SEATTLE -- It was a storm for the ages. Five of them, in fact.

In late December, 2008, the Pacific Northwest was plunged into an icy grip that lasted two weeks, bringing the coldest temperatures the region had seen in nearly 20 years, the greatest prolonged snow in a generation, and the first White Christmas to Seattle since 1990.

The prolonged snow as deep as 12-24" in many spots, combined with icy temperatures in teens and single digits wreaked havoc with cities as they struggled to clear the deep snow and thick ice that coated the region.

While road crews worked 24/7 to try and keep up with Mother Nature, many residents were trapped in their homes for several days, unable to navigate the snow covered roads in their neighborhood.

Heavy snows the weekend before Christmas forced the cancellation of all Alaska and Horizon flights, as well as many others at Sea-Tac Airport, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded and turned many areas of the airport into an impromptu hotel. Travelers using Amtrak and Greyhound found similar fates as service was canceled there too.

Local garbage pickup was suspended for three weeks, leaving mountains of garbage piling up in garages and curbsides. Package delivery services were brought to a standstill at the height of the Christmas rush, and many packages never did make it to their destination in time for Christmas.

There were no weather-related fatalities, but there was one very harrowing moment for several dozen people when two charter buses collided while nosing down an icy Seattle hill, sending both of them crashing through a metal railing above the freeway.

One bus skidded to a stop with its front end and wheels dangling 30 feet above the freeway below as the passengers screamed in terror. All made it out safely.

Here is a recap of all the events of those two weeks, so you can tell your kids and grandkids about the great snow of aught-eight. For each date, I've attached a video of a time lapse animation, courtesy of the University of Washington Atmospheric Sciences Department, so you can see the day play out.

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We started and ended the year with blankets of snow, but there was quite a bit of weather to keep us on our toes in between!

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We've been saying all along to expect some surprises as this incredibly complex pattern of two weather systems move through Thursday and Friday, but now it's even getting more... complex.

The second storm due in Thursday night is now looking much stronger and not exactly where the models through it'd be.  This adds a whole lot more uncertainty to the forecast because the computers now are basing their projections on incorrect information. Read more »

The forecast for Thursday and Friday has evolved to the point of where I think we should just spin a big wheel and see what it says it'll do. It just might end up being more effective than the forecasting models have been of late. (I blame the upcoming leap second tonight :) )

First a short recap of the week so far:  We begin the week with the two main models forecasting a significant windstorm for Thursday night, perhaps rivaling the top 3.

Around late Monday, one model starts to back off, going with a more weaker, southerly route, while the other model keeps original plan of big winds. That holds for a while.  Then, late Tuesday, the "windy" model backs off and goes with the weaker solution, only to then have the first model flip back to the windy solution overnight. As of this morning, it's now two storms.

Here is a conversation I imagine between these two models this week, which we'll call Ned and Gus: Read more »

It's not exactly like we're going to do a blind taste-test, but our latest forecasting models are squaring off against each other, each painting a vastly different scenario for a storm expected to strike sometime either Thursday afternoon or Thursday night.

Earlier forecast models were pretty consistent in showing a very strong storm -- as deep or even deeper than the Dec. 2006/Hanukah Eve storm, although central pressure is not the sole deciding factor in a windstorm's affect on a region -- coming ashore somewhere along the north coast or southern Vancouver Island Thursday night.

But now some have changed their tune, bringing in a much weaker storm farther south across the central coast, and having it come in Thursday afternoon instead of Thursday night. Meanwhile, the others are sticking to their guns of the stronger storm to the north during the night, although not quite as dire as before. Read more »

It's been a very crazy two weeks of weather around this area, messing up holiday travel plans for many. But how much worse would it have been had it occurred two years later when the Vancouver Winter Olympics are being held?

Here is a story from the Associated Press on just that question: Read more »

You'd think after two weeks of being Mother Nature's punching bag, we'd get a break.

Maybe February?

In what's akin to having a double header scheduled the day after a 19-inning marathon, it looks like 2009 is going to start the way 2008 will end -- stormy -- with three decent storms scheduled to blow through here this week. In fact, we might pull off the hat trick of Northwest winter weather: flooding, snow and wind.

Of the three, it appears wind will become the biggest factor as we wade through the final days of '08, with perhaps the largest punch reserved for the start of 2009 as the third storm, due in Friday morning, is looking like the strongest of the week, and perhaps the strongest of the year as far as wind goes.

Why so stormy? The north Pacific Ocean is perfectly primed for storm generation. Remember all that cold air that we had? (If you need a reminder, check your street's curb.) It's still out there. Temperatures in Siberia have been in the -70F range of late, while the interior of Alaska is having *high* temperatures around -40 (C or F, take your pick) and that's an amazing amount of arctic air to tap into and shove to the east.

For the past two weeks, a ridge of high pressure out in the Pacific was helping to alter the jet stream so that it was pushing far north into arctic temperatures, then down along British Columbia, sending that arctic air into the interior, and having it available to be drawn into Western Washington by all those storms passing by to our west and south.

That ridge moved west, and now that cold air is pooling into the Gulf of Alaska and northern Pacific.  In the meantime, we have the typical warmer waters and air to the south as you approach the tropics. Read more »

Western Washington wasn't the only place dealing with a two-week long plunge into the arctic...

I'll be working on a recap blog of everything that happened here and in Portland and Spokane over the last two weeks -- look for it to be published sometime between Monday and the Vancouver Olympics (there's a lot of data to research! :) )

But in the meantime,  Mark Albright, a research meteorologist with the UW Atmospheric Sciences department, has compiled a list of other records and events that occurred around the globe during the past two weeks. Just goes to show how weather is connected.

To start off, we had an interesting discovery on December 11th that the first 11 days of December were warmer in the upper atmosphere than the first 11 days of June.

Little did we know that we wouldn't have to worry about the last 11 days of December being warmer than, well, pick any other month in the last decade...

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