Cliff Mass: Get ready for snow in the PNW this weekend

Snow is heading to the Pacific Northwest this weekend, but how much you’ll get depends on where you live.

“We’ll see more than a foot of snow in the mountains, potentially several inches in the foothills, and up to an inch in areas north of Seattle,” meteorologist Cliff Mass told KIRO Newsradio’s Luke Duecy.

Snow crews are ready

Snow crews everywhere are bracing for poor road conditions, while kids across the region are crossing their fingers that school will be canceled come Monday morning.

“Lots of snow in the mountains. That’s the thing that people should know,” Mass said. “So, they’ll be one to two feet above 3,000 feet. The passes will get some snow and there will be great skiing coming up so.”

Mass said this weekend’s dumping will help the snowpack, which has been a bit below normal. And also, it’s going to help a snowpack. So, we’re a little bit below normal and we’re going to get a lot of snow during the next several days.

The lowlands should see some flakes, especially in the suburbs north of Seattle.

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Watch out in the convergence zones

“There will be a weak convergence zone in the North sound. So, there will be a band of snow with that,” Mass explained. “And there could be another band of snow in Northwest Washington – Bellingham over the San Juan Islands. The models are calling for that. It could be an inch or so. So, there’s two hot spots if you want to call it that for snow, but at this point there’s no big precipitation source that could give us heavy precipitation and really pull the cold air into the low levels.”

Cliff told us that a major system that is coming through on Friday is too warm at low levels to bring anything but rain.

“The air is coming off the off the ocean, and so it’s too warm to snow in the in the lowlands. But it’s plenty cold enough to snow in the mountains,” he said.

Now, tomorrow, a lot of cold comes in. There will be some showers coming through and we may see a few flakes, but there’s not anything that’s going to give a sustained precipitation.

When asked whether people in the lowlands will need to stock up for the weekend, Mass said: “People don’t have to run to Costco or their local food store to stock up. It is not the kind of situation. People aren’t going to get trapped in their homes or anything like that. But if you were going out into the mountains, you know you’re going across the passes, you might want to take those chains with you and you might get your skis ready if you enjoy that kind of recreation.”

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However, roads could be a concern.

“The roads are pretty cold, so any place there’s snow, it’s not going to melt very quickly,” he said. “It’s not like if we got snow in November when the road surfaces are warm. So, things can stick if they fall. If you’re up, you know, north of Seattle, Lynnwood, up there… you may have to be careful. And the same thing is true up in Northwest Washington.”

Even though this weekend may not see much snow, Cliff reminded us that it is still winter and a La Niña year.

“This whole issue about La Niña and El Niño, they are not perfect forecasting tools,” he shared. “They just tells us how things are weighted.”

Mass added there is still plenty of time for snow.

Contributing: Luke Duecy, KIRO Newsradio

Bill Kaczaraba is a content editor at MyNorthwest. You can read his stories here. Follow Bill on X, formerly known as Twitter, here and email him here.