Brrr -- Peninsula could be on ice until Christmas; blustery winds on West End tonight
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Snow is still in the forecast North Olympic Peninsula-wide starting Tuesday night and extending through Wednesday.
This story will be updated on peninsuladailynews.com as weather forecasts warrant. Click below the weather icon at the upper right of the home page for the latest AccuWeather outlook for your town.
Santa Claus' early North Pole gift to the North Olympic Peninsula is at least a week of subfreezing weather, a new coating of snow by midweek -- and the prospect of ice and bitter cold all the way to Christmas.
Frigid air is covering Western Washington as an arctic system is giving residents of Clallam and Jefferson counties an idea of what the weather's like around Santa's workshop.
The system, coming down from the Yukon, is passing along the Strait of Juan de Fuca after shooting down British Columbia's Fraser River Valley.
Most of the gusts are on or near the water, and some of them are predicted tonight as 35 mph gusts on the West End -- particularly in the Beaver and Sappho areas.
Some snow and chilly winds are possible along Hood Canal on the east side of the Peninsula.
Temperatures across lowland areas of the North Olympic Peninsula are expected to hover in the 20s and low 30s this week.
If daytime high temperatures rise above freezing during the week, they will be only by one or two degrees, the National Weather Service said Sunday.
That means ice and snow accumulated on the ground will not be melting soon.
Lows in the teens
Overnight lows in the teens are possible in some lowland areas of the Peninsula.
And they're likely to continue past Sunday, when more snow is forecast.
"Our long-range models show temperatures below freezing from now until Christmas," Weather Service meteorologist Johnny Berg told the Peninsula Daily News on Sunday.
"However, the long-range models are very often not correct because they cannot grasp all of the variables."
What's clearer to weather forecasters is the near outlook, which calls for dry weather until Tuesday night when more snow moves in.
An 80 percent chance of snow is predicted for Wednesday by the Weather Service, with accumulations near the water between 3 inches to 6 inches, double in higher elevations.
After the Wednesday snowstorm passes, mostly cloudy weather with continued frigid temperatures are forecast Thursday through Saturday.
History could be in the making this week:
It could go into the record books as the longest stretch of freezing weather on the Peninsula and across Western Washington since an arctic blast in December 1990 brought six consecutive days of temperatures at or below freezing.
________
PDN reporter Paige Dickerson and KOMO-TV meteorologist Scott Sistek contributed to this report. KOMO in Seattle is a PDN news partner.
Port Angeles native Sistek's weather Web log, "Partly to Mostly Blogging," with updates and discussion about the current arctic blast, is at www.komonews.com/weather/blog.
Last modified: December 15. 2008 4:45AM