Category: Extra!!

The stages of fall

On By bryanweatherIn 2025/2026, Extra!!, Salem Area Forecast, The Mountains and Beyond, WEATHER ALERTSLeave a comment

Headlines

  • Dry and partly sunny through Saturday evening.
  • Rain arrives Saturday night.
  • Showers, downpours, sunbreaks, and breezy winds Sunday.
  • Dry Mon – Wed. Highs 62 – 65°.
  • Much stormier weather arrives Thursday and will last through next weekend and beyond.

Details

Fall around here seems to have two stages.  The first stage is what we’ve been experiencing for over a month now: brief periods of rainy weather and showers followed by several days of nice sunny weather. As you know, that’s exactly what has taken place since mid September. In fact, dry days have just barely doubled the amount of rainy days since mid September – a pretty great mix if you ask me! 🙂

The second stage of fall takes place when those numbers switch with wet, soggy, and grey days dominating our region. Typically, this takes place during the second half of October or early November, and this year it appears to be right on schedule.

I’ve shared a few of those ensemble charts I enjoy using from time to time. The two charts we have today are showing 24 hour rainfall totals, and max wind gust speeds in mph for Salem. More than 4 or 5 days out it’s best to focus on general trends and large scale patterns, and not so much on the details yet… Remember, time goes from left to right and each horizontal line is a possible outcome.

Often what will happen is the extreme solutions shown by individual members (horizontal lines) will fade as time gets closer; however, if we continue to see an increasing amount of members showing a certain outcome then we do want to pay attention to that possible outcome as consensus grows.

When viewing both those charts I saw two clear messages.  The first one is that stage two is coming for western Oregon next week.  Regular rainy weather with frequent storms will dominate our weather beginning next Thursday, and it looks to stay active for as far as the eye can see. I drew a nice line right around Thursday morning to illustrate the solid agreement rain will begin on that day. Notice how wet it gets in the days following as highlighted by the arrows. The heaviest rain totals are indicated by yellow, orange, and red coloring.

The second thing I notice is these storms have the potential to be quite active/strong. In addition to the heavy rain potential, there is also a potential for very strong winds. The max wind speed chart has it’s share of impressive wind gusts as well with orange, red, and brown shadings representing much stronger than usual wind speeds. Here it is again. Remember to click on it for a closer look.

The weather models definitely have my attention, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for any strong frontal systems, “atmospheric rivers”, or powerful low pressure systems that might be heading our direction. Regardless, stay safe out there and enjoy what could be the last of the 60s for the season next week, because stormy weather is quickly approaching!

October

On By bryanweatherIn 2025/2026, Extra!!, Salem Area Forecast, The Mountains and Beyond, WEATHER ALERTSLeave a comment

Welcome to October!! This is an exciting time of year for weather here, and I have a full post loaded with stats, maps, charts, graphs, and fun facts. Take a look at the headlines in case you’re short on time.

Headlines

  • Detailed look at temperatures in September.
  • Detailed look at precipitation from September and from the past year.
  • Detailed look at what to expect in October.
  • A quick forecast for the next several days is located at the very bottom.

September 2025 in review

The month started off very warm and humid. The first five days of the month had highs above 80°. We also had a couple of thunderstorms in the area, but nothing widespread. In general, warm/humid conditions dominated the first half of the month. So warm that it took until the 15th before we finally experienced a temperature cooler than the lowest temperature from August! The rest of the month went on without anything real notable. Our coldest temperature took place the morning of the 26th with a chilly low of 43°, and the hottest temperature of the month occurred on the 16th with a high of 93°.

This first graph shows Salem’s daily high temperatures compared to our average high temperatures.

This next chart is the same exact information, but displayed like a calendar of September (well minus the dates lol). Days highlighted grey indicate highs right at average for that day, orange highlighting indicates warmer than average high temperatures, and then we have blue representing colder than average highs. It’s a fun alternative way to display the same information.

More warm days than cool days, and when combined with our warm overnight lows, September 2025 ended 2.1° above normal. Thumb through these next images to see temperature anomalies from June, July, and August for the lower 48. These provide an easy way to see how summer played out across the nation. Note that September maps are not available at this time.

Moving onto precipitation, the winter of 2024/2025 was on the slightly drier side of things for the Pacific Northwest as a whole. This map shows how much precipitation we have received over the past year. You can see the slight “rain shadow” effect of the Coast Range and a much more significant effect from the Cascades. The wettest location is a little spot located in the southern Oregon Coast Range where 187″ of precip were recorded over the past year!!

Despite all the rain, we are currently in a little bit of drought.

You can have buckets full of rain, but if you live in a location where tons of rain is normal, then it is still possible to experience drought conditions. It all depends on when the rain falls (too much at once versus spread out over time), and of course how much rain has fallen in total. This year, we had an unusually dry April, May, and June which put us behind as we headed into our dry summer.

