PacificNW update.

[jssailem]

Happy Valentine’s Day all.
How did we get a holiday in the middle of February?

• A holiday dreamed up by women wanting to be fertile so they can have baby’s in the fall?
• Catholic Church celebrating St Valentine, to displace a pagan Roman ritual?
• It is the fault of Hallmark?

What ever the origin, it is a day not to be missed.

I have Rufus’s forecast for the rest of the month. It is looking more like spring than winter. Maybe the groundhog was wrong. Maybe we will get an early start this year on the sailing season.

Valentine’s Day 2025​

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The PNW is just about done with subfreezing temps, snow, freezing rain, sleet — Winter. Normal, relatively mild temps, with periods of rain and mountain snow, should round out the rest of February. Mug up.​

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Snow & freezing rain issues this morning across the region. By Valentine’s Day afternoon, temps will begin to moderate, melting the ice and slowly allowing a return to normal outdoor activity. The usual cold spots will be a slower to moderate -- Columbia Gorge, the far NW corner of WA and eastern basins. Saturday should be mostly dry until late day, when the leading edge of a Pacific system - RAIN - moves onshore overnight into Sunday. Moderate temps.​

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Next week is trending wet, with a series of Pacific storms moving onshore, spaced apart by merely a few hours. Tue looks to be the drier of the 5 work days next week.​

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The weekend of Feb 22,23 no longer charts as dry & mild; rather, it looks wet, esp for western WA & southern BC. South of Eugene should remain mostly dry that weekend.​

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Week of Feb 24-28 looks mostly dry after Monday, with Wed likely to be quite mild. Southern OR could get some showers Thu from a system wetting northern CA. We see RAIN returning late Fri Feb 28 to end the month. March looks to start out wet.​

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“The most sensitive nerve in the body seems to be the one that runs to the pocketbook."​

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-Rufus​

 

[jssailem]

The Windy weather app provide the imagery for Rufus’s forecast.
First one is a look at the Pacific. Two major storm centers are making their way eastward along the Japanese current.

So how do we know that these storms will be headign to the Pacific NW? For that we need to look at the steering winds. They are seen in the next image. This is the winds at 5500 meters. The 500 hPa level. These steering winds are beneath the jet stream.

For our Chesapeake Bay sailors, you can see that white streak (137kn winds) coming out of Central Canada. It is going to be cold on the bay for at least the next week.

 

[kappykaplan]

For our Chesapeake Bay sailors, you can see that white streak (137kn winds) coming out of Central Canada. It is going to be cold on the bay for at lest the next week.

Yeah . . . We're going to have some temperature whiplash here as a result.