Snow Mostly Skipped Portland This Week. Here’s Why.

Despite local agencies preparing for the worst, snowfall largely skipped over Portland this week.

Colby Neuman, a National Weather Service meteorologist, says that's because cold air never quite made it to Portland—instead, it stayed in eastern Washington and Northeast Oregon.

Neuman says the agency was tracking a low-pressure system off Oregon's shore, which never made it far enough south to push cold air into Portland. (That matched the National Weather Service's models, which were less breathless and more skeptical than some other forecasts.)

"It turns out the low-pressure moved farther north over the past day and it basically is tracking toward Vancouver Island," Neuman says. "Most model scenarios depicted what is happening now, where the chance of snow was small for us."

In short: It didn't snow because it wasn't cold enough.

Still, local grocery stores made sure to stock up on extra kale in case of a Portland snowstorm panic.