Inland Northwest Hay Weather

Our cool and we’re weather pattern delivered more rain over the past few days as hoped for and expected. Here’s the rainfall totals for the past 3 days.  Our precipitation for May is almost up to normal for the month.  But we’re still far from making up for our dry April.  We should still see showery weather through Wednesday.  After that, temperatures will start to warm up, reaching near 80 by Sunday and into early next week.  There are still some small shower chances during this period but the European computer forecasts that these chances are fading fast.  So bet on the warmth and not the rain for the second half of this week. We will see another chance at a rainy period in the middle of next week.  At this point, it doesn’t look like this would be as cold or wet as what we’re in right now.  But there’s a lot of variability in the forecast, especially for a 10 day forecast in the spring.

The warm and dusty April is a distant memory now. Our much anticipated pattern change arrived pretty much as expected, and a bit wetter in some parts. Here’s the rainfall measured by volunteers over the past 5 days.  Our precipitation total since April 1 is still far below normal.  But our overall precipitation total for the water year (starting Oct 1) is still looking good. The observed precipitation (green line) is above the normal (brown line).  And the good news is that more showers are on the way. Friday will be a rather wet day. Not just an afternoon shower, but more like a few hours of rain. We'll see a similar scenario Saturday night into Sunday. Here’s what the European computer forecast has as a total rainfall from these two systems. Don’t get too hung up on the totals. The main point is that this shouldn’t be as spotty as the showers over the past few days.  Looking into next week, we’ll go back to more of the spotty shower pattern, along with a gradual wa...

The upcoming weather pattern change is still on track. Warm and dry weather will be replaced by a cooler and wetter pattern. How much rain will we get and how long will it last?  Unfortunately it doesn’t look like it will be really wet or long-lasting. These spring storms typically have more uncertainty than a strong winter storm. So it’s hard to be definitive.  A few mountain sprinkles are possible Saturday with warm temperatures and breezy afternoon winds. A better chance of rain will be on Sunday, with the highest chance of showers on Monday.  Here’s a few computer forecasts of the total rainfall through Wednesday morning. First, I’ll start with the National Blend of Models. Like the name implies, this is a blend of a number of computer forecasts.  Then here’s the European model. It has more rain in the Basin, less over northeast Washington.  The US model (the GFS) is similar.  The model below is the AI (artificial intelligence) model for the Europeans. ...

As we talked about in the previous blog, April 2025 was drier than normal. Is there any hope of that changing? First, I want to show you a graphic that helps explain our dry April. This chart is similar to the weather maps I often show, where blueish colors represent below-normal pressure (and often temperature) while warm yellow and red colors show above-normal pressure, which typically relates to dry warm weather. This map is an average of all 30 days in April. The first thing to notice is the strong high pressure just offshore of the Pacific Northwest.  This is the culprit for our dry April.  Storms have had to go around this high pressure.  Those that went around it to the north would come at us from Alaska and northwest Canada, bringing more dry air into our region than actual rainfall.  Most storms went south of the high pressure.  You can see a small area of below-normal pressure near Southern California, which shows how several storms bypassed the Pacifi...