A Northwest La Nina Thanksgiving

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving and didn’t eat too much. Didn’t eat too much? Yeah, right! That would be a holiday miracle.

My wife and I loaded up the Sussman crew to visit grandma and grandpa in Central Oregon. They retired here in time for the winter of 2007. That was a La Nina year and for mountainous areas including central Oregon and Washington it meant patience-testing amounts of snow!

Now, here we are again in a northwest La Nina winter and the snow is already piling up in many areas including the grandparent’s neighborhood. The icicles were huge on central Oregon homes; we’d build a snowman and then wake up to see it covered in fresh snow; and then there was the trip over the mountains. What’s crazy, is that the trip over the Coast Range and the Cascades looked about the same on Thanksgiving – lots of snow (see pics below). It’s another sign of La Nina: unusually low snow levels.

A lot of people ask me, “what is La Nina?” I explain the basics in my what will winter 2010 be like post. But you can also see what happens in this graphic. La Nina sort of ‘powers up’ the jet stream which directs our storms and we end of with more valley rain and mountain snow. Which means if you missed having a white Thanksgiving, you’ll get your chance all winter long in the mountains. Because the snow should keep on coming in a big way!