Polar Bear Swim New Years day! Little snow Friday. Then a mess on Sunday

Update 11AM:

By the way… I just found out it snowed in Temecula, California today…. rare would be an understatement.

https://twitter.com/alberniweather/status/550365221672333312

Happy New Year and Happy Swimming!

Don’t forget about the Polar Bear Swim tomorrow!  There will also be free bus service around town from 10:30AM to 1:30AM on New Year’s Eve.  Oh and there will be a free shuttle taking people to Canal Beach for the Polar Bear Swim so the crazy parking situation doesn’t happen again.

The end of the cold, clear skies.  Record high pressure gives new meaning to feeling “under-the-weather”?

According to KOMO’s Scott Sistek, Seattle set a new record high barometric pressure for December as did Portland, Oregon.  I don’t have any information about Canadian records, but if they set records in Seattle then it is quite likely we did as well.

Holy cow — #Seattle has set their all-time highest pressure reading at 1045.4 mb, or 30.84" of mercury! Old record 1043.4 set 12/1/2011

— Scott Sistek (@ScottSeattleWx) December 30, 2014

Between the B.C. high now (1056mb) and that Alaska superstorm last month (925mb) atmosphere had pretty much both extremes last 6 weeks.

— Scott Sistek (@ScottSeattleWx) December 30, 2014

For perspective, record high pressure in #Seattle right now is like being under 1.5 ft of water in a pool vs. normal pressure #NoBigDeal

— Scott Sistek (@ScottSeattleWx) December 30, 2014

Scott mentioned that we had some pretty good extremes in December, and I’ll get to that in my upcoming December / Annual summary.

Friday possible light snow/rain.

In the meantime, we will have another change in the weather coming first on Friday with a weak system moving over the Island mostly affecting the West and East coast:

The possibility of showers or snow will start around 9AM and end around noon.

Sunday — possible real mess, or just lots of Rain and warmth.

On Sunday, we will definitely be getting some sort of fairly major precipitation.

The models are still in disagreement on whether it will be snow or rain but the best bet is that it will be a mix with snow or freezing rain first and then washed away overnight on Sunday as temperatures rise to nearly 10ºC.  We may even hit record high temperatures again if we go to the high end of what the models are predicting for temperatures.

What a topsy-turvy fall and winter it has been.  Truly from extreme to extreme.

Webcam still being ornery.

My apologies for the webcam being on the fritz for so long.  I think I’ve determined the problem to have arisen due to the renovations my basement introducing interference in the long cable run from upstairs to the computer in the basement.  I’ve ordered some heavily shielded wire and some other small gear to hopefully improve things but it won’t be here for at least a week so I’ve left it to sit until then.  This has also eaten into my savings for the new 360º lens so that will be put back a bit to.  It will rise again though I promise!

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