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Early Spring Thunderstorms

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While thunderstorms, especially damaging storms, are common this time of year in the US, they are generally confined to the southern states. As the spring moves into April and then May, thunderstorm season moves northwards. As such, we typically don’t see such storms in the Northwest until May. But this unusual weather pattern tomorrow in late March is classic for strong storms in our area. So there is a threat of damaging storms tomorrow.  Here’s the Storm Prediction Center’s outlook for tomorrow.  The yellow area has the best chance of strong storms, but they are also possible in the dark green area.  We talked about warming into the 70s in our previous blog and that now looks certain.  That, along with other ingredients including a strong cold front, will create the storms. They’ll start down near Portland in the late afternoon.  Here’s what one computer thinks the radar will look like at 4pm Wednesday. Then they will march north and east. They probably won’t...
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Early Spring Weather

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As I have said in the past, spring is a war between winter and summer.  Winter wins some battles, but summer always wins the war.  The past couple of weeks have definitely felt more winter-like.  But summer is about to make a short visit to our area. First, winter will have a couple more victories.  After the rain this Friday afternoon/evening, we'll have a dry day on Saturday, with a possible light afternoon shower.  The wind will be breezy in the afternoon, but not to the level of the past couple of days. Then we're looking yet another chance of spring snow on Sunday morning.  Not a slam dunk that it will accumulate on the ground, but the timing for it looks good.  In any event, any accumulation would be very light and won't last through the day.  But it will be another cold day with temperatures only in the mid 40s. As we talked about in the previous blog, temperatures will make a rapid warm up during the first part of next week.  60s are ...
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Warmth in Sight

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As we had discussed in previous blogs, temperatures cooled after the 10th and we got our spring snow. So when will we get back into warmer weather?  Not this week.  Temperatures will stay in the 40s or possibly lower 50s this week. We’ll have a couple of dry days, but more rain is expected mid week as well as the end of the week and into the weekend and possibly early next week.  Even a little snow is possible late in the week. Each system could bring us some decent rain.  The total for this week could be around an inch or more north of Spokane. But after these upcoming rains, we’ll get a significant pattern change.  Here’s the current weather map.  Cold low pressure over the West. By next Monday, the weather map should look like this: Warm high pressure will develop over the West.  60s are a safe bet, and our first 70F day is possible by Wednesday or Thursday next week (March 26 or 27).  After that, things may cool down a bit, but that is nearly ...
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Winter 2024/25 Recap

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Now that we're well into spring, it's a good time to take a look back and review the winter we just finished up.  Was it cold?  Wet?  Mild?  Dry? First, as a reminder, the Climate Prediction Center was expecting a weak La Nina to develop and influence our weather.  La Ninas tend to produce cooler and wetter winters (and springs) in the Northwest.   But after the previous winter's strong El Nino, a weak La Nina was slow to develop.  In fact, we won't know for a few more months, but this winter may not even reach the criteria for calling it a La Nina winter.  The graph below shows the index that is monitored for this determination.  And you can see that it's not until just the last data bar on the far right that the ocean temperature has cooled below the La Nina threshold (horizontal blue line). In spite of this uncertainty, CPC came out with this winter outlook last fall, which looks much like the typical La Nina pattern: So for the three...
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Spring Snow

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As we discussed in our previous blogs, the dry spell after our snow meltdown gave us some much needed time to dry out.  As a result, we had a relatively minor spring mud season.  Our 8" soil temperatures have warmed up about 3F in the past week (except in northeast Washington), helping the surface moisture to soak into the ground. We also talked about a pattern change after the 10th of March leading to cooler and wetter weather.  That is still what is expected for next week, and the details are coming closer into view now. Currently we have a small area of high pressure over the Northwest, which should give us mild weekend weather.  Most Pacific storms (like the one in the Gulf of Alaska) have been going south of us, and the next one in line is no different.  It will bring us a breezy Sunday afternoon and evening but not much else. But then a mass of cold air currently over the Bering Sea will move towards our area early next week.  This will bring us rain ...
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Spring & Summer 2025 Outlook

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With the sudden switch to warm and dry weather, many minds are probably on the upcoming spring and summer weather.  So let's take a look at what we can deduce. First, we have mud season to get through.  Although the air is warm, the ground is still pretty cold, inhibiting surface water soaking in.  The WSU Ag WeatherNet shows 8" soil temperatures in the lower to mid 30s in most of northeast Washington.  But the sunshine will help slowly warm the soil. Additionally, we're not looking at much precipitation in the next 10 days.  The Pacific storms will be going by to our south, into California.  We have some very low chances of rain starting Sunday, but any rain that does fall should be very light.   It does appear that rain chances will increase by late next week with temperatures in the mid-upper 40s.  By March 10th, we're probably looking at a cooler and showery weather pattern for a few days, with possibly some spring snow showers and highs ...
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A Chance to Dry Out

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Changing from one season to the next is generally a transition that takes place over several weeks, especially in spring.  But this year, it almost appears that we went from winter to spring during a weekend.  After our several days of rain compliments of an atmospheric river, we deserve a break from the rain, mud and wind.  Thankfully, that's what we're going to get. Here's a recap of the precipitation reports from the area for the last 5 days.  These are taken by ordinary folks like you and me, and submitted online.  The program is called CoCoRaHS.  If you're interested, you can see their website at www.cocorahs.org . 5-10" of rain over parts of western Oregon and Washington.  Here's a closer view of our area: Very strong high pressure will develop over our area, bringing us dry weather and mostly sunny skies through Saturday.  High temperatures will be in the upper 40s to mid 50s.  You read that right. This should help dry things out....
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