Any Rain in the Future?

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 Pacific NW and went into California instead.


So do we have any hope of this pattern changing?  Yes, but we’ll have to be patient. This weekend and next week, we’re dealing with more of the same. The weather map below looks similar to April. Storms are tracking across the southern states, while we here in the northwest get just weak disturbances.  Notice the strong high pressure offshore, just like in April. 


The offshore high pressure is expected to move inland next week, setting us up for more dry, warm weather.  There is a very small threat of showers midweek. 


But there is good news. All of the major computer forecast systems predict this pattern to change, starting around next weekend.  Low pressure should become established along our coast, leading to better chances of rain. 


This is obviously getting far into the future, so I would get too excited yet. The folks at the Climate Prediction Center are seeing this same pattern shift and are starting to indicate the potential for wetter weather in the West starting around next weekend.  


For the outlook for the entire month of May, they aren’t seeing a strong wet signal for our area, although there are some close by. But they also don’t see a strong dry signal in the West like we saw in April. 






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