The End of Winter?

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 day could change to rain by the end of Wednesday.


After this, our daytime temperatures will warm into the mid-40s by the weekend, with nighttime lows staying above freezing.  This is all compliments of a major pattern change.  


We've seen this pattern before, back in November, and got a lot of rain from it.  We're not looking at a repeat, necessarily.  But we are looking at a decent rain event for this weekend.  This will be due to a long atmospheric river of moisture stretching from the Pacific Northwest all the way back to Hawaii.



There's a good chance that the rain will hold off until Saturday evening.  But Sunday and Monday look wet, with around 1" of rainfall and daytime temperatures in the mid-upper 40s.  Lower 50s are even possible next Monday.

Looking beyond the weekend into next week, daytime temperatures remain mild in the mid 40s to lower 50s.  And this should hold through the end of the month.  Yes, we could still see some snow in March.  But spring snow usually doesn't last long.

  

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