Spring weather finally arrives with 60° temps, but it won’t last long

Today was just glorious with bright sunshine, blue sky, and temperatures making it into the lower 60s in the metro area

This finally ended the longest sub-60 degree stretch Portland has seen

Typically in winter we get a 60 degree day either with a pineapple express or southerly windstorm at some point, but that didn’t happen this year from mid-November through mid-March. It’s a bit of a quirk that today will NOT end up as a warmer than normal day because the overnight low was farther below normal than the high was above normal! Regardless, after 3 weeks of chilly weather, it was nice to feel that warm sunshine. Notice that at this point the past 3 years we had already seen a few 60 degree days

You can see we’ve turned a corner the past week as well with 5 days reaching/exceeding 50 degrees. That last week of February was the coldest final week of the month we’ve seen in Portland!

The warmer temperatures are courtesy of a weak “ridge” of high pressure over the West Coast. The view up around 18,000′ shows the higher “heights” over us right now

By next Tuesday, a cool dip in the jet stream (trough) has returned. We’ll go right back to cool and showery beginning Sunday

So make sure you get outside tomorrow and Saturday since we’re back to mainly indoor weather in the days that follow.

Someone asked me on Twitter the other day if she could remove her hose bibs and turn on outdoor faucets. That’s a big YES west of the Cascades. Sure, we’ll get a few more frosts, but it’s too late now for a significant freeze. Of course we can still get a wet morning snowfall in the lowlands from this point forward, but even that becomes extremely rare west of the Cascades after the 20th of March. Check out the latest “early spring” snowfall dates in Portland. These observations go back 83 years. We all remember the freak April snowfall last year, and many of us still remember the 2012 snowfall. That one only dropped 0.3″ officially in the city, but a heavy/wet snow dropped 6-8″ between Salem and Eugene that day!

I don’t see any “close calls” with low elevation snow through at least the end of next week. Speaking of snow, check out the current snowpack across Oregon...looking excellent! I really like that the highest anomaly relative to normal is in the driest part of the state. Those California storms have brought abundant snow and rain across southcentral and southeast Oregon.

Enjoy the sunshine!

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