Will It Snow Enough in Portland for Sledding?

Portland is on tenterhooks: Are we getting a snow day with sledding and snowballs? Will children be delighted and traffic snarled? Or will any snow predicted for Friday and Saturday melt away immediately (or never show up at all)?

I asked Clinton Rockey, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Portland office, for the current projections — and to understand why I don’t yet know if I’ll be at Laurelhurst Park’s sledding hill this weekend.

Is there going to be a real snowstorm later this week?

“A real snow storm, huh? Accumulation is the big question: How much? We're still trying to figure that out ourselves, but right now I would say there’s a moderate to high chance that we'll get one to three inches of snow, maybe a little bit more (on Friday night into Saturday).”

So we don’t know if it’ll snow for certain.

“It's still very much up in the air as far as the actual amounts. The only thing we can count on is that we are going to turn colder.”

The mountains just had a blizzard with more than a foot of snow. I thought this winter was supposed to be mild, with El Niño weather patterns.

“It doesn't mean that you can't have a cold snap or some snowy periods once in a while. It does indicate that the odds are not in your favor to have a bigger snowy winter. I do expect we'll probably maintain our mildness through the rest of the winter.”