Plan to head to Idaho for the winter next week, looks like finally a couple of dry days going over the pass, through Spokane and up to Priest lake.
I am worried about the freezing fog thing though, they say that was a major factor in the big wreck yesterday (18 semi trucks involved) over in Kittitas. I ran into that once around Ritzville once and there were a few cars in the ditch and movement was down to a crawl. I would like to avoid that.
I pretty much figure fog will be an issue in Eastern Washington from about Nov 20th until mid-February, except just after the passage of a reasonably strong front, which scours out the fog (pushes it out of the area to the east). It undoubtedly has been bad this past week or two because of mostly rather benign and stagnant conditions. The existence of snow on the ground in Eastern Washington enhances the inversion because snow is cold, but the top of an area of fog is also white and cold and enhances radiational cooling.
For many years I taught avalanche courses at Blewett Pass and I would often return from Seattle two days in a row, and might even ski there on occasion as well. I found that the fog-top inversion would increase on succeeding days by around 400' or so absent winds. When teaching those courses at Blewett Pass when it had cleared, in shade the snow temperature was on average about 7 degrees C colder than the ambient air temperature. This is a major source of this fog inversion, as colder air has higher relative humidity.
Looking at Windy (for Low Clouds), the Mission Ridge Webcam, WSDOT webcams, and aviation METARS for say Moses Lake, Wenatchee, Yakima, and Spokane should show you cloud layers and visibility.
If you are on twitter, check out the videos this guy posts.
He shows various weather models and explains what they mean
https://twitter.com/SeattleWXGuy
Or you can search YouTube on SeattleWXGuy
He does 1 or 2 videos per day.
Very informative.
BTW, up to 50 foot waves expected on Oregon Coast tomorrow
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