The west coast has been hit hard with heavy snow in the north, flooding rains and landslides in the south...and Texas having devastating wildfires.

The NorthEast is having the warmest winter season in recent memory but lots of flooding rains. Rain all week to come.

I can't imagine getting 12 FEET of snow in one day.

In the PNW, winter started slowly, but picked up in January and now we are having pretty good snowfall in the mountains. The resorts have built up their snow base and the skiing is good, albeit windy and snowing are not my favorite skiing weather. We have been in an El Nino winter (warm water in the north Pacific) but forecasts are for a transition to La Nina (colder water in the north Pacific). Hopefully La Nina will stick around into next winter and deliver lots of PNW snow and a great ski season. The downside is that I really need to get an emergency generator hooked up. Our power grid, even in the Portland city limits, is quite vulnerable to ice storms and high winds. In January I knew lots of people who were without electricity for 3 to 8 days. With temperatures below 20F, days and nights of no heat, no lights, no hot water, no internet, no appliances, etc is no fun.

AFIK, the heavy snow is in the mountains, where they're generally prepared, and are dealing with it. I saw a man on the news saying he was running through some part for his snowplow, IIUC, as in the plows were trying to keep the roads open during the blizzard. The visual they're all showing is of the highway, I think going into Tahoe, which is a good sized population area, which stradles the border with Nevada. There were hundreds of vehicles stopped because so much snow dumped so fast. The Highway Patrol was taking care of them.

All this Winter, unlike El Niños of the past, instead of the precipitation being week after week, a few days on, a few days off, this has been dumping everything in a day or two, then clearing out for a good stretch. I don't know the numbers for the snow—just that living in SoCal, I'm grateful for snowpack, which means water. At the beginning of the season, it seemed like we might be back to drought. Considering it's March, and precipitation usually ends by mid-April [ETA—in the high Sierra Nevada snow can end more like Memoeial Day, end of May], even with the late start to the storms, it's probably winding down, and the rain totals here are well above average but nowhere near ”wet year”, yet. We've had wet year type damage because of the quantity dumped in short periods. In general, the snow in the mountains has followed the same new pattern, but that's all I know about it, snow being something in books, and TV. I saw a few snowflakes in the desert once when I was a child...

“…just that living in SoCal, I'm grateful for snowpack, which means water.”

They said the snowpack’s at 104%, a stark contrast from January when it was 20-something %. I think they said measurements will show more on April 1. I guess we need more than one or two good years but we’ll take all we get.

Rain tomorrow with snow above 6500’ and in the Sierra. Supoosed to be nice for the weekend.

The weather is very scary. Lack of water is terrifying. Too much is equally so......