Weather
This forecast was created at 8 p.m. on Thursday, February 27, 2025
We are now in the home stretch of winter, with less than three weeks until spring begins on March 20. In the Western U.S., March is when most mountains reach peak snowpack before warmer temperatures cause runoff to outpace new snowfall. To see what the current snowpack is like, check out our recent article.
March begins with the entire western U.S. dry and abnormally warm, with most of the Rockies sitting 5-15ºF above normal on March 1. However, a pattern change begins the next day when the first parade of low-pressure systems moves across California and the ‘four corners’ states. These storms will bring cooler temperatures and a little bit of much-needed snow to the Southern Rockies. The last of those storms rolls in around March 6 and 7 and will perhaps affect the Pacific Northwest more than anywhere else, with multiple inches of valley rain and potentially a couple of feet of snow in the Cascades (watch for a more detailed article on that storm next week).
The Climate Prediction Center’s 6-10 and 8-14-day outlooks mirror what we are seeing in the models, with cool temperatures and precipitation in the Southern Rockies this week followed by more widespread cold air and precipitation next week.
Source: Climate Prediction Center
Weather forecasts become much less accurate the further you look ahead, but the prevailing pattern, along with climatology, suggests that storms are likely to continue moving in across the Pacific Northwest through the end of the month. Models are showing surprisingly good agreement on that, with above-normal March precipitation for the Pacific Northwest and the Northern Rockies and cooler-than-normal temperatures for the entire western U.S..
