Forecasting Kitsap

Today was certainly a BEAUTIFUL day with crystal clear skies and highs in the low to mid 40s. Lows this morning were in the 20s to low 30s— much colder than expected in the high and low temperature department.

Over the next several days it will only get colder and more interesting. Let’s divide this in two sections. First, cold.

This is where we’re projected to be sitting (temperature wise) Sunday afternoon:

That’s easily highs in the upper 20s/lower 30s for all of Western Washington. There’s still the possibility these numbers are overdone, but so far the models have been too warm the past couple days, and the blast of arctic air hasn’t even arrived yet! I have lowered my high temps in the 7 day forecast accordingly, but not too low…I want enough room to back out at the last second if I need to!

Models have been very consistent in this being a 3-4 day event: Sunday through Wednesday morning. Highs will average in the mid 30s with lows in the low to mid 20s during this period under mostly sunny skies. There is a wrinkle, however (isn’t there always?) and that’s snow potential…

For the first time this season, the snow forecast model has picked up on a possible over running storm system mid day Wednesday, the 9th. Some models keep it cold all day, others, like the GFS, warm the airmass up to the point where we won’t stay snow for too long, but we could see a couple inches of accumulation before the change over. At this point, though, the possibility remains we don’t even see any snow out of this or…and this is what I secretly hope for…we don’t see a change over at all but stay all snow, and continue that way through next weekend.

And, for those interested, the European model, which tends to be a little more thorough in weather output than the GFS, is advertising a cold and snowy blast indeed. Fun to talk and think about, but it’s far enough out in la la land that this could very well be a mirage.

Anyway, to sum this event up: Cool conditions through Saturday, then we take a turn for the colder with daytime highs averaging in the mid 30s or colder through Wednesday morning under sunny skies before a warmer storm moves through, potentially dumping 1-2” of snow across the region (more the south you go) before it warms up to all rain.

That’s all I have for now…more updates to come tomorrow…

Matthew Leach

Forecasting Kitsap

Questions? Comments? E-mail me at: forecastingkitsap@live.com

7 DAY FORECAST

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 7:16 pm by Matthew Leach and is filed under Storms/Active Weather, This Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.