They say hindsight is always 2020. Well, since it is now 2020, let’s take advantage of it to take a look back at 2019! These weather events won’t necessarily be the most damaging, but they are the ones that caught my eye the most throughout the year. Here they are in chronological order:

February/March – Extreme cold and snow

By extreme, of course I mean extreme for the Tri-Cities. Other places certainly get more snow than we did, and plenty of places get colder than we did. For us, though, our late winter blast shattered dozens of records . An unusually strong ridge of high pressure that was perhaps further strengthened by the Blob was in place over the Gulf of Alaska. This sent the jet stream north over central Alaska to collect cold, arctic air before surging south bringing repeated snow storms.

In between these, temperature inversions took hold. Typically these inversions will have temperatures ranging from around 25° to 40°, but the copious amounts of snow on the ground helped to keep us closer to 10°. Temperatures at the Tri-Cities Airport bottomed out at -1°, which beat the old March record of 10°. More astonishingly, the temperature got that cold in March twice (once on the 4th and once on the 5th)!

The snow was probably the most memorable part of this whole event, though. Not only did we beat the old season record, we did it in just one month! February brought 33″ (a new monthly record), with just over 3″ for March (another monthly record). We didn’t receive any measurable snowfall before all of this, so our seasonal total ended up at 36″ (beating the old record of 33″).

I suspect that this was probably the most impactful weather event in the Tri-Cities during 2019, and it won’t be forgotten anytime soon.

May 28 – Benton City severe thunderstorm

The Storm Prediction Center had us under a risk of general thunderstorms on May 28, but one thunderstorm in particular seemed to not care. Aided by lift provided by Rattlesnake Mountain and the Horse Heaven Hills, this storm ended up producing quarter size hail in Benton City before continuing south.

While it only dropped rain on Benton City and parts of West Richland, folks in the Tri-Cities were treated with an extremely photogenic lightning show! I remember going outside to take the trash out and being amazed when I looked east. I had seen the storm on radar, but I had no idea it looked so great! I wasn’t the only one looking, either. Many of you provided pictures for a slideshow I was able to post the next day.

This was the strongest thunderstorm near the Tri-Cities in 2019.

July – Cold Creek Fire

An improperly maintained vehicle traveling on SR 24 west of the Hanford Site caused sparks to fly, lighting some of the grass on the side of the highway on fire. Strong winds combined with dry conditions helped to quickly spread the fire south across Rattlesnake Mountain – a burn scar that we can still see today. As it continued to spread south, air quality in the Tri-Cities deteriorated and ash fell across town.

The fire grew rapidly, reaching 8,000 acres within a few hours of starting. This prompted the county to place areas north of Benton City under a Level 1 evacuation notice. Level 1 is not a mandatory evacuation, but instead instructs people to start preparing to leave. Luckily firefighters were able to get control over the fire and the notice was lifted the next day. Even still, this fire is a good reminder to all of us to have a defensible space around our homes. This is especially true for people who have undeveloped land near them.

September 28/29 – Early winter weather system

An unusually cold winter-like weather system impacted the Pacific Northwest at the end of September, but it wasn’t unprecedented. A similar system came through in 1934, which set the record for the lowest high temperature ever recorded in September in the Tri-Cities. This record stood for over eight decades before being broken in 2019, when high temperatures were limited to the 50s.

This storm brought rain to the Columbia Basin, but at higher elevations and in places to the north it was snow. Rattlesnake Mountain gained an early white cap out of this, and Spokane got a couple inches. Like how we won’t forget what happened here in February, people in Montana north of Great Falls won’t forget this one for quite a while. Some towns recorded snowfall values approaching five feet, and that’s not including the snow drifts. Snow like that is hard to imagine unless you’ve experienced it yourself.

December 31 – Tumbleweed Apocalypse

SR240 at mile post 10 is closed in both directions. DOT is working on clearing. Several vehicles trapped in the tumble weeds. Use alternate routes.-S.C. pic.twitter.com/xD2GfUluim — Trooper C. Thorson (@wspd3pio) January 1, 2020

It’s a good thing I waited until January 1 to write this, because we ended 2019 in the most Tri-Cities way possible – with a tumbleweed apocalypse! Strong winds developed on December 31, which sent tumbleweeds flying outside of town. Honestly, I didn’t know what to think when I started getting notifications on my phone saying that there were people stuck in tumbleweed drifts that in some places nearly completely buried semis.

It didn’t take long for memes to start flying like tumbleweeds. Here’s my favorite, posted by my friends at 98.3 the Key:

Evidently, SR 240 between Horn Rapids (SR 225) and the Yakima Barricade (SR 24) was closed for ten hours. WSDOT had to use snow plows to clear it all, and as they were working to clear it on the 1st they discovered yet another car buried in the mess. Luckily this car, which is a Mazda, was empty. I hope it’s owners were able to get where they were going safely.

Personal Note

This year was my 10th year running Tri-Cities Weather! Some of you have been along for the entire decade, but whether you’ve been here since 2009 or since this morning, I want to thank you. Weather is my passion, and I love being able to share it with you all. I have some big things coming up this year, that I am quite excited for. Some of these are career related and are partially thanks to you all. I will be announcing those when they happen.

Again, thanks for letting me share my passion for weather with you and I hope you all have an excellent 2020!

The featured image for this post was provided by Tanya Sorensen of Boardman.