WeatherWatcher: Parade of Winter Storms Update

I wanted to get in a quick update on the winter storm threats for Friday afternoon and into next week. We have a stronger and wetter storm coming from Alaska, set to arrive Friday around noon time. This storm is also a little warmer than our previous two systems and it is believed it may warm up just barely enough to have rain mix in by midnight Friday night.

At present, and models are inconsistent so this may change, about 1-2 inches of snow is possible in the Shoreline and Lake Forest Park areas by Friday evening. If your commute takes you from the south of Shoreline such as Seattle, there is less snow expected there, around 1 inch. Coming from the north say Lynnwood or Everett, you may see up to 4 inches in your commute. No additional accumulations are expected after 6pm.

We have another few storms moving through Saturday evening and Sunday, as well as a couple more next week as far as models are concerned. All of these appear to be cold enough to be rain and snow mixed, or snow.

To complicate things more, several convergence zone events are in the forecast as each storm passes from Friday through Sunday night. These are not easy events for models to forecast because of their small size relative to normal weather systems.

With our current temperatures and even slightly warmer temperatures, it will still be cold enough for a convergence zone event to dump snow. This can happen even if it is raining in other areas such as Seattle or Lynnwood and can really catch you off guard in a commute. In the event that a convergence zone forms and if it forms over Shoreline and Lake Forest Park we could see a dumping of anywhere between 3-7 inches or more, depending on how strong the convergence zone gets.

This forecast could change suddenly, so I'll try to keep updated here as often as I can. For more rapid updates you may want to follow my twitter feed @SWeatherWatcher.  I'll post any winter weather advisories, watches or warnings there as well as soon as I see them.

For current weather conditions visit www.shorelineweather.com