Wet weather returns this week and turning colder

PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV) - It was a mainly dry and cloudy day Sunday. Only portions of the coast recorded trace amounts of drizzly precipitation. We saw about average temperatures in the metro today-- Portland hit 51 degrees this afternoon.

Overnight temperatures shouldn’t drop down below 40 degrees, and we’ll still be mild for President’s Day tomorrow with highs expected around 50 degrees once again. Some very light rain showers will push through mainly in the afternoon and evening, but rainfall totals in the valleys won’t amount to much.

Tuesday looks like a pretty wet, showery day. That system will bring plenty of snow to the Cascades-- at least a foot of snow is on the way to the ski resorts between Tuesday and Wednesday.

Models are starting to juice up our Wednesday snow chances in the lower elevations. The newest model runs are suggesting showers might stick around longer than we previously thought, which would give us a better chance of seeing some of that accumulate in the lowlands, OR we will eventually transition to mixed showers or just plain rain later. The ground won’t be cold enough to worry about freezing rain in Portland.

For now, Wednesday remains a possible First Alert Weather Day as our lowland snow confidence isn’t high, but I’d say it’s getting higher.

The cold air from the north really digs in late Wednesday. That’s why you’re seeing lows in the 20s and highs in the 30s for Thursday and Friday- but we’ll be dry by then.

Some of our models are now holding off a bit longer on the precipitation for next weekend, indicating it’ll arrive Sunday morning instead of Saturday. That means we’ll likely be warm enough to not have to worry about another round of snow or wintry mix, but models are all over the place this far out, so we’ll be watching that closely.

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