Inland Northwest Hay Weather

May was an interesting month. It started off bone-dry, turned wet during the middle of the month, but finished off dry and warm.  This resulted in a rainfall deficit of about a half inch for the month. Looking ahead to June, the pattern looks rather similar.  After a warm and breezy dry cold front yesterday, temperatures will be cooler for the next few days.   Frost is possible Monday and Tuesday morning . Could be a spotty afternoon shower in northeast Washington through Tuesday, but any rain that does fall should be rather light. Strong high pressure will develop off shore during the next few days and this should keep our area dry through about June 12.   We’ll be back into the 80s by Thursday June 5th and remain there for a week.  Might even reach the lower 90s early next week   After that, there should be a pattern change around June 13th as low pressure develops over the Northwest. This pattern should bring us cooler temperatures and showers, and ...

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...

In a previous blog I mentioned that April is sort of between the two wet seasons in the Inland Northwest.  So on average, April is drier than March and May. But this April seems a bit drier than normal. Is that true? Well, the short answer is yes. Here’s a look at the percent of average precipitation across the lower 48 states for April thus far. Easy to see how the entire West has been drier than normal this month. A closer view of the Northwest shows that only a small area from Tri Cities to Ritzville is running wetter than normal, thanks to our big rain event around the 7th.  But memories are typically short. So most of us have probably forgotten the wet events in early April. Here’s the daily precipitation at Deer Park for April. The green line is the actual precipitation, while the brown line is the normal.  You can clearly see the wet event we had on the 7th, which took us briefly above normal. But since then, we’ve seen very little rainfall and we’re now more than ...

In the past blog it appeared that this upcoming weekend would be cooler and showery. But the past few days the computers have been altering that idea. It now appears likely that the storm coming in from the Pacific will go too far south to bring us any rain. We might see a few mountain showers on Sunday, but that’s about it. Instead we will see temperatures continuing to warm, reaching the mid 70s for Friday and Saturday, and probably even Sunday.  The next decent chance of rain won’t be until Tuesday. This does not look like a very wet weather system, and isn’t a slam dunk that we will get much at all. Below is the forecast from the European computer models. Maybe around 0.1”? After that, Friday would be the next chance of rain. Similar to Tuesday, rain is not a sure bet for Friday. And if we do get any rain, it will be on the light side.  Looking into the start of May, temperatures look to be on the mild side. Here’s the outlook from the Climate Prediction Center. They do sh...