WASHINGTON — Happy Thursday! It’s a much warmer morning today compared to 24 hours ago, but it’s still not warm. Offshore wind continues with Wind Advisories in the Foothills and the Coast. With wind gusts of 30-50mph for locations like Enumclaw, North Bend, Issaquah, Sammamish as air is drawn toward an area of low pressure out in the Pacific Ocean. Elsewhere, we’ll have pockets where wind gusts will be in the 20-30 mph range through the morning. Winds will subside toward early afternoon.
Wind Chill readings are mostly in the teens and twenties but could be lower in the really impacted windy areas in the Foothills.
Attention turns Thursday afternoon and evening to a weather system moving into Oregon late that will bring a warm front northward into the area with a bit of moisture. The front will push a lot of moisture in, but at first the cold dry air will “eat” the snow. After we have evaporative cooling for a while, we will start to see more and more moisture make it to the ground. With highs in the upper-30s and evaporative cooling, temps will fall once precipitation starts.
Tonight, through the first half of Friday look to be the main event for snow late this week — and could be the last lowland snow event for a long while (or the winter.) Snow will be heaviest and most persistent later today and Friday across the southern one-third of the area, from about Tacoma south. This is where we’re most likely to see 1-3 inches of snow accumulation into Friday. There could also be spots where warmer air aloft cause freezing rain to develop, but snow should be the predominant precipitation type. Snow will taper in the southern sections of the area by midday Friday or a little after. A Winter Weather Advisory is in effect.
Farther north for the Seattle-Bremerton corridor up to Everett, snow accumulations tonight and Friday will be more spotty and be in the trace to one inch range. The better chances for accumulation will be near Hood Canal and also on the Eastside where upslope forces nearer the mountains could wring out a bit more snow. Farther north from Everett to the Canadian border, there could be trace amounts of snow for the most part.
Friday morning’s commute could be difficult, especially in southern sections of the area and near the mountains. Pinpoint Alert Days have been declared for Thursday and Friday. We will have to watch this event as it plays out, because snow accumulation is possible all over, with the South Sound being the most favored spot.
We’ll dry out Friday afternoon and evening for a quiet Valentine’s evening before our next weather system arrives on Saturday. This next round of precipitation will usher in milder air that will end the cold snap for the lowlands. There could be some brief rain/snow mix as precipitation starts on Saturday morning, but it should be all-rain by later in the day. Snow will be heavier in the mountains through Sunday as rain continues in the lowlands. Up to a foot of snow could fall on the passes by the end of the weekend.
Next week looks rainy in the lowlands with more mountain snow. The longer-range outlook for late February calls for a better chance of warmer-than-average temperatures in Western Washington with above average precipitation, meaning that we could well be done with lowland snow chances for a while — and perhaps the season (but we’ll see)!