Saturday. 12/7. Cold, cold weather. More frozen waterfalls. The end is in sight.

It’s winter now, and that means it’s time for the snow forecast!

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Random Morning Thoughts

People keep asking me to ask Meadows to run a bus from Hood River. Okay, people. There’s a bus on Saturday for Brewfest. $10. Leaves the Hood River News parking lot at 10am. Returns at 5pm. You do not have to attend Brewfest to ride the bus.

Mt. Hood Snow Forecast – 5000′
Saturday
Sunday
Monday

Mt. Hood Snow Forecast

It’s cold enough now that the snow is doing weird things. It’s packing down hard, it’s accumulating at lower per water value rates that at temps in the teens, and … OMG is it cold on Mt. Hood this morning. -4 degrees at 6600′. Wind chill of -26. It’s 47 degrees in my office, and the lock was frozen solid this morning.

We’ll see clear sky today with temps in the low single digits, at best. Wind will be NE at 20-30 at 5000′ and much stronger higher.

You think it was cold this morning? How about a repeat tomorrow? Or maybe even colder temps? Combine that with north wind at 30+ for a bitterly cold Sunday on Mt. Hood. But hey, at least the sun is shining!

Monday brings slightly warmer weather, with temps in the teens in the morning and low 20’s in the afternoon. A bit of a weather system will drive some high clouds into the region in the afternoon. We might see an inch or two of snow out of this system Monday night. Wind during the day Monday will be N 30 early, becoming more NW at 20-30 in the afternoon.

This weather pattern will gradually break, and a couple of borderline-temp weak systems will come in Wednesday-Friday. So, we are once again in a wait-and-see pattern with the weather.

Plain Old Local Weather

Today will be clear, sunny and cold, with temps in the teens to low twenties. Tonight will be the coldest night in years, with temps dropping into the single digits. I’d heard that cold weather kills bark beetles, so I emailed out county forester to ask. Turns out that they really die off around -20 degrees. So, this cold weather is cold, but sadly, it’s not beetle-killing.

Tomorrow looks cold in the Gorge, with temps in the upper teens to low twenties. It’s going to be a great day to look at frozen waterfalls. I went yesterday, and they were already stunning.

On Monday, temps moderate in the Gorge, but how much they moderate is still up in the air, as there’s a pretty good chance we’ll see some mid-elevation fog develop. If that happens, we’ll likely stay below freezing here at river level. Chances are we’ll see some more flurries (like yesterday’s flurries, which turned into 2” of snow) Monday night into Tuesday. This cold pattern should break on Thursday, possibly with another dusting of snow before switching to rain. Looks like the disaster scenario model runs are all in the past, thankfully.