Worst Wintertime Pineapple Express in 50 Years?

Well folks (you know who you are), you've really done it this time, begging for a Pineapple Express and now we've all been smacked with it! Despite the current calm between storms, this has been really bad news up in the mountains. Webcams today are revealing bare slopes in the WA Cascade passes and even high up on Mount Hood and Saint Helens. The current storm cycle is certainly the warmest, wettest, and worst of 4 major Pineapple Expresses we've gotten since November 1. Just how bad is it? I decided to do some quick research, and I was quite surprised by what I found. <br><br>By some measures, this may be one of the worst wintertime Pineapple Expresses to hit the higher elevations of the WA Cascades over the past 50+ years, and we're not even halfway through the whole predicted storm cycle yet. Consider the past few days data from the highest manned observation site in WA:<br><br>[fixed]RAINIER PARADISE RANGER STN, WA (ASFW1) Elev 5427 ft<br><br>Date Time Temp. Precip Snowfall Snow 24 Hr 24 Hr Past<br> - - - 24 hour 24 hour Depth Max Min Weather<br> - (PST) (f) (inches)(inches)(inches) Temp Temp<br><br>19 Jan 8:00am 43 0.96 --- 46 45 41 Partly Cloudy<br>18 Jan 8:00am 44 6.10 --- 48 44 37 Rain<br>17 Jan 8:00am 37 0.55 --- 59 38 31 Rain<br>16 Jan 8:00am 32 1.91 9.0 64 34 25 Fog/Ice Fog/Thick Haze<br>15 Jan 8:00am 26 ---- --- 55 27 17 Mostly Cloudy/Cloudy<br>[/fixed]<br><br>Wow, 6.10" of precip in a day! That appears to be the 7th-highest one-day total recorded at Paradise since 1948 (over 20,000 days). It's also the 3rd-highest precip recorded on any winter day and the most rainfall on any winter day! (the other 2 winter days with more precip had a mix of rain and snow). During the fall, Pineapple Expresses are more common, but even so only two days during the fall have ever recorded over 6" of rainfall. So this storm certainly ranks among the all-time extreme weather events at Paradise. The NWAC precip gauge nearby measured 5.81" during the same 24 hours, supporting the validity of the NPS number. Obviously, other storms may have dumped more rain over a multiday period, but that would be much more difficult and time-consuming to carefully check.<br><br>Detailed weather records exist for only a couple other high-elevation sites in WA, so it's hard to find other useful data to investigate this with. Paradise is the best site to use because it's high enough to get some snow or mixed rain/snow from many Pineapple Expresses, although not from this nasty warm storm. The Western Regional Climate Center's period of record for Paradise extends back to 1948, so that's the period I quickly checked right now (data back to 1916 is available from the National Climatic Data Center, but is spottier and less reliable).<br><br>So should we just blame El Nino for all this mess? Maybe, but this is a weak El Nino, and the last season to have so many Pineapple Expresses was probably the record-wet 1995-96 season, which was during a weak La Nina. So it's hard to lay all the blame on El Nino. I think it's really just bad luck more than anything else, weather is largely random and highly variable. The WA/OR Cascades have been alternating between cold-dry and warm-wet weather systems since November, while farther south the CA Cascades and Sierra have gotten cold-wet and warm-dry systems instead, building up a huge snowpack and then getting to enjoy it during weeks of sunshine. We sure did get plenty of the good cold-wet systems back in September-October, but very few since then. On average, these things are likely to even out again over the remainder of winter and early spring, so we should see more cold-wet systems and heavy mountain snowfall in WA/OR. Anyway, my Cascade Snowfall page has current snowdepths and twice-a-month snowpack summaries throughout the season. It sure looks like another great year to ski Mount Shasta!<br><br>Amar Andalkar<br> www.skimountaineer.com <br>

Yeah, looking at the NWAC site it appears the top of Tye Mill at Stevens went from 57" on the ground Saturday to 34" today. Ouch.

Stevens Pass also reported 6-inches of RAIN within a 24-hr period since Jan. 16th.  Yikes!  Many probably read this today on Stevens ski area web-page:<br><br>"Due to the heavy rain conditions, we are sad to report that we will be closed until we receive more snow." &gt;<br><br>Amar- How does this current storm cycle data for Paradise compare with the strong Pineapple Express event on October 20, 2003? [just curious as Seattle broke a one-day rainfall record on that date with 5.02 inches, superceding the old record of 3.41 inches in one-day].<br><br>--Chris<br><br><br>

Good stuff, especially the note about it being bad luck. I saw the Seattle Times cribbed some of your data for their chart today (they did credit your site).

Hey Chris, that's a good question. The torrential rainfall in Seattle that day remains etched in my memory. <br><br>Paradise recorded 2.70" as of the morning of 10/21/03, which was a record for that day (although obviously most of the rain fell the previous day). It got about 5" total precip over 5 days from that system, with a bit of snow mixed in at the end. For comparison, the one-day record for October precip there is 5.20" on 10/22/59. Paradise's overall one-day rainfall record of 7.76" was set on 12/2/77, but this was followed by 17 straight days with snowfall, albeit heavy wet snow with rain often mixed in, a total of 102" of snowfall and 19" of precip. Wow! I'm sure we'd take that kind of sloppy wet snow happily right now, we don't need powder, we just need some base (and then some powder!).<br><br>Anyway, back to Oct 2003: The real jackpot for precip from that system was in the North Cascades, where many sites recorded over 4-5" of precip on 10/21/03, topped by Diablo Dam with 6.04" and Darrington with 6.10". The biggest problem was that the ground was already saturated from soaking rains a few days earlier (10/16-17), which had also melted off the few inches of early season snowpack. This set the stage for devastating "100-year" floods when the second, even larger, Pineapple Express arrived. And so we still can't reach the west or north sides of Glacier Peak, or drive the whole Mtn Loop Hwy, well over a year after those storms.<br><br>Andyski, thanks for the note about the Seattle Times, I just found that article online and saved it. One of their graphic artists had contacted me yesterday about acquiring snowpack data/plots for an article, so I pointed her to my archive of NWAC data. It would be nice if the NWAC could make their archived data available online like NRCS SNOTEL does, as do the BC and CA Snow Surveys, but maybe there's some funding or other issue preventing that.<br>

As I recall Mt. Baker, according to NWAC data received 30" of rain in a ten day period in October 2003, with 2 individual days of roughly 10" and 9" - and we're not talking snow. the freezing level was 11000' or so.