A Big Change in the Weather Pattern

It has been a wet November.  Multiple storms delivering over an inch of rain this month.  Here's some precipitation observations for the month of November so far.



Officially at Spokane Airport, 3.57" has fallen in November, which is the wettest November since 2006.  The all-time wettest November was in 1897 with 5.85".

For Deer Park, 5.35" of precipitation has fallen in November, which is just shy of the 5.45" in 2006.

But as we know, these kinds of things tend to average themselves out.  While we've been very wet for the past 30 days, the eastern part of the US has been very mild.  Short pants on Halloween.  Wildfires in the northeast. And now we're going to see the pattern reverse.  The West will dry out and the East will be in the news with winter weather.

Here's the current weather map.  Stormy in the West, warm in the Midwest, and a storm exiting the northeast.



Here's the forecast for next weekend.  The pattern has flipped.  Dry and mild in the West.  Very cold and stormy back East.  Cold arctic air will push into the upper Midwest on Thanksgiving and spread over the entire eastern US, even down to the Gulf coast and Florida. Watch for some potential Great Lake Effect snow storms with this pattern.


This pattern could last through the first week of December as well.  The weather locally is a bit hard to predict in this pattern.  For next week, we should see the development of low clouds and fog as daytime temperatures cool into the 30s with lows in the 20s.  High pressure at this time of year means inversions, which trap the moisture near the surface and create our usual fog and low clouds, with sunshine in the mountains.  There's a chance of a dusting of snow on Monday morning as well.  But then that's probably it for the next 10 days or more.

Eventually, that high pressure could get strong enough and oriented in the right direction that we could see some sunshine and warmer temperatures in early December.  We'll have to wait and see on that.




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