Pacific NW Weather: Upper Level Low!

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Hey everybody, Michael Snyder, Pacific Northwest Weather Watch. Today is April 19th and right now we are looking at the visible satellite imagery. You can see the storm system. It's got a glorious looking out there. Looks like a cinnamon roll, right? And it's going to stand off our coastline. It's going to drive down a bit further south, park itself off the coast of California, then eventually spread some precipitation back up into the Pacific Northwest. We'll take a look at the latest on that. We'll take a look at the extended forecast as always as we go through the video here today. It is almost 1000 pm here in Spain. I am extremely tired. I'm kind of sitting in the dark here. Um I know it's only what about one o'clock there on the west coast of North America, but I should be back on Tuesday to get back into the groove of things and get back into my own studio. So if we take a look again, there's that typhoon out there. That energy is going to be injected into the westerlys. It's going to help to amplify this ridge downstream as we go on in through this upcoming week. And if I back that up, you can see this system coming in through here the next couple of days, keeping some unsettled weather around, but then we look to move in kind of a dry period as we go through the remainder of April. And again, we'll be watching that on a daily basis. You know, I do these daily videos here. So, we'll be checking back on that. But you can see this ridge hanging out as we go all the way through the early portion of May. Now at 850 mibars, 5,000 ft. You see the above normal temperatures here across Pacific Northwest, that trough swings through here as we go through the Tuesday, Wednesday time frame. But then you can see the ridge is still out there across the Gulf of Alaska. How close will that be here to the region? You kind of see the normal temperatures at 5,000 ft just off to the east of the Cascade. So we have something to watch there as we go through the extended forecast and we look 10 plus days out and you can kind of see that region still out there across some of the Pacific Ocean. Now timing of this next event. So let's take a look and you see that storm system again diving down to the south and then it starts to come in across California starts spreading some of that precipitation back up over western Oregon and then eventually into western Washington as we go through the day on Tuesday. Cannot completely rot a lightning strike. Best chances are going to be Cascades eastbound. The instability will be greatest there. But again, you can't rule out a lightning strike or two even west of the mountains. These upper level lows move around the area. Then we go through the day Wednesday. And by Thursday, it starts to kick off to the east. And then if I kind of scroll through here, we're going through six-hour chunks. And you notice we don't have a whole lot of precipitation coming all the way towards the end of April. Kind of a weak system brushing us as we go through the 27th there. But again, we'll be watching that. Plenty of time to worry about that potential as we go over the next few days. Now, this is all the way out towards what, hour 174. And you see this next system, not much in the way of snowfall here. Maybe some for the Blue Mountains. Maybe an inch or two if we're lucky across some of the Washington, Oregon Cascades, but doesn't look like much. Not an overly cold system. And not a great trajectory to bring snow into the higher terrain. And again, across our higher terrain, we are doing extremely poor. I mean, we're at 54%.

[00:03:05]That's really low. And if we take a look here, we're really not that far from the all-time record snow water equivalent low across the region, the entire Pacific Northwest. So, yeah, we got a bump out of that last system there, but you can see it wasn't much and it's definitely nothing that's going to put our drought to an end or anything of that nature. So, probably going to have some issues as we go on in towards the summer. Now, this is for today. Check it out. 72 probably the high for Seattle.

[00:03:29]Look at Wamut Valley into the 70s and lower mainland. Some mid70s showing up.

[00:03:34]Nice warm temperatures. What a day. And a very nice day again tomorrow, Monday.

[00:03:38]Then we go through Tuesday and you notice the temperatures start to drop off west of the Cascades. And by Wednesday, we've cooled things down across much of the region as that upper level low traverses across the area. Now we go through Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, bouncing back towards next weekend. We'll see about that, but yeah, that's not a bad signal there. And again, we'll be breaking it down day by day. Here's the 6 to 10 day. Got that above normal slice up there in the Pacific Northwest. Check out that below normal signal across the central portion of the USA, clipping Idaho and portions of Montana as well. And there's the 6 to 10 day. Uh we'll revisit that again here over the next couple of days, but it does look like we may be below normal.

[00:04:20]So yeah, I'm going to wrap up this video here pretty quick. Short video here today. I'm so tired that I'm just going to get to bed and I'll get a video out probably tomorrow as well. And Tuesday I should be back at home in my studio and I'll get a video out then also. But yeah, um what else? Uh let me know what you guys see out there. Let me know what you guys think. You like these thunderstorms coming up, the potential for them anyway. Um I wish we had more to talk about in the way of mountain snow, but you know, mother nature calls the shots. And otherwise, hope you guys are having a good day and I'll catch you guys in tomorrow's forecast.