Mother Nature has been pretty nice to the Snoqualmie Valley so far this fall. Typically we’ve had more wind events by now, but fall 2018 was pretty much absent of any major power outages or downed trees.
Now we head into winter (which officially starts tomorrow) with a Wind Advisory accompanying a strong storm rolling into Washington early Thursday morning, December 20th. Note: If you lived a little farther west, it would be a high wind watch, but weather forecasters say we have a slightly less of a chance to see [possibly] damaging wind gusts.
The National Weather Service says winds in the East Puget Sound area will rapidly increase Thursday morning. The wind advisory goes into effect for the Snoqualmie Valley at 10AM and is set to expire at 7PM. Peak gusts are expected between 12PM – 4PM.
The south wind is predicted to range from 20 to 35 mph, with gusts up to 55 mph possible. A ‘wind advisory’ is issued when winds of 35 mph are expected.
According to the KOMO News Weather Department, forecast models are predicting the area of low pressure triggering this wind event to track over central/northern Vancouver Island and then move inland to the northeast. They say if the low pressure tracks farther north, the winds will be less. If it tracks farther south, the wind could be stronger.
Heavy rain is part of this storm, too, but the rain and wind should subside later into the evening. This storm is raising snow levels from 3000-4000 feet this morning to 5,000 feet this afternoon, so travel over Snoqualmie Pass should not be impacted by a big snow event. Sorry skiers, but the snow level will drop back down later tonight.
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