Fun with photos (Mars edition)

 I spent about an hour puzzling out the Perseverance Rover's location tonight. News reports gave me enough data.. but on my phone it took a bit of sleuthing and several MRO magnifications to get it right!

La Niña takes the lead

 It's been an up-and-down season for snowpack in our area, but the late-season burst that is common in La Niña winters has shown up. Our 15" snowfall is down to a few foot-size lumps, but in the mountains it's been less prone to melting!

All my happy places are doing well, other than the Sierra Nevada. Still time to work that out too, but it's lagging in most southern basins. Nice to see western Wyoming doing well; the Wind River Range is as special to me (and the same distance away!) as the Sierra, and that timberline granite is such a cool place to  be..

Anyway - the state of Washington is comfortably white in the high country, and Oregon is just around average in the Cascades. Nothing drastic looks imminent in the summer as far as drought; wildfires have become something else entirely and are independent of snowpack.

Hopefully this summer will prove to be very unlike that last, when Covid-19 destroyed all plans and travel was frowned upon. 

Let us all hope for a different summer.

- and something it was!

 The storms that were forecast last week looked like Snobliteration! headlines would be appropriate. It didn't quite get to that, but it was pretty extreme - and we (barely) set a new accumulation record. Feet of snow and/or temperatures in the low teens seemed to be in the cards - but even as the storm knocked on our door the models were not in full agreement. The cold air was flooding through the gorge and a storm from the SW was plenty wet, but which would reach our area first, and would the southerly storm winds win the day?

It all began early on 2/11 with a trace on the ground when we woke, maybe a flake or two above 1/4 inch. By day's end we were a bit over three inches on the ground.. but at 35° nearly all day a lot of potential was wasted. This was not expected to be the Big Day, but it was a start. So for this day the SW nature of the storm was winning out at our place.

Awakening on the 12th we found 6½" on our measuring-stick on the deck, which being porous held more snow than most other areas. By day's end we had finally reached freezing, and small but persistent flakes brought us to just under a foot of snow. Winds were light and consistently from the east, so the snowdrift against our measuring-stick made the measurement challenging!

Saturday the 13th again found a decent amount of overnight snow, and we had 14½" on the ground, which matched our deepest record here on the hill-top. More flakes added up to 15" on the deck - and since previous measurements came from there, it was a new record. Our driveway stood at 13 inches and no drifts. The Fiat was a complete snow lump with only the mirrors showing (the radio antenna was lost the previous day). This was in fact the Big Day, with changeover to ..something else expected on Sunday. The Willamette Valley was already shifting to ice as the gorge winds weakened, and it was bad - 3/4 inch and more was wrecking trees and power lines. Portland was a mixed bag but the change was coming soon.

Sunday we awoke to just under 15½ inches on the deck (I wrote down 15.3"). Epectations was for another 1-2 inches, but we turned out to be in a dry slot as moisture chose to damage Oregon instead. We had drizzle, which was not falling hard enough to pull down cooler air from above; by day's end we were back to 13" and reached 40° for a bit. Ice continued south of us, but the event was ending here. The forecast for icing was again overstated, as we've never had freezing rain here. The drizzle did freeze on the snow and we got a few 8-inch icicles, but no clear coatings on any surfaces.

I'm writing this up on Thu 2/18, and we still have about 5 inches on the ground. I got the Fiat down the hill but it hasn't made it back up the driveway yet. I just scraped more snow out of the way, so I expect it will be up here again this evening. Update: WRONG

Photos coming, inevitably!

That would be something!

Here is a graphic of snowfall thruogh Sunday from today's GFS ensemble. This looks like the major snow event for 2020/21 winter!

That's a foot of snow for Portland and Kelso - and Centralia, south Olympia, Hillsboro and St. Helens! The San Juan islands freeze with outflow from the Fraser River but are protected from precipitation by the Olympic Mts; from Rainier south the Cascades get a major dose of whiteout. It would indeed be something to experience if this plays out! Other models are still doing other things with the cold air and the storm-track, so this composite of a single model is not the absolute word on what's coming.

Lowland snow near the Pacific is always a juggling act; a few days ago the temperatures were a few degrees lower, which added several inches to the snow totals. A degree or two here and there in the atmosphere is only critical in the dark of winter, when a warm layer can melt flakes and drop ice or bitter rain upon us. This region will always do best with a storm dropping south along the coast for some snow - but that cold source can't hold much moisture. To get the big numbers we need a storm to track from the SW with its larger content of moisture. That gets tricky because if it hits the coast too far south we don't get the moisture (Mt. Baker vs Mt. Hood in the graphic), and too far north means the warmer air will disrupt the cold air and disappoint the snowghouls (just south of Portland, where the Columbia Gorge outlet cannot quite reach this time).

Whew. so much for all that! Hoping for about a foot on the hill-top, so at least one saucer can play in the driveway. Bummer that our funding for a rope tow hasn't been addressed yet..

THIS JUST IN - Winter Storm watch issued for 1-5" of snow plus possible ice glaze overnight Thurs-Fri. Should be interesting to see if 800 feet of elevation makes a difference!