Blustery night leads to chilly day

Blustery night leads to chilly day

Snow falls at Crystal Mountain, Oct. 7, 2008. (Photo: Tiana Enger)

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Story Published: Oct 7, 2008 at 5:40 AM PDT

Story Updated: Nov 21, 2008 at 3:27 AM PDT

By Scott Sistek

SEATTLE -- Another gentle tap on the shoulder that fall is here...

A fairly potent storm blew through Western Washington Monday night, knocking out power to a few thousand and making for a couple of things that went bump in the night, but all in all, it was fairly tame compared to the usual storms that can roll through here during the last few months of the year.

Peak wind gusts were generally in the 25-35 mph range, although we had a few places that nudged into the 45-50 mph category.

Here are the peak gusts of the storm:

Bellingham: 48 mph
Oak Harbor: 45 mph
Hoquiam: 45 mph
Everett: 44 mph
Alki Beach: 44 mph
Magnolia (Seattle): 39 mph
Seattle (Sea-Tac): 36 mph

No other cities were listed over 30 knots.

The wind did knock out power to about 3,000 people in Ocean Shores Monday night. And crews with Puget Sound Energy were working to restore power to about 1,900 customers in Whatcom, Skagit and Island counties.

A Wind Advisory expired at 9 a.m. and the rest of the day will cool and showery, with highs in only in the mid-upper 50s.

So now the attention can turn to mountain snow:

Snow levels will be around 3,500-4,000 feet today as chilly air pours in behind the overnight cold front.

The brunt of the moisture will be in the North Cascades where they could see as much as 3-6 inches of snow above 4,000 feet through Tuesday afternoon.

Stevens Pass about right at 4,000 feet, so it's on the lower end of this scale -- perhaps 1-3" up there. Farther north of that pass, some isolated spots along the west facing slopes above 4,000 feet could see as much as 6", and the Mount Baker and North Cascades highways could get a good dose of snow. In addition, as we mentioned earlier, it'll be quite gusty up there, so camping/hiking, driving up around there could be difficult with very low visibilities.

For the Central Cascades, we could also see a few inches of snow above 4,000 feet through Tuesday afternoon, but Snoqualmie Pass, at about 3,200 feet, is still well below the snow level and will just be rainy and windy.

The snow will abate late Tuesday evening. Long range forecasts show another cool system coming in on Thursday that could bring snow levels down as low as 2,500 feet, perhaps bringing the first snowflakes of the season to Snoqualmie Pass, although moisture appears to be limited so we're not looking at much snow at this point.

Beyond that, it looks like we might dry out for a while with no more storms on the horizon.

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