Ready for Some Rain?

Our multiple storms delivered the promised snow over the past few days.  Now that you have your driveway neatly plowed and your walkways shoveled, you can sit back and watch it rain.  And we could be talking about a lot of rain.  Temperatures will also rise into the 40s for much of the week and not go below freezing at night.  Add some breezy winds at times, and we should see some of this snow melt away.

Below is a summary of precipitation probabilities for the next 10 days (top graph) and the precipitation amount expected (bottom graph). Starting from the left side, you can see we have a few hours of snow in store today, starting about 10 am.  This will probably change to a little light rain before sunset.  Then look at the huge probabilities of rain starting Monday and continuing through Thursday.  It's not going to rain continuously for four days.  There will be some breaks, just impossible to forecast at this time.

The bottom graph shows that we could see 2" of rain or more.  On the right side of the graphs, you can see that things calm down, with just low probabilities of rain or snow next week.


Here's the weather map from yesterday (Saturday).  You can see the one system moving through our region.  The Friday storm is already in the central Rockies by this time.


But by Tuesday, look how much different the weather pattern is.  Deep low pressure has developed offshore, with a warm ridge of high pressure to our east.  This is a good set up for multiple warm storms to invade the Northwest with rain and high snow levels.


There is some disagreement on how much rain we'll get.  The US and Canadian models predict a down pour.  Here's the forecast for the total precipitation for today through Friday night from the US model.  2-4" of precipitation for northeast WA and the northern Panhandle, with a lot more rain on the west side.


The European models also forecast a wet week, just not quite as wet as the US/Canadians. 1-2" for northeast Washington.






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Very Snowy and Cold Next Week

Image
As we discussed in our previous blog, our mild winter weather is coming to an end.  We'll see some light snow tonight (Friday night), but then it should be snowing most of the day on Saturday, with snow showers continuing Saturday night and into Sunday morning.   The European model isn't too excited about the snowfall amounts with this system for the Spokane area (0.7"), but gives a healthy 3-5" to the northern valleys.  It has been very consistent with this forecast over the past couple of days. Meanwhile the GFS is much more excited about this storm, bringing 6" to Spokane and Sandpoint.  The difference is that the GFS lingers the storm over our area much longer than the European model.   There are lots of other models that give us snowfall amounts somewhere between the GFS and ECMWF forecasts above.  With temperatures right around freezing, this snow will be on the heavier wetter side.  Snow-liquid ratio (SLR) will be around 10:1, which means if you get 0.25&q
Read more

Wetter Weather Ahead

Image
In our last blog, we talked how broad low pressure was forecast to develop over the western US.  The details on this are starting to take shape.  I'll probably provide an update on this during the middle of the week, but here's where things stand now. First, we'll have a few dry and warmer days after our cold front on Saturday night.  High pressure will build into the area Monday through Wednesday.  Temperatures will be in the mid to upper 60s on Tuesday and Wednesday, with a little cooling on Thursday. But it won't last.  The low pressure in the above graph that is off the California coast will merge with the small low off the west coast of Canada.  This will create a broad area of low pressure over the western US by the end of the week. This weather pattern will bring us a cool and wet Thursday night and Friday.  The rain could reach our area by Thursday afternoon, but the best odds are for Thursday night, with showers on Friday.   That said, if the timing slows down,
Read more

Looking Ahead to Spring and Summer

Image
With the snow having melted and the road weight limit signs going up, our thoughts are naturally turning to Spring.  Will the mild temperatures and rain continue?  First, let's look at where we are on moisture. In the Northwest, things overall are on the drier side, with pockets of above normal precipitation. Zooming in a bit, we can see that the Columbia Basin overall has had above-normal precipitation, while much of the rest of the state has had near- or below- normal precipitation.  This makes sense.  We have had very little wind this winter (only one windy storm I can think of).  So the Cascade rain shadow hasn't been a factor this year. Looking even closer at a few locations, we see precipitation is very close to normal for mid-February.  In fact, it's rare that it is so close to normal (I know, that sounds strange).  Here's the Spokane Airport trace since October 1st.  The green line is the actual accumulated precipitation for this winter, while the brown line is
Read more