Cold Start

Green is showing.  Yes, the warmth of the past couple of days is bring’n on the green of Spring.   No green coffee in this Mug ☕️.

Pleasant pre-Spring weather will last through Saturday, then the next wet pattern returns mid-weekend.  A stretched, weak system will bring clouds & showers to the entire west coast on Sunday.  Not a super wet one.

The first day of Spring - Monday - will be damp, as the ’stretched storm’ noted above slowly works east.  On Tue, moderate-to-heavy rain will hit CA again - mainly south of the Bay area into Baja; the PNW should be mostly dry, with a stray shower.  Cool.  Same for Wed Mar 22.  The next wet system for the PNW arrives on Thu the 23rd and unfortunately, it will be the harbinger of another COLD pattern across the PNW.  Yes, low elevation snow (for March), cold rain, showers, and potential thunderstorms - with hail - will be in play from Thu on through the last weekend of March 2023.   In fact, if model solutions verify, Sunday the 26 could be quite stormy and ‘winter like’.  Oh my.

The pattern mentioned above, is setting up to mirror the past couple of cold cycles we have experienced since early Feb.  High pressure ridging far to the west over the Gulf of Alaska opens the door for cold systems to ’slide down the east margin of the ridge (dome)’, drawing cold, Canadian / Arctic source air over the eastern Pacific, for chilly, low-snow weather.  Sound familiar?  With the sun angle higher in the sky, ‘lift’ of the cold surface air gets magnified considerably, setting up thunderstorms, hail, gusty winds and lots of mountain snow above 1,000 - 2,000 ft.  That may be the pattern for Sat Mar 25 - Wed Mar 29.  During that same period, the battle zone between warm & cold air will over southern OR & northern CA — Patrons in that region will have heavy rain / snow & messy travel conditions.

It looks like a warmer, west origin Pacific storm will move onshore by Thu Mar 30, for more Spring rain around the PNW and seasonal snow in the higher terrain of the Cascades.  The pattern for April Fool’s Day (Saturday) has been mixed - either wet, showery or mild and dry.  Let’s wait on this foolish outlook.