After the weird “stationary snowstorm” for Portland last Sunday busted by staying further north, I thought that we were pretty much done with any real winter weather for the season. The maps showed nothing chilly again through at least the 16th or 17th of February, and any kind of cold/snowy weather after that time tends to be greatly impaired by the strong sun angle.

But alas, in a winter like this it was not to end that easy….

There was snow in the Gorge again today Tuesday.  Probably about 3-4″ fell out of the sky.  However at the lowest elevations in The Dalles, that snow had some difficulty sticking during the midday and afternoon.  The air temps near 34 degrees, plus the solar energy trying to bleed through the cloud cover, were too much for snow to get much of a lock on the roads and sidewalks, and even grassy surfaces saw a lot of melting down.  Here is a photo from up at the Fort Dalles Museum, nearly 300 feet higher in elevation than the downtown:

That extra degree or two by going up a few hundred feet, sure changes everything in these marginal situations!  Tomorrow the temps at all elevations are expected to be a couple degrees cooler, so that means a lot more sticking in the downtown areas.

The cause of this latest surprise snowstorm, is that a little ‘wedge’ of cold air from Canada slipped down into Eastern Washington over the past 24-36 hours, and now an incoming Pacific low pressure system from the southwest is pulling that cold air through the Gorge as an east wind.  (This is very similar to an event we had in mid-December 2015.) Today we had the first wave of showers come up from the south, and tomorrow comes the biggest slug of moisture.  I’m expecting another 4-8″ of new snow in the central and eastern Gorge, and unlike today it will have a lot less trouble sticking at the lowest elevations due to marginally colder temps.

Thankfully, I’m not expecting another January scenario where it gets frigid and the snow stays on the ground for weeks on end.  Instead a mild west wind should punch through by some time late Thursday or Friday, and quickly warm us up to the 40s.  Then on to at least a modicum of sunshine by Sunday and early next week.  With the milder temps and increasing February sun angle?  I bet our snow cover will be partly gone by Valentine’s Day!

Still…that’ll be well over 60 days with nearly continuous white on the ground, except for those few days right before New Years.  That just about rivals both the 1985-86 winter and 1992-93.  I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this, come the end-of-winter report in March…