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Snow in the Forecast?

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Yes, it’s that time of year again. And if you’ve paid attention to the forecast, you’ve seen the dreaded (or delightful) word: snow. Is there really a chance of it?  Actually, there are two chances. At this time of year, timing is critical. If the clouds move in too early at night, we don’t cool down enough for snow. If the precipitation starts too late in the morning, it will be too warm for snow.  Our first chance of snow will be early tomorrow (Thursday morning). Clouds will increase about 7pm this evening and Precipitation will start about midnight. This isn’t good timing for snow. The wild card in this mix is that the air will be drier, with dew points around 30F, which is good for snow. If there is any of the white stuff on Thursday morning, it’s doubtful it will accumulate on the ground. Steady precipitation should end around 7am with about 0.15” of liquid.  We’ll have a short break before the next, stronger storm arrives Thursday night. The clouds and precipitation will be a fe
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Outlook for 2024/25 Winter

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It’s the most often asked question at this time of year: what’s the winter going to be like?  Seasonal outlooks are what I call “educated guesses”. They’re not just the flip of a coin.  There is a lot of science behind them. But their accuracy is only a little better than a coin flip.  For winter outlooks, the focus is on whether it is an El Niño, La Niña or neutral conditions in the equatorial waters of the Pacific. There are a lot of other things that come into play, but these are all in the atmosphere. And we currently can only predict the atmosphere out for about two weeks. But the oceans are much slower to react, and so we can make confident forecasts for them several months into the future.  Last winter was a great example. It was an El Niño winter, and as expected, this brought mild conditions to the Inland Northwest.  Overall. But there was a week of brutal cold in the middle of January. But when you looked at the entire winter, it was warmer than normal.  This year, it’s back
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Are Our Dry Seasons Getting Drier?

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Back in July during our hot stretch of days, I looked to see if there was any trend in how hot our summers were.  You can view that blog here . In that article, I also took a quick look at precipitation trends for the the summer, that is, for June, July and August.  But given our long wait for autumn rains this year, I wanted to take a little closer look at the warm season rains. As we've discussed before, June is really a springtime month in the Inland Northwest, although there have been some recent exceptions.  Our dry season is definitely the three months of July, August and September.   See the green bars in the graph below. And each year it's a common question: when will the fall rains arrive, ending the wildfire and dust seasons?  Sometimes that's a widespread event. But most years are like this year.  Some areas received rain, while others are still waiting.  Here's the map of yesterday's rainfall. So has there been any trend with precipitation in our dry sea
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Lots of Weather from a Dry Cold Front

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Fall fronts are usually lacking moisture around these parts. But just because there’s not much if any rain doesn’t mean there isn’t any weather.  The front will move through the area tonight (Saturday night). Some folks may get a sprinkle but not much more that that. Skies will clear by late morning as the wind picks up, which will peak in the late afternoon.  It’s worth noting that we don’t expect a repeat of the thunderstorms from Wednesday afternoon. Instead, very dry air will move in behind the front. This will lower the humidity, which combined with the wind will create critical fire weather conditions. The NWS has already issued a Red Flag Warning for most areas.  Please be careful on Sunday and don’t do anything that could potentially start a fire. Without the arrival of fall rains, our fuels are extremely dry right now.  Winds will gust in excess of 30 mph during the afternoon.  Some computer forecasts have winds gusting to 35 or even 40 mph.  Blowing dust is possible in the Ba
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Was This a Hot Summer?

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With the seasonal change to Fall, it's a good opportunity to look back at the summer of 2024.  Would you say it was a hot one?  A dry one?  Just about normal? For those with short memories (like me), June of this year was just about as "normal" as you can get, both with temperature and moisture.  But then July rolled around with a very scorching stretch of days.  Spokane Airport reached a high of 90F or better for an impressive 20 consecutive days.  To put that in context, Spokane averages only 20 days of 90F weather for the entire summer.  So if I had asked you at the end of July what kind of summer we were having, you'd likely have answered that it was a hot one.  And it was a hot July across the western U.S.  Below shows the ranking for each state's average July temperature.  Red means it was the hottest on record (California, New Hampshire and Florida).  Orange indicates it was one of the 10% hottest summers for the West as well as the East coast. August start
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The Start of Fall

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We’re just about done with our warm stretch of September weather. The much promised cooler air is starting to infiltrate the Inland NW.  And the thermometer will continue to drop for the next few days.  Here’s the temperature forecast for the next 10 days.  70s and even some 60s for the foreseeable future. What’s more is the forecast of rain. Pretty good odds for extreme eastern Washington and a done deal for north Idaho.   This won’t be a widespread wetting rain event for everyone.  Some folks may only get a few hundredths if that, while others may get a quarter of and inch.  Here’s an average forecast of all of the various computer forecasts.  Dry in the Columbia Basin but rather wet in western Montana.   But here’s the European computer forecast.  Similar pattern, but you can see more more holes of light rain with this forecast. The weather pattern dries out a bit (but not entirely) for Friday and Saturday. But then chances of rain increase after that as another Gulf of Alaska syste
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Fall Rains on the Horizon

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September is starting off on a hot note.  We could be looking at several 90+F days over the next week, well above the normal 2 such days in an average September.  This is all compliments of a large area of hot high pressure along the West Coast as well as western Canada. The heat should peak on Saturday or Sunday, and then very slowly subside next week.  A very weak weather disturbance could lead to some mountain thunderstorms on Sunday.  But the main cooling will begin as the high pressure shifts to the east and a large area of lower pressure develops off the coast. This pattern will slowly shift eastward allowing progressively cooler air to infiltrate the Inland NW. Then this pattern will become rather stationary for the latter half of next week.  In other words, this isn't our typical fall front that brings us some wind and a little rain for a day.  Instead, this will set up a rather wet pattern for this time of year, with a chance of rain for multiple days, out to at least the
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