LYNNWOOD, Wash. — Another frigid blast has settled into Western Washington. Cold weather shelters have opened up all across the region.
Some cold weather shelters say they’re experiencing more days of being open – and serving more clients.
The “We All Belong” shelter in Lynnwood is hosted at Maple Park Church. The shelter is completely volunteer-run and opens when temperatures drop below 34 degrees.
Lynn Utter with We All Belong says they filled about 350 beds last winter. By the end of this February, they will have filled about 650 beds. And the shelter will be open for at least 10 more days this season compared to last.
“That is very, very concerning,” Utter said. “There are a lot more unhoused people.”
The King County Regional Homelessness Authority took over tracking Seattle-King County data in 2022 and says it’s activated cold-weather response protocols three times so far this year, once more than this time last year.
The newest late-February cold spell comes as people still remember the unusually long and cold winter weather that dragged well into spring in 2022.
Washington State Climatologist Nick Bond says Washington winters are not getting more extreme. It’s La Nina that’s contributing to the chill, at least in part.
“It is the third winter in a row with La Nina,” Bond said. He says that while it has happened before, it is rare for three La Nina winters in a row. “It has stacked the deck for colder weather,” he said.
But Bond points out that data shows winters in Western Washington have actually become more mild compared to 50 to 100 years ago.
“We still have cool years now, but we don’t have the bitterly cold ones that occurred in 1950,” Bond said.
Looking at how many days hit 28 degrees or lower at Sea-Tac International Airport, it was much more common in the 1970s to see 13, 15, or even 35 days (in 1985) of cold weather hitting that threshold.
Over the last few years, the numbers trended closer to five to eight days reaching 28 degrees or lower. (Though 2022 saw 12 days that reached the threshold.)
Overall, the winter mean temperature in Washington has warmed by 1 degree over the last century, from about 33.5 F in 1900 to 34.5 F in 2022. The amplitude showing the swings has also shrunk.
Data shows in recent years, winters have brought more instances of snow 1 inch or more at Sea-Tac Airport. That happened six times in 2019 and 2022 and five times in 2017.
You have to go back until 1985 to find similar numbers – that year also brought six days where it snowed an inch or more at Sea-Tac.
However, with the population boom – and in homelessness, too – this latest cold snap bringing temps in the low 20s is more than enough to be considered dangerous.
“There are some folks out there here in the Puget Sound area that are not going to do well in the cold weather we have coming up. The next couple of nights are going to be downright cold,” Bond said.
Bond says it’s a bit premature to predict what next winter will be like, but La Nina is definitely winding down.
“It looks like this one is definitely ending, and every indication is it could be even on the warm side in the tropical pacific next winter,” Bond said.
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