Mountain Weather

Another beautiful spring-like day across the mountains with filtered sunshine and warm temperatures. This pattern will linger into the evening as the high-pressure ridge responsible for this streak of dry weather quietly shifts east. Overnight, look for mostly clear skies and increasing winds. Expect the strongest winds in the Olympics and near Mt Baker. Clouds start to arrive in the wee hours of Saturday morning head of our first storm. 

Precipitation arrives in the Olympics just before sunrise and begins to spread east and south, first at Mt Baker in the morning, then much of the Central and Southern Cascades around lunchtime. Strong WSW winds and support from the Jet Stream overhead should help precipitation spill over the Crest. Unfortunately, this storm is warmer than we might like, with snow levels between 5500 and 6500ft. As the bulk of the precipitation arrives, winds increase and peak, resulting in stormy weather, particularly in the West North zone. Rain and snow continue into the evening, before turning more showery from north to south overnight. 

We see a relative break in the action between storms on Sunday morning before a secondary short-wave system approaches the WA/OR border. Precipitation lifts from south to north Sunday afternoon, focusing on the Mt Hood, West South, and East South zones. Cooling temperatures should help snow levels to slowly drop down the mountainsides. Precipitation and cooling should continue Sunday night into Monday, eventually bring snow into the lower elevations. 

One last dry day before the pattern finally changes. It's pretty warm out there this morning. Most mid and upper elevation weather stations are reporting temperatures in the low to mid 40s! Inversions and low level easterly flow through the passes continue to bring slightly cooler (but not cold) temperatures to lower elevation sites near and east of the Cascade crest. With plenty of sunshine on tap for Friday, it will feel more like a beautiful spring day than early February. Increasing westerly winds should push pass level fog and low clouds east of the crest out, and allow temperatures to increase. While most locations will see generally light breezes, gustier moderate winds should impact the Olympics and Mt Baker areas. 

Overnight conditions remain dry and mostly clear, with clouds entering the area in the wee hours of the morning ahead of our first storm. Precipitation arrives in the Olympics to start the day, and the West North zone soon thereafter. Then things get a little uncertain. Precipitation will spread south and east, but the question is, how fast? Some weather models hold off until the afternoon, while others show significant precipitation for much of the day. While this storm has a slow cooling trend, it starts so warm that it will take a bit for temperatures to cool off. Unfortunately, that means rain and high elevation snow for Saturday. Gusty winds associated with the front also increase throughout the day, peaking in the afternoon, before easing overnight. Even though this might not be the snow dump we've been waiting for, it opens the door for additional storms and colder air later this weekend.