Inland Northwest Hay Weather

With the sudden switch to warm and dry weather, many minds are probably on the upcoming spring and summer weather.  So let's take a look at what we can deduce. First, we have mud season to get through.  Although the air is warm, the ground is still pretty cold, inhibiting surface water soaking in.  The WSU Ag WeatherNet shows 8" soil temperatures in the lower to mid 30s in most of northeast Washington.  But the sunshine will help slowly warm the soil. Additionally, we're not looking at much precipitation in the next 10 days.  The Pacific storms will be going by to our south, into California.  We have some very low chances of rain starting Sunday, but any rain that does fall should be very light.   It does appear that rain chances will increase by late next week with temperatures in the mid-upper 40s.  By March 10th, we're probably looking at a cooler and showery weather pattern for a few days, with possibly some spring snow showers and highs ...

Changing from one season to the next is generally a transition that takes place over several weeks, especially in spring.  But this year, it almost appears that we went from winter to spring during a weekend.  After our several days of rain compliments of an atmospheric river, we deserve a break from the rain, mud and wind.  Thankfully, that's what we're going to get. Here's a recap of the precipitation reports from the area for the last 5 days.  These are taken by ordinary folks like you and me, and submitted online.  The program is called CoCoRaHS.  If you're interested, you can see their website at www.cocorahs.org . 5-10" of rain over parts of western Oregon and Washington.  Here's a closer view of our area: Very strong high pressure will develop over our area, bringing us dry weather and mostly sunny skies through Saturday.  High temperatures will be in the upper 40s to mid 50s.  You read that right. This should help dry things out....

This past week gave us the first real taste of winter weather, with sub-zero low temperatures, followed by our biggest snow event of the season.  Of course, this is all occurring in the middle of February.  As I pointed out in an earlier blog, while December or January is typically the snowiest month of the winter, there have been a handful of winters where February was the snowiest month.  And the winter of 2024-25 will add to that list.   In fact, at the Spokane Airport, they've already had more snow this month than Nov 2024 - Jan 2025 combined.  Has that ever happened before?  Actually, yes, in the winter of 1909-10, 1918-19, 1935-36 and 2018-19.  Still, impressively rare. We'll add to our February snow total with a weak storm on Wednesday.  Here's the latest forecast from the ECMWF courtesy of PivotalWeather.  1-2" for northeast and north central Washington.  A bit more for the east slopes of the Cascades.   Snow all d...

If you read the previous blog, you'll know that we were talking about two things.  First, another push of arctic air into the region.  Second, the potential for a pattern change in the Pacific leading to more snow for the Northwest. The push of arctic air has been slowly trickling in.  We had a little push last Friday and we're getting another today (Monday).  These weren't strong arctic fronts with howling northeast winds.  But they are bringing dry air and clear skies to the area, which are ingredients for cold temperatures.  Deer Park dropped to -4F this morning, its first sub-zero temperature of this winter. The coldest temperature this morning was -11F at Priest Lake, and -10F at Winthrop and near Cheney. It will probably be a tad colder Tuesday or Wednesday morning.  Then the clouds start to move in from the Pacific by Thursday morning, which starts our warming trend. Here's the weather map for Tuesday night.  The western US is covered with ...

Our cold, snowy weather pattern looks like it will hang around throughout next week.  And it could be even snowier. Thus far, the current weather pattern has had the Northwest in the cold air.  But most of the precipitation has been going on to our south.  Here's the analysis of precipitation for the past 3 days (Feb 2-4).  The heaviest precipitation has been in an atmospheric river from northern California into southern Idaho. This moisture plume bent northward for a few hours last night giving our area a few inches of snow.  We'll see a similar thing happen tonight, albeit with a bit more snow than we had last night.  Here's what the ECMWF thinks our snowfall will be.  More snow on the Palouse and Spokane than up in Colville. We should see some more snow showers on Wednesday night, but then things should taper off on Thursday through Saturday.  Unfortunately, that means we're going to get colder.  Lows on Thursday morning will be in the tee...

There will be interesting and somewhat unpredictable weather in the next few days.  First lets take a look at the overall weather pattern.  A deep cold low pressure system has taken up residence over BC and will remain in our area for the next few days. This is Low #1 from our previous blog.  Low #3 (north of Hawaii) will come into play in the middle of next week.  More on this in a bit. This weather pattern is going to do two things.  First, the cold low will keep the atmosphere very unstable.  This will cause snow showers to form.  These will mainly occur in the afternoon and evening hours, but could develop at any time of the day or night.  Most will be random.  But in this situation, there are often very small disturbances in the atmosphere that are difficult to detect and predict, but can organize some showers into a few hours of heavy snow.   Here's an example of what I'm talking about.  The ECMWF model wants to give abou...