A Wet Weekend

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

I've been watching the weekend forecast with some interest, because it is looking more and more like we might get quite a bit of rain out of these storms. The maps above show the expected 24 hour rainfall from 5 P.M. Friday to 5 P.M. Saturday (top) and that time Saturday to 5 P.M. Sunday. We will have a very strong warm front for this time of year come in Saturday and it will then be followed by a slow-moving cold front that may stall for some time across the region. I would expect two inches of rain in the lowlands (except in shadowed places like Sequim) for this 48 hour window, and the mountains could see 5 or even 7 inches in the rainiest spots of the Olympics and maybe 3 inches or so in the Cascades. The Skokomish River could flood, but that isn't really saying much because it floods all the time. In any event, I'm excited to see how this event will unfold, and I'm very excited for the whole winter in general. There aren't any guarantees that it will be snowy, but I am pretty confident that it will be since our La Nina is so strong and other historical strong La Nina years have had tons of mountain and lowland snow. After the rainy weekend, we will revert to a more sunny and pleasant pattern, although we will be much cooler. The days of highs being in the 70s are gone.

Charlie