or is it?
the past few days were leading up to this, i could sense it. it’s been getting progressively colder over the past week as a very cold trough of low pressure digs south out of the gulf of alaska (500mb temps (overhead) today reached the lowest the entire winter season—40 degrees C). high temperatures have only been reaching the lower to mid 40s and today only the mid to upper 30s. luckily at the same time this is going on, a low pressure system began developing right off the coast of washington, throwing moisture and precipitation over the cold air mass in place here at the surface. overall snow levels plummeted to 300-500 feet (normal this time of year is closer to 4000-5000 feet) and earlier this morning dropped all the way to sea level. we had a good 2-3 hours of light to moderate snowfall, mixed with rain in the lighter showers, here in downtown seattle. unfortunately none of it stuck since temperatures remained right above freezing at the surface. however, some of the hills near downtown did get some accumulations of a trace to an inch or two. and of course the more favored low-land spots for snow, like the hood canal, reported 4-6 inches by this afternoon.
i would suggest that this is winter’s final hoorah before we turn warmer and drier, but knowing the climate and weather patterns up here i wouldn’t bet on it. off and on rainy periods will likely persist through late june and i would not expect to see temperatures rise above 70 (or even new it) until mid june, if then. i can say that i am definitely looking forward to my trip to orlando and atlanta next week to soak up much warmer weather for a change. temperatures in florida next week—lower to mid 80s, almost twice that of seattle. i love the cold, but a few days of warm weather will be beneficial considering it really hasn’t gotten warmer than 60 degrees here since early october or so.