Inland Northwest Hay Weather

Just a quick update on the weather for the next few days.  Christmas Eve  A warm front will potentially bring record warmth to parts of the region. Spokane’s warmest Christmas Eve was in 1919 with a high of 55 degrees. We probably won’t reach that, but a high around 50 is possible. Walla Walla and Pendleton  will warm into the mid 60s tomorrow.  Not very Christmas type weather.  Christmas Day Temperatures remain in the 40s with rain showers in the afternoon and evening.  Friday A windy day with afternoon showers and gusts up to 35 mph. A slight chance that the rain could change to snow on Friday evening.  Saturday and Sunday A chilly weekend with lows in the 20s and highs in the mid 30s.  So this will be the third brown Christmas in a row at Spokane. And 6 of the last 8 Christmases have been brown at Spokane.  

For most of the country, a White Christmas is either impossible or too rare to actually gets your hope up for. But in the Spokane area, the odds are more like 50-50, with even better odds north of the metro area.  But with the last two Brown Christmases, statistics were in our favor.  To add to that, the climate models were predicting that the mild temperatures would be replaced with a cooler weather pattern for the holidays. And while the weather has cooled down, it’s not exactly great snow pattern for the Inland Northwest.  Here’s the current forecast for Christmas. The central and eastern US will have a rather mild holiday, while the West Coast will be cooler.  Unfortunately for us, the majority of the weather in this pattern will be aimed at California.  Lots of rain and Sierra snow expected there. Temperature forecasts for the next week are cold enough for snow, at times. But our high temperatures will be near 40, so rain is also a possibility at those time...

To say that the weather has been active the past couple of weeks would be an understatement. From the Atmospheric River flooding last week to the strong wind storms this week. You may be wondering what is next.  First, a short recap of our wind event. It panned out pretty much as expected. Here’s a map of some of the higher wind gusts. The widespread extent of the winds is really impressive. Spokane - 62 mph Coeur d’Alene - 66 mph Deer Park - 54 mph Sandpoint - 54 mph Pullman - 67 mph Lewiston - 73 mph Pendleton - 81 mph Here’s a map of the wind warnings (brown and tan shading). I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a large contiguous area of wind warnings before.  And in case you were wondering, yes there was even some lightning. Truly an impressive storm.  I had mentioned in an earlier blog that snow was possible for Thursday. That’s now looking more likely. There could be some lightning snow around sunrise Thursday. But a little better snowfall will start around noon and co...

We had some windy days last week, but nothing that caused much if any damage. We have some more windy days coming up this week. But the wind events coming up are likely to be stronger and more damaging.  The weather pattern this week is different and more favorable for strong winds. The first event will be Monday evening. Wind gusts will be around 45 mph. Here’s the US and European computer forecasts.  You’ll notice some differences between the two, but overall they’re similar for the most part.  This will be a good chance to see what model verifies better. The next windstorm will be Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.  And it will be windier.  Possibly a lot windier. Here’s the US and European forecasts. Widespread areas of gusts exceeding 50 mph with some areas over 60 mph.  Those kinds of winds will cause downed trees and power lines.  The computers are still haggling over the exact details.  Some of the previous forecasts had shown winds even...

As promised, it has been a mild, wet and windy week.  Thanks to a record Atmospheric River that has dumped a lot of rain on the Northwest.  Several west-side rivers have eclipsed their all-time record levels.  Here is a map of the 4-day rainfall for Washington and North Idaho: It's the usual story of tons of rain over western Washington, drier in eastern Washington, and then wetter again in the Idaho Panhandle.  But lets look a little closer at the west side. The Olympic Mountains (west of Seattle) received over a foot of rain.  And the Cascades (east of Seattle) were inundated with more than a foot.  Lynn Lake (in the central Cascades) received over 20" of rain in 4 days.  But look at the green numbers in the middle of the map, north of Seattle.  They are in the lee of the Olympic Mountains, so like Wenatchee and Yakima, they actually don't receive very much rain in a pattern like this.  Heck, some of us in the northeast Washington area got ...

Growing up as a future meteorologist in northern California in the 70s, we used to call it a Pineapple Express. Now the more technical term that is often overused is Atmospheric River. Whichever name you use, the result is the same: warmth, water and wind to the West Coast.  I can describe it best with a weather map of atmospheric moisture across the North Pacific.  Asia is on the left, the West Coast on the right, the equator at the bottom. The first thing you notice is all the bright colors near the equator (bottom of the image).  It’s very hot down there, the ocean is very warm, and the atmosphere holds a LOT of moisture.  If you look closely, you’ll see a plume of green and blue extending from the tropics and pointing at Washington and Oregon. That is an atmospheric river. And it’s pointed right at us next week.  The weather pattern will bring lots of tropical air and moisture to us (hence the Pineapple nomenclature). The result is a familiar one.  Warm...

Two weeks ago (see blog here ) the computers were indicating that cold air would slip into our area after Thanksgiving.  And for the most part that has come true.  Will it last?  You probably already know the answer if you've looked at your phone weather app.  More on this in a minute. First, lets have a quick review of November weather.  And surprisingly, it was rather similar to October.  Here's the precipitation percent of normal for the month of November.  For the second straight month, California and Arizona precipitation was well above normal.  There were other wetter-than-normal spots in the US, including the Inland Northwest. Zooming into the Northwest, again, it looks rather similar to October.  Eastern Washington was well above normal, especially in the Columbia Basin.  Meanwhile, western Washington was actually drier than normal once again.  Also note how dry Oregon and southern Idaho were. This precipitation pattern indi...