What Weather is Next for Washington, Oregon?

By , Expert Senior Meteorologist
Jan 20, 2012; 7:40 AM ET
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What's next for Washington and Oregon in the wake of this week's winter storm? More storms of course!

The storm responsible for the northward swell of snow across Washington pushed over the Rockies early Thursday. However, the train of storms will continue to bombard the Northwest with rain, ice and snow into next week.

Rain continued over coastal Oregon Thursday, but a shallow layer of cold air near the surface and a new pulse of moisture from the Pacific brought a broad zone of damaging freezing rain over southern and eastern Washington and northern interior Oregon. The snow continued to pile up in the high country.

The next major storm will slam into much of Washington and Oregon later today into Saturday will be a warmer storm for many areas.

While this next storm is destined to bring rain to Seattle and Portland, it is the issue of rising snow levels that grabs our attention.


This map shows additional snowfall Friday to 6:00 a.m. Saturday. We have had reports of close to 80 inches of snow in the mountains just south of Pocatello, Idaho since Tuesday.

The rain itself will be heavy enough to cause urban and poor drainage area flooding along the coast and around sea level. However, over the intermediate elevations and interior river valleys that got hit with heavy snow recently, rapidly melting snow combined with the rain can lead to more serious flooding.

The different density of the snow, fluctuating temperatures and locally gusty winds will raise the avalanche danger in the Cascades.

Strong winds associated with this weekend's storms can also bring power outages.


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