By Gordon McCraw, Meteorologist for the Tillamook County Pioneer
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The weather continues to be dominated by the trough of low pressure parked off the coast to the west that sends waves or disturbances across the area, giving us showers, a threat of thunderstorms, and cooler weather that is producing lower level snow in the early morning hours, and continues to add to the accumulating snow across Hwy 6 and 26 where the summits are reporting over two feet of snow roadside. So we continued to see on/off showers this evening though they do become less frequent, and the thunderstorm threat diminishes as it appears the trough will finally start to push to the east. The snow levels do drop again, but with clearing skies, the chance of snow dwindles with the showers that likely come to an end later tonight. We see light east winds tonight and with the clearing skies, radiational cooling allows the temperature to drop to near 28 degrees. This means that patchy black ice is a concern everywhere!
The trough continues to push off to the east tomorrow, leaving us with mostly sunny skies, winds becoming northwesterly 4-8, and highs near 48. With the freezing level lifting to above the Coast Range passes, some of the snow will slowly start to melt, but know that the nighttime temperature up in the passes will still be falling into the low 20s, so the icing concerns remain. Down here, still with the partly cloudy skies, we see northwesterly winds still 4-8, the low also drops to near 28.
For Wednesday, with a weak ridge of high pressure over the area, we see another mostly sunny day, the winds westerly 4-8, highs near 47, then it looks like there will be some clouds pushing in Wednesday night ahead of another approaching system, light northerly winds, the low dropping to near freezing again.
Thursday brings a slight chance of morning showers, then a slight chance of afternoon rain, the snow level will be climbing finally, reaching 2200’ by Thursday afternoon under partly sunny skies, the afternoon temperature here climbs to near 50. Thursday night looks mostly cloudy but dry, the low only drops to near 36. The summit temperature will again be dropping into the 20s so there is a chance of light snow showers still for those areas from late night through early morning.
Friday, we have another decent front moving towards the area with rain and rainshowers likely by Friday night into Saturday then the associated parent low pressure area drops down the coast of British Columbia towards Vancouver Island and this would increase the winds and continue to rotate showers into the region for Sunday. This system is not as cold as the previous one so high temperatures for the weekend look to be in the low 50s and the lows in the low 40s.
