Portland and Vancouver actually don't have any weather.  Being west coast cities we have very little drama in our weather because we have the biggest weather cushon in the world directly to the West of us, namely the Pacific Ocean.  We never see hurricanes, Noreasters or Tordados.  With steady water temperatures of around 50 degrees all winter long the North Pacific gives us really mild and gentle ups and downs in our weather.  Because of this it is actually very difficult to pile up more than an inch of snow in downtown Vancouver.

However, if you were to listen to our news media you would think that the threat of snow this evening was the end of the world.  It is the local joke around town about the turf war among the networks for the coveted Sivan overpass when there is a flake of snow in the air.  I cannot tell you how many times I have sat down to watch the evening news and heard "Well there isn't anything happening here right now but this misty rain is expected to turn to snow any moment now." 

When there is a flake on the ground the news media whip the metro area into a frenzy.  During the last ice storm they went live 24 hrs a day for about three days.  You would have thought that Katrina had just landed in Portland.  It is absolutely rediculous.  But...we love it!  The ratings for those shows are super high and you bet the media will do it again and if they are smart they are charging Les Schwuab a huge premium for their commercials during their storm team coverage because they have some of the highest ratings of the year in our market.  So why all the weather hype in Portland and Vancouver?  I think it goes right back to what I said at the beginning Portland doesn't have any drama in its weather so the media and the viewers who tune in very large numbers have become drama queens when it comes to the weather.  We don't really have anything to complain about so we make something to complain about.

Now don't get me wrong I am a bit of a weather geek myself and I really like Mark Nelson's blog on the Fox news site.  It is the epicenter of weather geekdom in Portland.  However, it isn't necessarily the actual drama which makes weather in Portland interesting to so many of us.  It is the difficulty predicting what is going to actually happen.  First of all you have the fact that there are not any weather stations out in the Pacific Ocean giving us an acurate picture of what is coming that means that our forcasters start off somewhat blind and dependent on models instead of real data.  Secondly, the Columbia River cuts a deep gorge through the middle of the Cascades and gives us a wierd pattern which even Seattle doesn't have.  Often in the winter there is a cold dry high pressure system in eastern Washington which a wet warm low off the coast.  That means that predicting our weather is not only a matter of working blind but also includes understanding just how much wind will come through the gorge at any given moment, how cold that wind will be, how far it will travel once it leaves the gorge and whether or not all the friction of that wind will actually warm our tempurature or cool it.  That makes Portland weather fun and keeps up a lively conversation on Mark's blog.  Before the snow event like the one expected this evening I have seen upwards of 700 posts on a single entry.  If you like weather science it all makes for very fun reading.

If you are traveling to the Portland/Vancouver area and you just want a good forcast you can catch Mark's forcast here.  It will help you cut through all the hype and just give you what you need, the best possible forcast for Portland and Vancouver.  Just remember we don't really have any weather, no matter what our media tells you.