Weather Eye: After ‘silver thaw,’ expect rain for rest of week

Whew! What a wild ride we had the past several days. Warm air and rain were on the way Sunday but that low-level freezing air held on and refused to go away. In the upper levels around 1,000 feet, it was in the upper 30s.

This resulted in the dreaded “silver thaw.” It has been a while since Clark County has seen this much icing. Areas hit really hard were on the east side of Vancouver, but ice coated everyone from Longview to the Columbia River. The Portland metro and south had a devastating ice storm.

Lucky, I guess we had plenty of snow on the ground rather than pure ice (although the weight of ice on top of snow is not good either). The cold air was slow to retreat up the Gorge as it does in some events. Seems like it always takes longer to warm up than forecast models predict.

At 4 p.m. Monday, Vancouver reached a high of 49 degrees and didn’t that feel good? Now the mess to clean up with trees and branches down in many locations. Cars snowed in on driveways. Lots of shoveling Monday and today. Some may be without power still today.

With the current pandemic isolation recommendations, stay at home had a different meaning. You probably couldn’t get out if you wanted except for a walk in the snow before the ice came. It was unsafe to be out driving, as well.

OK, we’ll remember this event for a long while, until next time some years down the road. Expect unsettled weather with plain old rain the rest of this week. Wednesday could be dry all day. Lots of snow will fall in the mountains. This weekend we could see a brief atmospheric river event of heavy rain in Southwest Washington that could melt some of the lower-elevation snow and cause rivers to rise quickly.

Take good care and we’ll chat on a mild and rainy Thursday.

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