Notice how well a large chunk of central and eastern Oregon are doing in regards to precipitation. That’s thanks to the numerous thunderstorms they saw during August and early September.

Regardless of the slightly drier weather, it’s amazing to see the sheer volume of snow that still piled up in our mountains since last year. Check this out!

The seasons are changing, it was foggy this morning, we had measurable rainfall four days this week which was our longest wet streak since May, and I believe our drought conditions will soon be behind us! Time to move onto October to see what lies in store…

October

October is a new beginning for Salem and the pacific northwest. October 1st is officially the beginning of our rainfall (water) year, our average high plunge from 72° on the 1st down to 58° by the end of the month, record lows start dipping into the 30s and then the 20s, and precipitation doubles from what we normally see in September. Put all together, and no other month features such a drastic change in our local weather as October does.

A very good question people ask this time of year is why our rainfall records begin on October 1st and not January 1st. The reason is because the vast majority of our rainfall takes place October through March, and if we stuck with the traditional date of January 1st for record keeping then we would be cutting our rainy season in half. Having it begin in October simply makes sense for record keeping, historical analysis, water management, forecasting for water availability, drought outlooks etc.

What is ahead?

Well, I’m still going with a few scattered showers this Saturday. Much of the day should remain dry, but it would be wise to plan on at least one or two brief showers moving through at some point during the day.

Sun – Tue: Totally dry. Highs gradually rise from 71° Sunday up to 77° come Tuesday. Lows each morning will begin in the low to mid 40s. Lots of sunshine during these three days!

Wed: Lower than usual confidence at the moment for both Wed and Thu. For now expect clouds to increase with a slight chance of rain late in the day on Wednesday. High of 68°.

Thu: Showers possible. Highs 62 – 65°.

There you have it! Get outside this weekend or early next week if possible, and enjoy the beautiful weather!!

A nice week ahead

On By bryanweatherIn 2024/2025, Extra!!, Salem Area Forecast, The Mountains and Beyond, WEATHER ALERTSLeave a comment

Highlights

Tue: Warm and dry with mostly sunny skies.

Wed – Fri: Cooler with lots of clouds and chances for sprinkles/light showers.

Sat – Mon: Warmer again with mostly sunny skies.

Wet weather recap

The rainy weather did not disappoint. In fact, Friday and Saturday were the rainiest back to back days since the first week of April! The map below shows rainfall totals from the weekend.

A solid half inch to inch in the valley and over an inch to two inches up in the foothills and mountains. The low pressure and steady rain was accompanied by chilly temperatures too. Record low high temperatures were set on Saturday all over the valley.

Snowfall also made it’s way to the Oregon Cascades. These two images show snowfall on Hoodoo and up at Timberline Saturday morning. Fun to see snow falling up there on the first full day of summer!

Forecast details

Tue: Very similar to the weather we saw today. Highs in the low 80s.

Wed – Fri: Each day will feature a very slight chance of drizzle or a few light sprinkles. Nothing widespread or heavy. Lots of cloud cover with sun breaks mixed in at times. Highs in the low 70s and early morning lows 53 – 55°. Best chance for any light showers or sprinkles looks to be Wednesday and Thursday with a lower chance on Friday.

Sat: Sunshine returns with highs in the lower 80s and mostly sunny skies. A real nice day after a refreshing start that morning with lows in the low 50s.

Sun & Mon: Sunny and warm with highs in the mid to upper 80s.

Looking further out to the first week of July it still appears we could have another shot at a few showers. Too far out to say with certainty, but there are enough individual members (horizontal lines) calling for rain at some point during the first week of July that it has my attention.

The biggest take away I see is that there is no sign of hot weather the next two weeks. Some upper 80s, but nothing prolong or real significant. I’ll keep an eye on that 4th of July forecast, but in the meantime enjoy the nice weather.

A very dry spring with rain on the way

On By bryanweatherIn 2024/2025, Extra!!, Salem Area Forecast, The Mountains and Beyond, WEATHER ALERTSLeave a comment

It’s been a long time since I posted. The weather has generally been extremely uneventful, plus I’ve been busier than usual with work and side projects (including the garden). Regardless, I figured it was time for an update.

The forecast

Wed & Thu: Onshore flow increases pushing in a stronger marine layer along with a very weak front. This will result in highs in the low to mid 70s. Expect plentiful AM clouds with PM sun breaks. We could see a sprinkle Wednesday morning; otherwise, these two days will remain dry.

Fri: PM showers. A cold atmosphere up above will result in the possibility of thundershowers too. Some of the downpours could be quite heavy. Highs right around 60°.

