Though it didn’t come in time for a white Christmas, Clark County experienced a series of snow-covered days last week.
Beginning in the early morning hours of Dec. 26, the weather turned cold and precipitous, which led a number of areas in the county to garner several inches of snow.
NWS Meteorologist Clinton Rockey said the air masses that moved into the region over the week weren’t especially cold but had low-enough temperatures to lead to accumulation. He said the region had a wide range of snowfall totals given the “showery” nature of the weather.
“Showers are like when you spill a bowl of popcorn on the floor. You never know where it’s going to be. … You could have a bunch in one area and none in another area,” Rockey said.
Clark County saw a range of accumulation, with a few inches in Vancouver to parts of Amboy and Yacolt which received 10 to 12 inches, Rockey said.
“Most places had at least 2 to 3 inches,” Rockey said about the snowfall that blanketed Southwest Washington.
The average amount of snow the area received landed at about 3 to 4 inches.
Rockey said the “last gasp” of snowfall occurred on the morning of Friday, Dec. 31 as drier air and higher temperatures moved into the region.
“(It’s) back to rain and heavy mountain snows,” Rockey said.
Although he said snowmelt would likely lead to rising river levels, it didn’t look like there was a potential for much flooding in Clark County.
In recent years, the start of winter has included more mild weather, but Rockey said the past week’s snowfall wasn’t out of the ordinary for the region.
“It’s what you would expect for January and late December,” Rockey said. “It doesn’t happen on a regular basis, but it occurs often enough not to be a rare event.”
The weather led to adverse driving conditions, with numerous wrecks recorded in the county. By Dec. 28 alone, Washington State Patrol had responded to 43 crashes since the snow started, WSP Public Information Officer Will Finn tweeted that day. Farther north, WSP saw more crashes, as Cowlitz County reported 73 crashes by that time. The Washington State Department of Transportation recorded numerous crashes on Interstate 5 in Clark County throughout the week.
The weather didn’t impact power in Clark County too much. During the height of the snowfall earlier in the week, Clark Public Utilities only reported minor outages affecting a few dozen customers at a time, CPU Media Specialist Dameon Pesanti said on Dec. 28. There was a larger-scale outage that morning that impacted around 1,000 customers, but it only lasted about 10 minutes.
