Kitsap Snow: Where to go from here and a peek into Christmas weather

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The weather has been different on literally every point of the Kitsap Peninsula, which makes the forecast from here on out increasingly difficult. Thank you all for your patience as I scramble to track the storm systems and try to pinpoint when we will slowly but surely wiggle our way out of this chilly, marginal pattern.

There’s at least one report of over 30” of snow near Lake Cushman, which of course added up since Saturday. A friend out in Seabeck told me he has nearly a foot of snow on the ground with more coming down. I live near Ridgetop and, as of 3:30 PM, it is snowing heavily outside my window. The temperature is now at 32, but 36 degrees in downtown Silverdale. I have also heard many reports from those living along the Hood Canal that it is either still snowing or rain has changed back to snow. The Seattle National Weather service assures us we will transition to all rain later this evening.

This situation is localized, however, and not everyone will be running into this problem. With that said, the general forecast is for rain to continue through the night into tomorrow before the precip breaks apart and we’re thrown into a showery pattern through the weekend. For local hills mainly on the western half of Kitsap County (including northern Mason County), wet snow or rain/snow showers will continue through the evening, hence the new weather advisory. I am not seeing much more in the way of additional accumulation for most spots, although the usual suspects along the Canal could pick up another 1-2” of the white stuff before we shut off the snow tomorrow. IF you can believe it 😉

And the forecast for the remainder of the week through Christmas Eve? Showers and sun breaks with highs in the low 40s. Are we done with the snow altogether? I’m not holding my breath. Things look very marginal, yet again, from the 23rd to the 25th.

For now, most of you should have a green Christmas. I’m probably not ready to say everyone will fall into that category.

I’m leaving tomorrow to celebrate Christmas with the rest of my family in Idaho, so you may not hear from me for a couple days. But I’ll definitely fit one more update on this blog before Christmas 🙂 Happy Holidays everyone!

Matthew Leach

Forecasting Kitsap

E-mail: forecastingkitsap@live.com