So it’s increasingly looking like there is not much chance for a White Christmas Morning. More on that in a bit…
However, there is at least a chance that we could have flakes in the air over the weekend and even into next week.
There is some arctic high pressure just now pressing into the southern Interior. Nothing like what we had in mid-November, but it will still be there.
The GFS has us in the Valley getting just below freezing over the weekend with little bits of precipitation filtering in thanks to a low that is going to generate just off the coast of Washington and then wobble around off the West Coast without really going anywhere. By Monday or Tuesday it is slated to finally make landfall around NW Washington state, which very often brings that lake effect snow across Georgia Strait and onto the East Coast.
Here’s the model output:
So that all adds up to some possibility for flakes in the air and snow on the ground, especially at modestly high elevations (like the lake, hump, sutton pass especially) over the next few days.
As you can see… the middle of the week, right around Christmas Eve, is when it starts to get really interesting. And probably really wet.
Here’s the rest of the long range precipitation forecast through Christmas and Boxing Day and onto New Years:
But that doesn’t really do it justice. Check out the model.
Blue is rain, pink is snow.
Morning of December 23rd:
Morning of December 24th:
Morning of December 25th:
Morning of December 26th:
So, sorry folks, but……
“It’s Startin’ to Look a Lot Like, a Wet, West Coast, Christmas”
🙂
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12 responses to “Maybe not snow for Christmas… but is this weekend close enough?”
Awesome Blog! Thanks Chris, always look forward to your forecasts!
Very Awesome indeed! I was so excited this morning knowing you were going to post a new blog, an knowing it would run into christmas!!Although its not totally what i was hoping for, at least now, i can wish even harder for snow! Thanks Chris
Thanks gals 🙂 I like to think that the beauty of a forecast coming from someone like me, who actually doesn’t know anything officially, is that you can always take the positive spin out of it no matter what I ‘forecast’.
So really, we might still get 2ft of snow for Christmas! Who knows!? 😀
I’m still holding out for the chance, perhaps naively, that the cold air next week will stick around long enough to bring snow on Christmas.
Careful what you wish for………I WISH FOR SNOW, WITH A BUNCH OF WIND TO BOOT! Lots of it!
LOL. Eve, you’re awesome! Me too!
Bill: The models seem to be pretty all over the place, now they’re saying it’s going to get cold on Boxing Day. Who knows!
Chris, to answer your question about my cam, it’s a dlink DCS-900 internet cam in a sewer Tee on the roof. My server grabs an image from it every 5 minutes to put on the webpages. Then every 15 minutes makes a movie out of the last 36 (or 72) images. I am planning on making a second webcam page for all the area cams in the new year once the new highway 4 cams come online.
Cool thanks Mike! That’s a nice camera! It’s in a Sewer Tee? lol. Awesome. 😀
Right price too. Maybe that will be my next purchase…. would really like a camera pointed towards Mt. Arrowsmith.
What do you use to make the movies?
Weeeeeeeeee! Lost our power 2 times during the night…………….what blustery fun!
lol. You’re one of a kind Eve!
Chris,
My server (running Fedora Core 9) has a little commandline program called ImageMagick. That’s what I use to imprint the date/time on the pictures, and to combine the pictures into the 3 movies (2 short, 1 long). It looks more like a slideshow than a movie, per se. I’m just waiting for the new cams to come online then I’ll make up a new page with links for all the cams out here.
Something else with my cam, I run power to it via a PoE setup. That limits the network speed to 10mbps, but for the pics, that’s plenty fast. And it means I only had to run an ethernet cable up to the cam. There’s a breakout box in the Tee with the cam that splits the power and data back to their proper plugs.