Weather After the Rain

Our midweek storm delivered on the much-hoped for rain in our area.  While Spokane had about a third of an inch, the southwesterly winds enhanced the rainfall just to the north of the metro area, as is commonly the case.  Flowery Trail picked up 1.40" of rain


In our last blog, I mentioned the potential for a weekend storm system.  The computers are honing in on a confident forecast.  Screaming message: we won't see nearly as much rain as we did from the storm just complete.  The reason?  The map below on the left is from our recent storm.  Notice how the low was "closed" over Washington.  We've talked about this before.  This means the storm is strong and moving very slowly and is a good pattern for rain in the Northwest.  The image on the right is a forecast for Saturday.  Notice there's no closed low.  This storm is weaker and moving faster.  So the resulting rains will be much less.


We will see some showery weather on Thursday and Friday as well.  There's a chance that the showers on Thursday could yield decent amounts of rain, especially north of Spokane.  

After Saturday, the shower activity becomes much more limited and temperatures warm into the 70s next week as high pressure builds into the area.  But the axis of the high pressure is actually to our east.  This will allow some weak storms to brush our area by the middle of next week.  At this point, this doesn't look anything like the wet system we just finished with.

Looking farther into the future, high pressure will rebuild over the area by the end of next week.  This will be a longer-lasting pattern, so expect dry and warm weather for the first week of June.

Speaking of June, the outlook for the month of June from the Climate Prediction Center of the National Weather Service expects a warmer and drier-than-normal month.









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