The last two days have been a classic case of “Late Winter Slop” in the Pacific Northwest. There has been a lot of snow in the Coast Range, Cascade foothills and High Cascades – and even low elevations have seen a tease of snow or sleet at times, especially in parts of NW Oregon and the Puget Sound. This afternoon there was a wintry mix (rain, snow, sleet and graupel) at about 900 feet elevation on Sevenmile Hill, west of…
(This was posted on my Facebook notes 2 days ago.) We’re fast approaching that moment I truly dread – the moment when I have to decide that The Dalles is no longer under “continuous snow cover.” I’m not an official authority on the matter, but decided to appoint myself an unofficial role after reading in the paper that local officials committed a “Late December Flop.” Well not exactly…but they claimed the December snow cover continued unabated into January, something I…
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…
The season of solar spring began in the Northern Hemisphere at 7:27am PST, today Friday, February 3, 2017. What is solar spring? It is the quarter of the year, orbitally speaking, when the amount of incoming solar energy in a given hemisphere is increasing at the fastest rate. Whew…was that a mouthful? We weather nerds like to think of Northern Hemisphere Winter as running from December 1 through February 28/29. Traditional calendars, on the other hand, define winter as beginning…