Columbia Weather Systems

 Today is the Winter Solstice, marking the first day of winter in the northern hemisphere. What's the weather like in your part of the world?

Traveling for the holidays? Plan ahead before hitting the road with these tips and by equipping your vehicle with the following safety supplies: - Blanket - Road Salt - Shovel - Scraper - Jumper Cables - Drinking Water - Repair Kit - Flashlight, Flares - Snacks As Weather Ready Nation Ambassadors, we are committed to educating about the importance of weather preparedness. For more winter weather safety tips, visit weather.gov/winter.

With a nod to the seasonal transition from Winter to Spring, Mark Nelsen, Chief Meteorologist at KPTV, presented his Winter Weather Recap at the Oregon AMS meeting last night. Mark summed up the first few months with his comment: “We’re used to being let down here if you like big winter weather.” And then we experienced one of the coldest Februarys on record with multiple snow events. From the initial forecasted snow non-event that was over-hyped by the media and led to outages of kale in Portland-area grocery stores, Mark offered a lesson for forecasters and media: “In today’s social media world, we must be very careful with weather information.” Shout-out to Kyle Dittmer of Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission who nailed the forecast for number of snow events at the Annual Winter Weather conference last October! View Mark’s presentation here.

Every year, hundreds of emergency responders are struck, injured or killed while traveling and tending to traffic incident scenes. National Traffic Incident Response Week is November 11-17 and aims to bring awareness to this problem. As temperatures continue to drop, this is an especially important reminder to keep an eye on weather and road conditions before and while traveling and to  # MoveOverSlowDown  when approaching and passing an incident scene.

The 26th Annual Winter Weather Forecast Conference is coming up! Save the date for Saturday, October 27th at the  Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI)  to hear Meteorologists from across the PNW give their predictions for the upcoming winter. The event is hosted by the  Oregon Chapter of The American Meteorological Society (AMS)  and is open to the public with all ages welcome.

If the cold of winter or the warmth of summer impacts the operation of your company, visit our website .