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Region has likely seen the worst of snowstorm

By Erik Robinson
Published: December 30, 2009, 12:00am

The surprise snowstorm receded almost as quickly as it materialized.

Morning commuters Wednesday found bare pavement on major highways after as much as 4 inches of snow accumulated Tuesday afternoon and evening across Clark County.

Snowplows worked through the night clearing roads in the Vancouver area. By morning, with the temperature rising, packed snow devolved to bare ruts before finally giving way to watery pockets of slush. County public works Director Pete Capell said 20 truck operators each racked up about nine hours of overtime, but he didn’t have cost estimates.

He said it was fortunate that snow began falling in the mid-afternoon, when workers were already on duty and ready to deploy.

“It really was a pretty easy event,” Capell said.

In Vancouver, eight trucks spent the night clearing priority routes. The preliminary overtime estimate was $5,800, city spokeswoman Loretta Callahan said. She added that numerous vehicles were abandoned, particularly on hills. This was possibly a result of motorists who were caught unaware of the storm, she said.

“Some of the drivers and cars that otherwise would have taken mass transit, carpooled or stayed home were caught by surprise,” Callahan wrote in an e-mail. “In some areas, getting snowplows and deicing equipment through and around the abandoned or stuck cars was a very big challenge.”

Forecasting snow west of the Cascade Range is a notoriously tricky proposition, and forecasters whiffed Tuesday.

Forecasters anticipated that a low-pressure system arriving from the coast would erode the cold air in place since the weekend. Liana Ramirez, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Portland, said just enough cold air remained in place to allow the moisture to accumulate as snow Tuesday.

Even though the snow lingered, the overnight temperature never actually dropped below freezing in Vancouver.

Will we be surprised again soon?

“It’s going to be back to normal,” Ramirez said. “We’re mainly looking at rain for the next week.”

Snowpack lags

Meanwhile, despite Tuesday’s low-elevation shot of snow, the Northwest’s mountain snowpack is well below normal for the date. Jon Lea, hydrologist for the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service in Portland, said the snowpack for the Columbia River basin is 69 percent of normal.

“It’s been a typical El Nino type of year,” he said.

El Nino, typified by relatively warm sea surface temperatures, tends to generate a strong jet stream near the equator. In the Northwest, this generally results in consistently warmer and drier conditions than normal. The opposite is generally true in the American Southwest.

Sure enough, Lea said, the mountain snowpack in Arizona is 162 percent of average.

Most of the water that drives hydroelectric turbines in the Columbia basin first clings to the mountains as snow. A healthy snowpack means more water for irrigators growing crops and juvenile salmon migrating to the ocean.

It also translates to a surplus of electricity when it runs off during the late spring and summer.

Erik Robinson: 360-735-4551, or erik.robinson@columbian.com.

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