WeatherWatcher: Another brush of white stuff on the way

Shoreline, February 9, 2019
Photo by Carl Dinse

City streets might soon look like the ones in the above photo, again. We continue to be on the margin for the snow level, with rain showers and rain/snow mixed showers at times through the weekend. The big story is Sunday evening through Tuesday afternoon.

Some colder air might make its way into the region Sunday evening as a new Pacific storm approaches from the south. We will be in that delicate balance of cold dry air evaporating the precipitation before it reaches the ground, or the warm pacific storm pushing enough mild moist air in to precipitate as rain.

Now, because of this delicate scenario, the forecast models have been all over the place. Some have indicated 10 inches of snow, others have indicated no snow. This has also changed on each run as we get closer to the event. Right now, it appears the consensus is 0 to 3 inches of snow could fall in the Shoreline and Lake Forest Park areas by Tuesday afternoon.

Bottom line: This is one of those set ups that could be a non-event (no snow), or it could dump 10-12 inches of snow. In my experience with this situation, I think we would likely see up to 6 inches, but the potential is there for much greater amounts or much less. Be prepared for winter driving conditions from Sunday evening through Wednesday. As always I will try to provide updates if forecasts become better developed.

Rest of next week: The forecast for the remainder of next week is still cooler than normal with showers around. At this time it looks like those showers should be rain into next weekend. There could be more threats of lowland snow or rain/snow mixed showers into the first week of March.

For current weather conditions visit www.shorelineweather.com