Oregon Public Broadcasting

The daffodils are just starting to bloom in western Oregon, but don’t put your snow shovel or sled away yet.

There’s more snow and cold weather in the forecast this weekend.

“Looks like the cold air starts to get in here Saturday afternoon, with the best potential for low elevation snow Saturday night into Sunday,” says Tyree Wilde, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

He says an usually cold storm system for March is moving in on the jetstream from the Bering Sea off Alaska.

This storm system is likely to bring 18-24 inches of new snow in the Cascades, and 8-16 inches of snow in the Coast Range.

“Right down on the valley floor, we’ll probably see maybe a little bit of snow sticking on the grass, but we think maybe the roadways will probably be okay,” says Wilde about elevations below 500 feet.

One to two inches may fall above 500 feet.

That snow will probably melt quickly, but the cold air could stick around for a few days.

“We could see temperatures at right around freezing on Monday morning and again on Tuesday morning, maybe 31 F – 32 F degrees,” says Wilde.

Which means gardeners should keep an eye on tender plants to keep them from freezing.

“Most plants are going to be fine,” says Weston Miller, a urban and community horticulturalist for the Oregon State University Extension Service.  “A lot of plants haven’t broken bud yet—you know, started to flower or started to leaf out.  So there shouldn’t be major problems.”

Still, Miller recommends potted plants get moved temporarily into a sheltered area or garage since their roots are more vulnerable to freezing than plants in the ground.

Tender plants and plants that have started to leaf out or flower may need to be covered in order to survive the cold weather.

The unseasonably cold weather does bring a bonus with it though.  

“It’s a form of natural pest control,” says Gail Langellotto, a master gardener with the OSU Extension Service.  She specializes in natural pest control and entomology.  

“Whenever you have a couple of warm days, when insects might come out of their form of hibernation— it’s known as over-wintering— then the cold snap basically kills them off or make it harder for them to survive the over-wintering process,” says Langellotto.

The National Weather Service says the we should see a return to more seasonal weather weather by the middle of next week.