WeatherWatcher: Little Snow of February 2014 and Weekly Report

• 7 Day Trend
• Last weekend's highlights
• Last week's data and graphs

7 Day Trend: Remember that upper level ridge of high pressure we had almost our entire fall and winter? It's gone, finally dissipated, and is no longer with us. For us this is very good news because we were starting the early stages of a drought. As many of you may already know, California has been in a big drought for some time now. They are also getting some relief from our new weather pattern. As a result of the upper level ridge leaving us, we are now open for direct impact of the Pacific storms we normally receive during Northwest winters.

Wednesday evening will have another surge of rainfall with Thursday being a drier day. Friday we have what will probably be one of the heaviest rain producers we've seen in months come through with up to an inch of rain possible. This will lead into a wet Saturday as well. Sunday looks partially dry before yet another storm front moves through late Sunday into next Monday. High temperatures will reach near 50°F with lows dipping to near 40°F. We might get a little colder at the end of the weekend, but no threat of snow for now. Frequent gale force winds will pass through with several of these storms as well, and gusts to 35mph or a little more will be common.

Looking South on 10th AVE NE in front of
North City Park.
Photo by Carl Dinse

Last weekend's highlights: Cold air dominated the entire week, as we got to experience low temperatures in the teens for the second time this winter, (first being mid-December). Lows Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning were 16.5°F, 14.9°F and 19.4°F respectively. The cold snap was ended with a warm Pacific storm moving in from the west, bringing 2.5" of snow to Shoreline and Lake Forest Park into the early morning hours of Sunday. This caught many people by surprise because all of the various forecasts were pointing towards the snow not making it this far north before a warm up. National Weather Service in Seattle issued a Winter Weather Advisory for the area about 1 hour after the snow started falling. Only those of us watching the doppler radars like a hawk knew by about 4:30pm Saturday evening that snow was going to reach us. Forecasters and the computer models used are not well equipped to handle forecasting storms interacting with such cold, dry air not unlike the air mass we had last week.

We had some strong winds move through Monday evening. Local gusts at the Home Education Exchange Center in North City peaked at 18mph, while other areas in the greater Seattle area saw gusts up to 40mph.

A surprised driver slides into a guard rail and stop sign in Shoreline.
Photo by Carl Dinse

Last week's data:

• High temperature: 42.8°F (Saturday the 1st)
• Low temperature: 14.9°F (Thursday morning)
• No rainfall
• Warmest day: 37.4°F (Saturday the 1st)
• Coldest day: 21.4°F (Thursday with a high temperature of 26.8°F)
• Average temperature: 29.6°F
• Station's historic average temperature: 42.8°F (13.2°F colder than average.)

For the past four years, what has been typical for the first week of February has been a warm peak in the daily average for the month. This year it was a strong, cold peak, making the huge difference in weekly average temperature.

You can see how the average trends warmer, this year it sharply went cold.

Dew point, like in December dipped into the negative temperature territory,
if you think the air was dry, that's because it was.

Daily High and Low temperatures, compared to station average for this month.

For winter storm updates and current weather conditions, check out my weather station web page.