Will We Have to Pay For This?

My first winter in the Inland Northwest was 1995/96. December of that year was extremely mild, with only 0.2” of snowfall at Spokane airport. “We’re gonna pay for this” I can remember hearing. I scoffed as the first half of January brought more of the same. Then the pattern changed. 

Snow started on the 19th and 10 days later we had 15” on the ground with single digit highs and -17F lows. Groundhogs Day would have a low of -24F. Quite an introduction to Inland Northwest winter. Five days of rain and temperatures near 50 melted all that snow in a hurry. This caused record flooding on the Palouse. 

I’ve heard the “we’re gonna pay for this term” numerous times. My guess is that it rarely pans out like it did during the winter of 1995/96.  Could we be in for the same fate 30 years later?

First let’s take a look back at last month. December 2025 was incredibly mild.  It was in the top 5 warmest Decembers at just about every observation site in Washington record. For some locations in the Basin, it was the warmest ever. And don’t forget that we just had one of the warmest Septembers a few months earlier. 

Thankfully we were at least getting rainfall, so we aren’t contending with drought. 

However, our mountain snowpack is pretty poor right now. The red dots are sites where the snowpack is less than 50% of normal.  Thankfully, the snowpack in British Columbia as well as Wyoming is above normal.  This is good news for the Columbia and Snake River spring runoff.

So is there any chance we’ll see a weather pattern change that makes us pay for all this mild weather?  Actually the answer is………maybe. I know, terrible answer. 

Very strong high pressure is developing over the West Coast as we speak. 

This will bring dry weather to the western US and could lead to some record high temperatures in California later this week, possibly even western Oregon and Washington.

But next week, the high pressure moves to the west and this could allow some colder Canadian air to move into our area. 

At this point there’s probably a 10% chance of seeing something frigid after the 23rd.  But at least a few of the computer forecasts keep hinting at this possibility.  

So as Shoeless Joe coached Archie Graham in Field of Dreams: “Look for low and away.  But watch out for in your ear.”  Here’s the GFS forecast of “in your ear”:

But as I said, this is an outlier. The vast majority of computers predict cooler temperatures after the 23rd, but nothing extreme.