There's also a better-than-normal chance for low-elevation snowfall
By Erik Robinson
Published: October 15, 2010, 12:00am
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A Regal Cinemas employee shovels snow outside the City Center theater in Vancouver in December 2009. A weather expert says this winter could bring snowfall at lower elevations.
o What: 18th annual “What will the winter be like” forecast meeting. The free event includes a “snowflake contest” where attendees can guess when the first snow will fall in Portland this winter.
o Where: Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, 1945 S.E. Water Ave., Portland.
o When: 10 a.m. to noon Saturday.
o Cost: Free.
Break out your galoshes.
A trio of forecasters leave little doubt that the winter ahead will be soggier than normal, and probably colder. As for the chance of low-elevation snow?
“Frankly, in any given year, there’s a 50-50 chance,” said George Taylor, a veteran prognosticator with Applied Climate Services in Corvallis, Ore. “It’s probably two-out-of-three this year. It’s a better-than-even chance, but I still wouldn’t be entirely surprised if we didn’t have any.”
Even in a year when cool sea surface temperatures in the mid-Pacific Ocean herald La Niña — typically resulting in cooler and wetter weather in the Pacific Northwest — predicting snow in Portland-Vancouver is a notoriously iffy proposition.
o What: 18th annual "What will the winter be like" forecast meeting. The free event includes a "snowflake contest" where attendees can guess when the first snow will fall in Portland this winter.
o Where: Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, 1945 S.E. Water Ave., Portland.
o When: 10 a.m. to noon Saturday.
o Cost: Free.
“If it’s moist enough to snow, it’s too mild. And if it’s cold enough to snow, it’s too dry,” Taylor said. “A little bit of moisture plus cold air just doesn’t happen that often.”
But rain happens, a lot.
Forecasters say residents should brace for a wet, windy and wild winter.
Tyree Wilde, weather coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Portland, said warm surface water has been shoved all the way to the western edge of the Pacific Ocean. As heat exchange occurs between the ocean and the atmosphere, it tends to dictate storm tracks dumping plenty of tropical moisture across the Pacific Northwest.
Wilde points out that La Niña was in place in 1996 and 2007, when the Chehalis River swamped Interstate 5 in Lewis County.
“Last weekend, we had some pretty strong storm systems come through,” Wilde said. “It’s not even winter yet, and we had a pretty potent rain event.”
Pete Parsons, a former television meteorologist who now works for the Oregon Department of Forestry, concurs that chances are high for well-above-normal precipitation west of the Cascade Range and a hefty mountain snowpack. Transitioning out of El Niño ocean conditions, Parsons theorized that there’s already an abundance of water vapor in the atmosphere just waiting to fall out.
“It should be a stormy winter and pretty volatile,” he said.
Parsons added that Portland-Vancouver residents ought to be prepared with tire chains and toboggans.
“The odds of getting an arctic outbreak this year are very high,” he said. “I’d be very surprised if we don’t get arctic air.”