Sat: Additional showers and thundershowers with a more steady rain likely during the late afternoon and evening hours. This will produce a widespread soaking rain for areas west of the Cascades. Downpours will have potential to be heavy. Highs will struggle to reach 60°

Sun: Showers wrap up with much of the day being dry. Just keep in mind that showers could still take place during the day on Sunday. Highs into the lower 70s again.

Mon – Wed: Partly cloudy to mostly sunny skies. Highs around 80° each day. Lows will start out chilly right around 50 to 53°.

Rain totals look to range from half an inch to just over an inch of rain here in the Willamette Valley. This will bring much needed precipitation to our region!

Aside from the first week of April, we have been unusually dry this spring. The few “rainy” days we have seen the past 8 weeks have not produced more than a third of an inch on any given day. The map below shows percent of normal precipitation locations have picked up between April 18th and June 17th. Many valley locations are running at a mere 15 to 25% of average.

We are running slightly better precipitation wise than the dry and hot spring of 2021. That year brought our most intense heatwave ever with temperatures soaring above 110° throughout the Willamette Valley. That was an awful experience. Luckily, no signs of hot weather.

As far as temperature goes, May 2025 went down in the history books as only being 0.2° above normal. For all practical purposes that’s considered average. At the moment, June is running 3.5 degrees above normal, a special thanks to the hot spell last weekend. That number will fall dramatically by this time next week due to the much cooler weather moving in.

For reference, I added a chart showing total rainfall for Salem during the month of May going back to 1997.

There is no clear trend here. The only notable thing I could see was the tendency for totals to range more drastically over the past several years, but in the grand scheme of things, several years is hardly a trend.

We’ll see where we end up for rainfall in June. For now enjoy the continued dry weather, and keep in mind that Friday through Sunday will be generally wet.

The Cascades

Planning on hiking or camping up high? Well, plan on some snowfall Friday night through Saturday night. Snow levels will dip down low enough for the volcano summits/peaks to pick up several inches of snow. Timberline, the tops of the sisters, Jefferson Park, Crater Lake, and any other peaks above roughly 5500 feet could see snow this weekend. Keep this in mind. Spots along the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail) could also see snowfall impacting hikers and backpackers this weekend. By Sunday afternoon the summer sun returns and the snow up there will quickly begin melting off again.

Winter wonderland!!

On By bryanweatherIn 2024/2025, Archives, Extra!!, Salem Area Forecast, WEATHER ALERTSLeave a comment

Woo hoo! Snow has been widespread across the entire mid Willamette Valley! It’s clear now that we have either hit the upper end of my forecasted snow totals or surpassed them for this point in our winter storm with more on the way tonight through Friday morning.

At the moment we are currently in between the rounds of heavier precip, and the “heating of the day” has helped major roads clear up a bit, but conditions go down hill tonight as temperatures drop and as round #2 moves in, so don’t get stuck out there thinking all is well.

What’s ahead?

More snow tonight with freezing rain and sleet mixing in. This second wave of moisture still looks quite “juicy” lol with a solid half inch of melted down precip (or more) with round #2. I currently expect at least a little bit of freezing rain or sleet to mix in tonight before changing back over to all snow; however, models have already been trying to push the cold air out of here too quickly, and so for the moment I’m leaning towards more snow and not as much in the way of ice.

Either way, winds continue to breeze out of the north, and temperatures will be plenty cold enough that whatever falls from the clouds will be frozen or will freeze on contact (freezing rain). My best guess is an additional 2 to 5 inches of snow with some freezing rain. If this storm continues to overperform I could see us surpassing those totals too! There are always little twists and turns with our winter storms here…

Snow will come to an end Friday morning, but with the colder than expected temperatures and increased snowfall, we should plan on road conditions improving very SLOWLY through the day on Friday with side roads remaining in rough shape.

Refreezing Friday night with clearing skies will lead to more issues again on side roads and less traveled streets through early Saturday morning before finally thawing out the rest of the way.

One additional thing I want to mention is how the Salem Airport temperature sensor has been regularly reporting a bit warmer than surrounding stations. Even warmer than weather observation spots in downtown and east along Lancaster Drive. Mark Nelson posted this graphic from the other day showing just how off it’s been and that he has tracked this for a couple years now. He does excellent work for Fox 12 and I appreciate his attention to details and to locations outside the PDX metro if you ever need a good forecaster to watch on TV.

So if you’re curious why your weather sensor at home has you in the upper 20s, but your weather app says otherwise, well now you know! Even right now you can see it is way off compared to the rest of the city and local area sitting at 34° while the rest of us are in the upper 20s to around 30°.

