Early snow in NID

[oregonwoodsmoke]

Yikes. A good thick coating of snow again this morning (10-9-19). It looks like I have about 3 inches that are sticking.


It's early October. I hope this isn't a foreshadowing of the rest of winter or we will have snow up to the eaves of the house by January.


I took the 4WD in and had the studs put on to beat the rush. Thinking I could leave it parked and use the tiny economy car and not put studs on the little car until it actually turned into winter. But maybe I put the studs on just in time. I didn't beat the crush by much. I had a 3 hour wait, so a lot of folks were thinking the same as me... get the studs on early.


Warning to newcomers: make sure your kids' Halloween costumes will fit over a snow suit.

[banjomike]

At this time of year, it's always very hard to predict what the coming winter will be or won't.

By the first 2 weeks of October, a killing freeze is expected, if one hasn't come already by the end of September. Most often, though, the freeze is only that; a night when the temperature drops to 32º or below.
After a day or two, the nighttime temps almost always rise again to above the freezing point, and the daytime temps are the same as before the freeze came.

This storm is unusual in that it's a true early-winter storm that arrived in early fall. They have occurred too, but far less frequently that a freeze.

The last one I can recall came at this time of year in 1986, and at first, everyone thought it was only a typical little early skirmish with winter, but the temperature never rose to above the freezing point afterward. There were many days that reached 32 or 33º, but none that climbed to 50 or higher.
So every little rain shower that came along became a snow shower instead until real winter set in. Nothing that fell early ever melted.
It stayed like that until Easter, 1987. Then suddenly, in the course of about 4 -5 days, mid-spring arrived.

There were some faint signals that this could happen; snow fell on the 4th of July in the high elevations in 1987, and the summer wasn't ever a hot one.
Back then, Halloween was always predictably a freezing cold night. Everyone dressed up their little trick-or-treaters in coats as a matter of course because the weather had been so predictable for so long. When I was a little kid, I can't remember a Halloween that wasn't cold. Most weren't snowy though, just cold at night.

[banjomike]

This cold snap broke the record set in 1985. In my previous post I was off by a year; I recalled the last cold snap coming in 1986, but time made it a little fuzzy.

It's due to go down to -8º in West Yellowstone tonight. West is quite often the coldest place in this area in the winter.