If you were to look at your iPhone's built-in weather app this morning, you might be rushing out to the grocery store to buy as many non-perishables as you can get your hands on.

As of 9:30 a.m. Monday, the app showed large, ominous snowflakes for Thursday, Friday and Sunday. Given the frozen hellscape that locked down the city in January, weary Portlanders would have good reason to pre-panic.

Not so fast, said Gerald Macke, a meteorological technician with the National Weather Service.

"That snowflake you see on your phone? That's probably all you are going to get," he said. "One snowflake."

Macke said the best chances of snow would come Wednesday night into Thursday. He cautioned that it's difficult to predict weather several days in advance, but he said snow levels were likely to stay above 1,000 feet and frozen precipitation that did reach the valley floor would melt off quickly.

"At best what you'll probably see is a wintry mix," Macke said.

Up in the Cascades will be a different story, however. Mount Hood Meadows had picked up about 6 inches by Monday morning and snow was predicted to continue through at least midweek, Macke said.

The moisture level, for the mountains and the valley, would begin to taper by late Thursday, though, and "limited moisture and warm road surface temperatures will minimize the threat for accumulating snow and major impacts," the weather service said.

--   Kale Williams

kwilliams@oregonian.com

503-294-4048

@sfkale

Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.