La Niña Spring proving herself here on a Friday evening as the opening salvo of a decent little system begins 🌧 the satellite doesn’t lie.. hopefully some much needed precipitation for the southern cascades.

Weekend outlook

Saturday: pack a jacket Sunday: gorgeous

and the little girl returns Monday 🌧

Overall not a bad day for cloud chasing.. was hoping for a supercell but looks like the south sound is getting the fun stuff. This big cloud was from a good looking system in the mountains behind Marysville just now.

Not losing hope however as the next system moves through tomorrow and the remnants of this system have even yielded a tornado watch for the Oregon coast.

Next couple days could provide more dynamic weather for us here on the south end. Fingers crossed for that lightning ⚡️

Make your weekend plans because the weekend weather is looking beachy! Should be warm and sunny before we go back into another round of wet and cool systems.

Weather update: I went to California and brought back a few days of good weather. We can’t hold off this La Niña pattern however as tomorrow we will see another potent rain-maker approaching.

Not 100% sure, but looking at the HRRR, our rain shadow looks to be holding most of tomorrow, so I’m anticipating we get drenched later in the day… these patterns are highly dynamic and I could see us going into a standing wave pattern off the Lee of the Olympics or just being saturated for a bit longer than ppl expecting. (Tmrw evening looks wettest)

Tuesday I’m kinda frothing on the CAPE - if we see bright sun early tuesday, and get some decent radiational heating going maybe - just maybe - we’ll get a few lighting strikes over and around puget sound.

Don’t hang up that patagucci just yet ppl — the storm train continues on Wed/Thur with another system out of the gulf of Alaska keeping things busy at the weather desk.

Next rain-maker isn’t much of a wind maker! And the Wed/Thursday system isn’t looking too windy but demands attention over the next couple days to double check the wind potential. These La Niña systems can be dynamic and change very quickly.

Hope you all enjoyed the weather this weekend! Some pics from the trip:

Back in the rain shadow we go! I’m still tracking the storm train about to happen for any extreme wind. These La Niña spring patterns can sneak up on us. As of now the major gradients are headed down to Portland and the OR coast, but I’m keeping my eye on the extended for any changes.

In any case, the gulf of Alaska is awake and the storm train is arriving Saturday.

Expect rain, wind and some really nice transitory high pressure sunshine. The “in-between” days are always the prettiest during these patterns as we can always find some unexpected calm wind and sunny warmth.

And yes — we will be rain shadowed, as shown in the two slides above.

#wawx #whidbeyisland #southwhidbey #weather #pnw #pnwweather

Well it seems our month-long dry spell followed by the 2 mini snow events are over.

Yet the satellite doesn’t lie and just before sunset I’m seeing a beautiful area of low pressure lingering just offshore and prepared to drop all kinds of lowland rain and high elevation snow.

Models are trending toward the 1” mark although the typical rain shadowing will be in effect for our area.

Regardless of the shadow, it will still be raining. Hopefully the Langley mystery weekend folks are prepared…

The pattern change seems confirmed over the next 10 days where we will see rain followed by clearing and then right back into another rain system. It’s looking like 3 systems in total now.

I’m not seeing any arctic air intrusion associated with these lows, so the snow hype men out there will need to take a nap, also the days are getting longer so the chances of March seeing snow (at sea level) are also melting a bit.

Keeping my eyes open for tight pressure gradients on these systems (indicating wind storms) but haven’t found any signals in the wind department. This can change however and I’ll update if/when I see anything on the models.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading

🇺🇦🌻🇺🇦

Expect another few inches of snow moving into tomorrow. This system will pertain more to the OH / Anacortes side of our region but the UW hi-resolution total accumulated snow model (shown here) underperformed on our last snow maker, and tonight’s system is looking interesting.

One interesting aspect is the atmosphere will be very cold and very dry, but when we get any moisture moving through, we’ll see the “wet bulb” effect take place which can really extrapolate any moisture in the upper atmosphere into snow.

