022 (two years ago) when Portland set its latest snowfall on record with 1.6″ in the city and up to 5-8″ in the hills. Yet it reached 50 degrees that afternoon!

Interesting and remarkable, but it didn’t affect our lives much in the lowlands and roads were fine by midday even in the snowy spots. That was a real freak occurrence. Then early in the morning last April 12th a dusting to several inches fell in central Clark county, although none fell in the rest of the metro. PDX dropped to 37 that morning with rain showers and it hit 53 that afternoon. Which brings up the question…

  • When it snows in April, is it “winter”? or…
  • When it’s 95 degrees in mid-May, is it “summer”? or…
  • When it snows in mid-November, is it “winter”? or…
  • When it’s 65 and sunny in February, is it “spring”?

The answer is NO to all of these, don’t be silly.

It can snow in spring, it can be hot in spring/fall, it can feel like spring in February, but we still call it spring, fall, and winter.

Hopefully you get my point…we had a great discussion about this on our First Alert Weather Podcast today as well. Make sure you check it out and have it in your podcast feed. Video version is best here: https://www.kptv.com/podcasts/weather/

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 6th, 2024 at 6:55 pm and is filed under Weather. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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