Any Snow in our Future?

I'm guessing that even those folks who don't like snow still look forward to having a white Christmas.  So is there any chance of seeing some snow in the future?

Currently we're still locked into our strong high pressure pattern in the West, with cold and snow back East.  This pattern isn't unusual at all during the winter.  The strong events usually last a couple of weeks, like this one.  

In the short term, we do have a couple of weather systems forecast to arrive in the next few days. The first system is so weak, it's barely worth mentioning.  It's doubtful we'll see any precipitation from it at all, except for perhaps some freezing drizzle on Thursday.  The second system is stronger and it will bring us some weather on Saturday.  


But you can see that high pressure is already building right behind this system, and it will move into our area on Sunday.  This will bring us more dry weather next week.

Will we see any snow on Saturday?  Possibly.  More likely rain than snow.  Rain you say?  How can it when it's so cold outside?  Well, that cold air is just down here at the surface.  Above us, the temperatures are much warmer.  Mount Spokane reached 43F today.  That warm air aloft will melt most of the falling snow, resulting in rain for the valleys.  Actually, it will probably be a wintry mix in some valleys on Saturday morning, with rain, snow, or freezing rain, especially in the lee of the Cascades and the northern valleys.  

Then, as I said, high pressure builds back into our area for dry weather Sunday-Tuesday.  But then a significant pattern change takes place.  Here's the weather map for next Friday.  The high pressure has moved way out into the Pacific, allowing a cooler low pressure area to develop over the Pacific Northwest (and western Canada).

It's too far in the future to start getting exact details such as timing or precipitation type.  The best we can offer at this point is that this is a much better pattern for precipitation in our area.  The storm door will be open. Also, we don't see the high pressure reforming over our area through at least the 20th.  Here's the outlook from the Climate Prediction Center for Dec 12-18.




So to summarize, here's the probability of precipitation type for the next 10 days.  We could see up to a quarter inch of precipitation on Saturday.  Then after a few dry days, precipitation chances will increase by the end of next week.




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