Does that snowflake on your phone really mean snow in Portland next week?

Did you look at your phone this morning and see a snowflake on your weather app for next Thursday? Well, don’t rush out to buy a sled just yet.

“Thursday is extremely far out there,” David Bishop, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Portland said over the phone Thursday. “The forecast will more than likely change.”

As it stands now, said Bishop, the National Weather Service is predicting snow levels to drop to about 1,800 to 2,000 feet.

Downtown Portland, he said, is closer to 30 feet.

“As it sits,” Bishop said, “we have the high forecasted to be in the mid to upper 40s.”

So, why is your phone giving you unrealistic expectations of a magical snow day? Technology, it turns out, may be imperfect.

“More than likely those apps just load a model run,” Bishop said, “and it’s never looked at by a human.”

But what the humans can tell us, at least for the near future, is it looks like rain through the weekend. So, rain boots, not snow boots, at least for now.