Snowy in Oregon With Colder Weather Ahead

Hi everybody! I’m back home in Seattle for the holidays, and while it’s great to see my family, dog, and friends, a very large part of me wishes I was still in Portland. While we’ve had a cool, cloudy, and relatively non-eventful weather day, the entire Willamette Valley is under a Winter Storm Warning for up to six inches of snow and some sleet/freezing rain mixed in as a developing low pressure system approaches the Southern Oregon Coast. Tessa Harvey in Salem reports “about 3 inches and dumping” this evening at Willamette University in Salem.

Eugene is currently seeing freezing rain, making for some treacherous travel conditions there.

The snow has really snarled up the evening commute in Portland. Traffic has been halted to a standstill on many of the roads and freeways around the city.

Kathy Fines of Hillsboro is one of the poor souls stuck in the mess, and has only moved 3 miles in the past two hours. Let’s all root for the roads to clear up so Kathy can get home!

But as bad as Western Oregon has been today, it is Eastern Oregon that is truly bearing the brunt of this storm. As of 2 pm, Bend had 8 inches, with another 5-9 inches expected. But by looking at the radar, you wouldn’t know that Bend or areas to the southeast were seeing much snow at all. This is because there is extremely poor radar coverage over SE Oregon. This should be fixed, but that’s a topic for another blog.

Although the radar is picking up some echos across Western Washington, we have yet to see any snow from Centralia north. The snow is expected to spread further north as the night goes on, perhaps reaching Seattle late tonight/early Thursday morning. The Coast and Seattle-northward should remain dry, and any accumulations over half an inch should be reserved to the southwestern portion of the state south of Olympia.

Thursday will be relatively similar to today for the Seattle area, with highs in the mid-upper 30s under partly cloudy skies. A reinforcing shot of arctic air dives southward Thursday night into Friday, and Friday will likely be the coldest day in several years for many areas with highs struggling to reach 30 degrees! Make sure to protect your plants, hoses, and pipes. Friday night, we are in for a hard freeze, with lows reaching the teens in many areas.

Saturday also looks cold with highs only in the low 30s. We have a chance of snow Saturday night into Sunday as a warmer Pacific system approaches the area, but unfortunately most models show us warming up before the precipitation comes. I’ll keep you posted on this.

– Charlie