Two more gray days with a few showers, then bright but cold sunshine Sunday

It’s been a gloomy January day with low clouds and fog stuck in the western valleys of Oregon and SW Washington. The rest of the region has been under a few thin high clouds, lots of sunshine, and blue sky.

A weak weather system moves down out of Canada and over the area tomorrow morning. Systems coming down from over land tend to not carry much rain and that will be the case with this one. We’ll only see light drippy periods the first half of Friday, then clouds linger the rest of the day. Very little or no rain falls after the noon hour.

On Saturday we’ll see scattered showers lingering through much of the day, but again they will be light and spotty. Those showers end right after sunset Saturday as we enter a 3-4 day dry spell. Most precipitation will be in the Cascades both tomorrow and Saturday with up to 10″ of snow possible up there.

The big change to dry weather and gusty/chilly east wind is still scheduled for Saturday evening. Weather forecast models have backed off on the intensity of the cold air arriving from Canada at that time. That means two changes to our forecast. 1) Showers end well before temperatures are cold enough for sticking snow Saturday evening, plus even after the cold air arrives it won’t drop to freezing until around sunrise Sunday. 2) Temperatures are forecast warmer for Sunday through Tuesday compared to what we were forecasting 24 hours ago.

On Sunday, and to a lesser extent Monday, a gusty east wind will make it feel colder than those 35-40 degree high temperatures. BUT, these will likely be the first totally sunny days we’ve seen in over 5 weeks!

Most likely we’ll begin a new rainy & mild weather pattern late next week.

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