Drier and warmer today

It’s been a dry day with warmer temperatures too, a nice change after several days of chilly showers. We’ll stay dry this evening, then rain returns by midnight at the latest.

A strong low pressure system (technically a bomb cyclone) is rapidly developing well offshore this afternoon, pulling air towards it. That’s why we have a breezy easterly wind across the metro area. That wind increases tonight through tomorrow morning, but gusts will remain below 35 mph.

Rain from this system remains over us most of tomorrow; the result will be a wet/cloudy/cool day. It’ll be quite a change from today!

We expect another break Wednesday with a mainly dry day, and Thursday won’t be very wet either, but cloudier.

Unfortunately another cold “upper level low” drops down over the region Friday through early next week. This brings another round of cold showers, temperatures 10+ degrees below normal, and snow down into the foothills again. At this point we don’t think it’ll be quite cold enough to bring sticking snow below 1,000′; just a few notches warmer than what we just experienced this past weekend. The cold westerly flow and abundant showers mean another dump of snow in the Cascades; possibly up to 2 feet spread over 2-3 days Friday through Monday. Winter continues into early April in the Cascades!

There’s no sign of a warm/dry spell through the first few days of April.