Inland Northwest Hay Weather

Our mid-June rainstorm is over. Some locations picked up significant rainfall.  Drier air is moving into the region. This will allow our temperatures on Thursday morning to drop into the 30s once again .  But then the steady warming trend begins. The warmth should peak around 90 by next Tuesday before temperatures cool off some. As we talked about in the last blog, the position of the high pressure offshore leaves us open to weather systems from the northwest. We’ll see one of those on Friday, but the threat of showers should be minor and mainly confined to north of Newport.  Here’s the European rainfall forecast for Friday.  The next small chance of rain looks to be around the 20th of June.  It also looks like it could get a little breezy next week.  Dew points look like they will stay in the 40s, which will mean afternoon humidity around 25%, and not a heavy morning dew.

The forecast from my previous blog entry is pretty much holding course. The 30F reading this morning at Deer Park airport definitely adjusted our climate clocks. It is June after all. And it’s been 14 years since Deer Park as seen such a cold morning this late in the spring. But now our attention turns to the upcoming rain. The computers have come into overall agreement. It doesn’t look like this is going to be a stalled low pressure system with unpredictable bands of rain over a few days. Rather, it’s looking more like a quicker event. Confidence is very high that it will be raining before sunrise on Tuesday, and it will continue most all the day. It should be done by Wednesday morning.  Here’s the forecast for the next 10 days. Amounts range from 0.25” to 0.75” depending on your location and which model you believe. But  suffice to say, you don’t want to have hay down if you can avoid it.  Here’s few computer forecasts.  Lastly, the Model Blend forecast is more bea...

It’s that time of year when we stop rooting for a good rain storm and instead hope for a week of dry weather. So you’re probably looking at your favorite weather app and seeing something like this: Should you ignore the forecast for next week and start cutting now?  The alfalfa is already starting to bloom. The chance of rain on Saturday probably won’t be enough to worry about.  The storm is coming at us from the northwest, which is typically not a favorable direction for precipitation around here. Below is a computer forecast of precipitation.  Should be less than 0.10”, unless you live north of Colville and Sandpoint.  But it will bring dry air so the Sunday morning low temperature will probably be in the 30s. The bigger question is the rain for next week.  Here’s the forecast weather map for next Tuesday. That pattern looks cool and possibly wet.  Why do I say “possibly”?  This looks like it will be another spring storm.  We’ve talked about the...

The critical rains of May turned out to be somewhat of a mixed bag. The graph below shows precipitation at Deer Park for the current May (green line), May of 2025 (purple line), and an average May (brown line).  May 2026 featured two long dry spells, but with good rains in the middle and and of the month.  But the total was half an inch below normal.  Compare that to last year which also had two long dry spells and ended with nearly the exact same total.  The biggest difference is that last year was dry during the last half of the month. Looking at the entire region, the story was much the same.  Except for a couple of isolated locations, the entire state (actually nearly all of the Northwest) was well below normal for its rainfall in May. So what can we expect for June weather?  The climate prediction center updated their outlook, but it’s still not an encouraging prediction.  Drier and warmer than normal for the Northwest. All of the climate computer...

Previously I mentioned Friday had the potential to be a rainy day. But now the computers are fine-tuning their forecast and are beginning to focus on a Thursday evening event.  But first, let me show you our rainfall event that just finished up.  Northeast Washington fared very well, as did the Palouse and Panhandle.  North central Washington as well as the Basin received much less. Our rainfall over the late winter and spring had been tracking close to normal. (The green line is this year’s rainfall, the brown line is a normal years rainfall).  But then those two long dry spells starting in late April have really put us behind on our rainfall.  For the water year (since 1 October), Deer Park is now 1.5” below normal, even after yesterday’s rain. Looking at a map of the state, we can easily see where the dry conditions are located, with the northeast 3 counties generally averaging 50-75% of normal precipitation. So let’s look at the next potential rain even...

We’re near the end of yet another mid-spring dry spell. Deer Park airport has had only 4 days of rain so far this month, compared with a normal of 11 days. We’ll likely add a few more days this month, but overall we’ll fall short of an average May.  Rain should start Monday evening and continue into parts of Tuesday. Don’t expect a lot of rain from this first round. Something around 0.10”.  After that, we’ll see our typical May pattern set up. A nearly-stationary low to our south with the potential for bands of showers to rotate around it.  Notoriously hard to predict.  Here’s our chances of rain for the next 10 days.  At this point the best chance of this bringing rain to our area is around Friday.  But we’ll have to wait a few days to see how things shape up.  Here’s the current forecast for rainfall amounts.  Possibly around a half inch. The first few days of June look like they will be warm and dry.  But another round of showers is possib...