Crazy Weather

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 continued off through most of the afternoon. Amounts should be less than 1” as afternoon temperatures will rise into the mid-upper 30s. 

Here’s the European model forecast for Thursday snow.



And here is the US model forecast. 


And yes, there will be more wind on Thursday night. But not as strong as what we had this morning. Here’s a peak gust forecast from the European model. 


We could see some more light snow over the weekend and into early next week. But we should be done with the strong damaging winds after Thursday nights wind event. 

Odds of a white Christmas are low, but not zero. There’s even a small chance for Christmas Day. I’ll send out another blog in a few days with a snow update. 



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