‘Wide range’ of possibilities for Western Washington snow as forecasts take shape

Are we getting snow this week or not? That’s been the question on the minds of everyone this week as forecast models take shape.

On Wednesday morning, light snow was seen in the South Sound, but all of it has been melting quickly. There will still likely be some heavy pockets with isolated slushy accumulation. King and Snohomish counties could also end up with some wet snow showers before the day is out, but that will likely happen in more elevated areas.

Those showers will wane late into the morning as temperatures rise above freezing by the afternoon.

We’ll be watching the push of cold air on Thursday, and the possibility that as it moves south it wrings out some light snow or flurries. That said, this air is going to be very dry and the overall atmosphere will not be rich with moisture during this transition, so we shouldn’t expected significant lowland snow potential on Thursday.

Some snow and wet snow showers are still possible early Thursday -- however, your best bet for more consistent snow would be in a possible convergence zone over the North Sound and North Interior. There could be some showers outside of that convergence as well, but there shouldn’t be much overall, even if some minor accumulation is possible.

Friday is where forecast models continue to disagree. There’s a chance that major lowland snow develops on Friday afternoon, as an area of low pressure moves ashore Friday night into Saturday morning, with the potential to bring a mix of snow, sleet, or even freezing rain.

But the actual location of the low-pressure area is critical. A number of forecast models have that going farther south over Oregon, which would limit impacts of snow to mainly the southern third of our area. A farther north track (as predicted by the U.S.-based GFS forecast model) has Western Washington being impacted by a major winter storm with some ice storm implications too.

We hope that the forecast models converge on a common solution in the next couple of days, and that will happen eventually as the models better resolve these fast-developing features out over the Pacific and their eventual strength and motion. In the meantime, we’ll be stuck with an unusually wide range of possibilities right now.

We will update as the forecast details come into better focus, but you should at least be thinking about home and business preparations for winter weather impacts Friday and Saturday.

We would expect drier conditions with slowly warming temperatures (but staying cold with morning temperatures below freezing) into next week.

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