Skip to main content
What a difference a week makes.
Before last week’s cold snap, snowpack in the Cascades was running at little more than half of normal. After a week of snow, ice and freezing rain, the snow water equivalent topped 120% in the north and central Oregon Cascades, according to snow sensors monitored by the National Water and Climate Center.
Oregon Department of Forestry lead meteorologist Pete Parsons included the data in his monthly forecast for the next three months, released Jan. 18. “We’ve had kind of a wild ride this winter,” Parsons says in a video that accompanied his forecast.
It took just nine days, from Jan. 9 to 18, to go from drought to surplus.
Absent another arctic outbreak, as the cold snaps are known, the state is likely to see lighter snowfall in the next couple months, Parsons says. He makes his forecasts by looking at surface sea temperatures, which determine much of the world’s weather, and searching for previous years with similar characteristics.
Right now, we’re in a strong El Niño. Trade winds that blow from east to west have broken down, and warm water is streaming across the Pacific toward the west coast of South America. Usually, that means warmer temperatures and less precipitation in the Pacific Northwest. That’s likely to be the case for the next few months.
“We’ll probably start to get deficits again,” Parsons says, “but it sure helped to get this big burst.” We could get another shock of arctic air, but chances are the best ski days are upon us.