Expect the roads to be wild tomorrow morning.

#whidbeyisland #whidbeyislandwx #wawx #headsUp

Image [Accumulated Total Snowfall] With about a month of non-eventful weather and high pressure ridging over the PNW, finally have a reason to make a quick update on our #southWhidbey weather.

The current system is looking convective with possibilities for some snow accumulation. Remains to be seen how this hi-res UW model factors in the warmer water of the Salish when forecasting the convergence zone band of snow that will move from north to south tonight and most notably Monday morning.

The larger story here is the arctic air behind this front, with the possibility of seeing a few record low temps into the 20s developing into Tues/Wed/Thur

#whidbeyisland #whidbeyWx #wawx #whidbeysnow

With all eyes on the east coast bombogenesis, we should see some relief from the cold foggy cycle with a weak/moderate frontal system pushing through on Sunday.

Good dose of snow up in the higher terrain, with rain down in our zone expected Sunday / Monday. The track favors rain shadowing for the south end, so I’m expecting under an inch of precip here at the house.

Should be good enough to kick the foggy gloom out and refresh the air quality a bit. The inversion I’ve noticed has been trapping everyone’s smoke down low as discussed last post.

Nothing super extraordinary with this system but we should see a decent PS convergence zone setup so you may see a few flurries down here, and things can get “variable” with the PSCZ. There’s always hope for a random inch of snow or a lightning strike..

Winds not looking too extreme with southerly gusts to about 30MPH.

With our soils dried out a bit I’m thinking this all makes for a rather uneventful late weekend storm system.

Long range models are disagreeing on what comes next so I’ll try and take a look after the next Euro and GFS runs are finished and see we can’t figure out what’s coming. Looks like another shot of precip behind the Sunday system but will get more on that once these computers start agreeing.

#whidbey #whidbeyisland #wawx #southwhidbey #southwhidbeywx #whidbeywx

The next few days we remain beneath the blanket of fog down here near the Salish. If you’re looking for exciting weather, mentally prepare yourself for absolute pandemonium on the East Coast. I can’t stop looking at the bomb cyclone about to besiege the entire eastern seaboard. Expect to read headlines with millions being shutdown from work and school, particularly NYC and Boston.

Back home, if you have the time and leisure to get yourself out of the boring and increasingly stale puget sound inversion fog, you’ll score summer temps on the southern Oregon coast with some seaside towns tapping mid-70s with light winds and solid swell 🏄🏽 at the beaches.

Stuck here? Me too…

Another option is getting yourself into the cascades where the temps are HIGHER than puget sound and the sun is out with clear skies above the inversion. The night sky is also impeccably clear up there making star gazing excellent now.

The long term models are beginning to show signs of a change in the doom and gloom, but the system incoming isn’t looking impressive, but the change will be welcome as this stagnant air is basically only going to accumulate more smoke, smog, and anything else we collectively fart/burp into the air. Returning to a zonal flow in a few days will likely be a welcome shift.

The dominant weather pattern setting up for the next 7 days will be the high-pressure ridge off the coast of the PNW.

Normally this would result in warm, sunny weather.. but for us we will probably see a mix of fog and (hopefully) sun. Calm winds and foggy, dewy weather will be the main story here.

On the extended, which can change, we see the ridge breakdown and models return to northwest flow which opens the storm door up from the gulf of Alaska.

For the snow lovers, I am seeing some hope in the extended for a possible return to winter weather.

Returning to the short term— for south whidbey, the Salish looks to keep us protected from any freezing fog, insulating us with slightly higher lows then elsewhere in Western WA.

Any clear nights might change that however, as temps can plummet without any fog or low clouds acting like a blanket. Something to watch for toward the end of the 7-day forecast.

#southwhidbey #southwhidbeyisland #whidbeyisland #whidbeyWx #wawx