Snow Returns to the Mountains

The first decent snowfall over the higher elevations of the Northwest occurred during the last two days.

Consider the image from the Crystal Mountain 360 cam two days ago (the peak of Crystal is at about 7000 ft).  

No snow on Crystal and little snow on Rainier below the glaciers.   Nice cap cloud though...

This morning, a very different story.   Crystal has some snow and the lower slopes of Rainier are now white.

What about the view from space?

Below are the visible images two days ago (left) and this morning (right) for the region covering Rainier, St. Helens, and Mt. Adams.  A LOT more snow coverage this morning.

There were some beautiful snow-capped peaks this morning.  Here is a picture taken earlier today by Debra Ellen Baker of Glacier, WA of Church Mountain (elevation 5693 ft).  Impressive.  

But now let me provide the exciting news.....some decent mountain snow is being predicted after this weekend by several forecast models.

The UW WRF model shows only a very light snowfall total through Sunday at 5 PM.

Moderate snow totals through Monday night.

And as much as a foot in place by Friday morning.

Do you really want to get excited?  The European Center snow total forecast through next Thursday evening has even more, with several feet in the north Cascades.

Time to get those skis ready!