Inland Northwest Hay Weather

Recently a weather outlook has been making the rounds. The Washington Post meteorologists caught wind of a professor positing about the potential for a super El Niño this coming winter, possibly the strongest in 140 years. They’ve written stories about it in March and April. For the record, the meteorologists at the Capital Weather Gang as well as the professor they reference are top notch, and I’m not writing this blog to disagree with them. I just wanted to add a few additional facts.  El Niño, as most of you probably know, is a warming of the ocean in the Pacific along the equator.  I won’t bore you with how this affects our weather in the Northwest.  But 9 times out of 10, El Niño brings mild winters to our area.   So how is El Niño measured?  A rectangular area in the Pacific is chosen and named Nino 3.4, which is the light blue area on the map below (image from the ECMWF webpage). Computer climate models predict ocean temperatures.  Those temperatures...

Our warm spell is expected to come to an end on Tuesday with a dry cold front.  But the weather will warm back into the 60s with dry weather for the rest of the week. All of that should change for the following week, when the weather will turn cooler and wetter, sometime around next Sunday (12 April).  Monday: high around 70. A little breezy in the afternoon and evening.  Tuesday: cooler and windy all day. Wednesday: a bit warmer and sunny.  A light breeze in the afternoon with gusts to 12 mph. Thursday and Friday: warm and sunny with light wind.  Good spraying weather? Saturday: transition day.  Probably warm with increasing clouds. A bit breezy. Possible shower. Sunday through next week: cooler, showery and breezy. Could be a rather wet day somewhere in this period, but too far in the future to have any confidence. Here’s the wind forecast for Deer Park for the next ten days.  And here’s the precipitation chances for Deer Park.  If you need a mo...

Get ready for a chilly night tonight. That cold wind today is bringing in some extremely dry air.  Dew points are into the single digits. Once the sun sets this evening, the wind should drop off allowing the temperatures to quickly drop into the 20s. A northeast breeze should develop overnight, but those areas sheltered from that wind direction could drop into the teens.  Tuesday: Increasing clouds but a bit warmer than today. A light northeast breeze, mainly in the morning.  Wednesday: Rain developing by late morning.  A break in the rain during the late afternoon or early evening, but then rain restarting around 8pm and continuing overnight.  Thursday: lots of rain showers, possibly mixed with some wet snow. Breezy with winds gusting to 20 mph.  Storm total rainfall around 0.50”-0.70”   Friday: Dry and warmer. Light morning wind, with afternoon gusts to 15 mph.  Saturday through Monday:  Sunny with warm temperatures and light winds. Afterno...

After a topsy turvy winter and early spring, what can we expect for the all-important spring weather?  Before we do that, let’s look back and see how well the winter outlooks verified.  We’ll start with temperatures. Here’s how the December-February period compared with normal winters. Incredibly mild throughout the West and the Plains states, with many states recording their warmest winter in 131 years. Washington had its 4th warmest winter on record. Meanwhile, the cold winter weather was located in the East.  Did the folks at the Climate Prediction Center see this pattern coming back in October?  Here’s their winter temperature outlook.  Not very close to what actually happened.  What about the blended computer outlook?  Again, doesn’t resemble what really happened.  Ok, so the temperature outlooks were a bust. How about the precipitation outlook?  Here’s what the winter precipitation looked like.  The West received average precipitat...

I know, you’re looking out your window at the mid-March snow on the ground (poorly predicted by the way), and I’m talking about a heat wave.  And yet, your weather app is talking about 60s next week.  Here’s the predicted weather map for this coming Thursday. As you know by now, red shading means abnormal high pressure, which equates to warmth.  This prediction is for warmth all across the West.  This weather pattern is more typical of summer than March. And the predicted temperatures back that up.  Below is a map of forecast high temperatures for Tuesday 17 March that meet or exceed the record high for that day.  That’s some pretty warm temperatures spread over a rather large.  Here’s the same map for Wednesday.  Temperatures are increasing and spreading out. Now for Thursday: Triple digits in much of the desert southwest, with the heat extending all the way to Arkansas and up to North Dakota. And yes, even a predicted record of 65 at Lewiston....

Round 2 of this windy week is looking stronger than part 1. The weather pattern is pretty classic for high wind in these parts. A deepening low pressure system that moves west to east along the US-Canadian border.  Wind will increase Wednesday evening, gusting to 50 mph by about 10 pm.  The peak wind should occur around 2am Thursday. Wind gusts to 65 mph are possible.  By about 5am Thursday, wind gusts should be decreasing to about 45 mph Here’s the European model forecast for peak winds. It’s worth noting that with Sunday’s wind event, the European (and all the other computer forecasts) were about 5-10 mph too light with the peak gusts. So the forecast below may be on the light side   Another storm is right on the heels of the windstorm. But rather than more wind, this storm looks like it will bring us some precipitation. Could be in the form of wet snow on Friday morning, mainly in the northern valleys, but mostly it will be a rainy Friday. Probably on 0.1-0.2” of ...