November Soggy and Mild

2016 is taking it's final lap as the month of November is retired to history. November was pretty warm overall and seasonally soggy. I have never recorded a 70 degree mark in the month of November and that is still the case but we did tease it a bit with a 68.4 reading on the 4th of the month.

Between the record wet October and this seasonally typical November I have recorded nearly a foot and a half of rain in the last 60 days!

On the temperature side of the weather, that 68.4 was the warmest and the coldest mark I had was 34.3 degrees on the 18th and that means I still have NOT recorded a subfreezing temperature. I did briefly accumulate some ice on my car's windshield on that very night so I have recorded a frost. This year will be the latest for the first seasonal sub-freezing temperature in the 16 years I have been recording at this locale. In fairness, we haven't had a continuously clear night in a long while. The warmest overnight low came on the 5th when the mercury bottomed out at a balmy 52.5. The coolest afternoon high was a seasonal cool, 45.3 degrees on the 27th. Overall the average observed temperatures were 44.8 and 55.19 against my 16 year "normal" of 38.42 and 50.98. That was a toasty November!

As for precipitation it was seasonally pretty typical. I measured a satisfying 7.67 inches in the bucket against a normal 7.98 inches. Nary a flake of snow fell but that is really not unusual at all for November as the last 16 Novembers have had 9 without any snow, 2 with just a trace, and the remaining 5 having some legit snow ranging from 1-3 inches. The rainiest day came about on the 24th when a monsoonal 2.24 inches fell which was one of two days exceeding an inch and 7 days over a quarter. 21 days saw .03 or more and just two days could be called sunny. Yeah, it was November ;)

The local prognosticators are calling for a mass of chilly air to drop down out of Canada and the Gulf or Alaska next week and snow is in the forecast. Hard to say, some feel it will be limited to 1000 feet and higher but others think that we may get isolated, localized snow showers all the way down to sea level. We shall see, but one thing is for sure, December on average is the coldest month of the year and the second snowiest month of the year behind January. La Niña is supposedly in place and that does mean cooler ocean temperatures and a little less effective marine influence on local snowfall.

If it is gonna snow, isn't December the better month for it anyhow? Ho, Ho, Ho, let's have some snow!

Get out and soak it up my friends, soak it up.

Soggy October

What a month! We just closed the books on the soggiest month of the year. October 2016 produced a whopping 9.15 inches of rain which is more than DOUBLE the average over my 15 years of reporting here. Is this what La Niña has in store for us this year? I wrote about the upcoming La Niña predictions on my blog, The 'Couv' Life, here.

It is not often that October is a rain leader. Sure the season starts to change in October but God doesn't usually open main line faucet until November.

I had 26 days with rain and only one day I could really call "sunny". All the cloud cover worked to create a month with warmer than average overnight lows and cooler than average daytime highs. There was nary a 70 degree mark in the month of October and in fact the warmest day I recorded at my station was a 66.7 on the 12th.

Temperature wise, October had only one low in the thirties and it was a 37 measured on the morning of the 12th. 19 days this past month saw overnight lows above 50 degrees! The warmest overnight low came on the 8th when the mercury bottomed out at a summer-like 54.7 degrees. The warmest afternoon was the aforementioned 66.7 on the 12th and the coolest afternoon high was a seasonably cool 53.6 degrees yesterday. The observed averages were nearly 3 degrees warmer overnight but nearly two degrees cooler by day. October's observed averages came in at 48.59 low and 59.56 high.

On the water side of the weather, we had a very wet month indeed. I mentioned at the start over 9 inches of precipitation fell all in the form of rain except in the mountains. We had one monster rain storm that came in on the 13th a dumped a monsoonal 2.21 inches on my rain gauge. That is the type of day that can skew the average for the whole month. Let it be known however, that really isn't the case this time. If I remove that day the month would still have nearly 7 inches and would still be close to 50% higher than average rainfall for October. Seriously guys, it rained 26 days last month! I only had two days in which there was zero rain. There were three days with less than .04 which really isn't "rain". There was 11 days with at least a 1/4 inch of rain. This was a cloudy, soggy, and all round rainy October.

Mount Hood Meadows Webcam shot, last week.

Is this a prelude to a monster wet season? Will I get five feet of rain this winter? Could happen? There's already nearly a foot in the bucket this season!

How about the snow and ski season? La Niña tends to favor the snow in the mountains. You can see that snow is accumulating up on Mount Hood already and the start of the winter ski season may come before Thanksgiving if this precipitation trend continues.

We sure could use a big thick snow pack this year. The cooler pacific ocean temperature could bring us a banner water year by packing the mountains with 80 feet of snow! Let's hope so!

Soak it up my friends, soak it up!