Stay safe, and keep on enjoying the snowy and wintry weather!! 🙂

5 more dry days

On By bryanweatherIn 2024/2025, Extra!!, Salem Area Forecast, The Mountains and Beyond, WEATHER ALERTSLeave a comment

The super quick version

We have about 5 more days of dry weather before rain finally returns to our region Thursday night or Friday. Mostly sunny skies, cold nights, and highs in the upper 40s will continue through Wednesday. Thursday should be dry, but with increasing clouds, and actual rain returns late that night. Showers should continue through next weekend with lowering snow levels. Colder and possibly snowier weather is possible as we head into February. More on that at the end of this post. 🙂

Details

As you all know by now, the deep south had an extremely rare and historic snowstorm this past week. Actual blizzard conditions where observed in many locations from Louisiana to Florida. These photos of the snow covered and frozen bayou and blizzard like conditions along the freeway heading into Florida are just amazing and almost unbelievable.

Here in Salem we got gently brushed (again) by that large mass of frigid arctic air. That is why our air has been dry, our days have been sunny with no more fog, and our nighttime lows have dipped well into the 20s several degrees below average. This weekend we are again getting brushed by a weak lobe of colder air. That’s the cause of the breezy winds we are seeing today out of the north. The result is colder lows well into the 20s with dry and sunny days.

This satellite image shows just how sunny and clear the entire pacific northwest is at the moment. The snow cover in the mountains and higher elevations also really stands out.

Here’s the next 7 days

Looking ahead

Ten days ago I put out a forecast mentioning the potential for colder (possibly snowy) weather later in the month. I was fairly vague because it was still a long ways off plus the weather models had a large spread of outcomes (disagreement) regarding where the cold air would end up. We now know it dove through the middle of the nation.

Next Sunday (Feb 2nd) models seem to be honing in on the colder arctic air moving MUCH closer to us, and possibly directly over us. When it’s more than 7 days out like it is at the moment, we look for consistency and trends. Below is a compilation of multiple model runs from the past few days showing the weather pattern up around 18,000 feet up in the atmosphere for Sunday morning February 2nd. Blue and or green shading is much colder than average, and the warm red and orange colors are just that – warmer than average lol… 😉

Definitely a clear trend for colder air here in Oregon, but how far south and how far west or east it goes will have a profound effect on our weather. Some of the solutions you see above would give us nothing but cold rain. Many of those solutions would put us in one of those tricky snow shower setups, and some of those would give us a full on snowstorm and or arctic blast. Odds are increasing that we will see something wintry, but still a little too early to get overly excited.

One more little piece of evidence telling us that something snowy might be heading our direction is this final chart which I’ve shared before. Each horizontal line going from left to right is a possible outcome for how many inches of snow Salem could see on those dates (the dates are located along the bottom). This model tends to overdue precip totals a little bit, so pay attention to lines showing 2 or more inches of snow.

Typically during wintertime I will see maybe one to three lines showing snowfall, but when I start counting 20+ then I really start paying attention. Lots of time for things to change of course, but keep this one on your radar. In the meantime, stay safe, and enjoy the sunny and chilly weather!

Wet week in review and a look ahead

On By bryanweatherIn 2024, 2024/2025, Archives, Extra!!, Monthly reports, Salem Area Forecast, The Mountains and Beyond, WEATHER ALERTSLeave a comment

As promised, this week has been very winter like with lots of rain, chilly temperatures, and at times, gusty winds. Below is a county map of Oregon showing total rainfall over the past 7 days. Most of the Willamette Valley has picked up around 3 inches of rain since last Saturday!

The other big change over the past week has been the well advertised increase in mountain snow. Hoodoo had a 15 inch base early this afternoon with 4 to 8 inches of new snow expected this evening through Sunday morning.

Looking ahead

Tonight: Showers increasing through the evening. Lows tonight in the mid 40s.

Sunday: Mostly dry with some a little bit of sun, and only a slight chance of a shower. Highs into the upper 50s.

Monday: Rain returns as a quick moving cold front sweeps in from the northwest. PM sunbreaks and showers. Highs in the mid to upper 50s.

Tuesday (Election Day): Highs around 57° with a fair amount of sunbreaks, and a slight chance for a brief shower or two.

Wed – Fri: Lots of fog. This time of year can be incredibly foggy, especially after having so much rain. Expect widespread fog each of these three days. Lows will likely bottom out in the 35 to 38° range and highs 49 to near 50 degrees assuming we get some afternoon sunbreaks. Lows could dip to freezing for areas that receive a little more clearing at night.

Next weekend: Rain appears likely, but obviously subject to change being several days out.

No big storms on the horizon at this time, and nothing real out of the ordinary for early November. No signs of any big warm rainstorms to wash away our early snowpack either as temperatures remain a little cooler than normal in the coming days.

October 2024

October may have ended on a cooler note, but overall it was quite mild being 2.8 degrees warmer than normal. As far as precipitation goes, we finished the month above average with a total of 3.8″ to kick off our new water year. Average for October is 3.47″. Over 2 inches of that rain fell during the final week of the month.

Have a great and safe rest of your weekend!