Clouding up but mainly dry this weekend

PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV) - It’s been another spectacular sunny December day! Temperatures made it up into the 40s again, close to normal for this time of the year. The chilly east wind blowing out of the Gorge makes it feel only like the 20s on the east side of the metro area. The good news for tonight is the east wind will continue to back off and be nearly gone by sunrise tomorrow. That means another cold, clear, & calm night is ahead.

This weekend through Monday should be mainly or all dry but clouds arrive tomorrow and persist through Monday. It’s an “onshore” flow of Pacific air bringing in the cloud cover.

Tuesday through Thursday next week feature a very challenging forecast. Very cold arctic air will be sitting just north of us, in northern Washington. Models disagree on whether Pacific moisture will interact with the cold air to produce snow to low elevations (Tuesday) or possibly freezing rain (later in the week). For now we’ll just call it mixed rain & snow showers Tuesday or plain rain. Then as a wetter system arrives later Thursday, we assume it’ll be warm enough to fall in the form of rain. That’s what it looks like for now. Things can change quickly in this pattern with so much cold air bottled up just north of us. Once we see a decent possibility of anything frozen we’ll let you know quickly!

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