Summery weather turns to fall weather on Sunday
Thursday, October 8, 2020
Temperatures are in the mid-seventies on this Thursday afternoon, on their way to the upper seventies, similar to yesterday when the temperature reached sixteen degrees above our 62 F average. More summery weather is expected through Saturday, with increasing winds, before a strong cold front moves through on Sunday with only modest precipitation expected. Dry but breezy weather returns for the following week, with cool temperatures starting the week on Columbus Day before moderating back towards average for much of the upcoming week.
A piece of energy left behind off the coast of California from a dry storm currently passing well to our north looks to remain detached from a strong and quick-moving storm in the Gulf of Alaska that is forecast to cross the Pacific Northwest coast early Saturday. There was hope in my last Sunday weather forecast that this piece of energy would be absorbed into the larger storm and bring good precipitation to our area, but it appears that we will instead experience a much drier cold front on Sunday when the Gulf of Alaska storm passes through.
Ahead of the front, winds from the southwest will be increasing on another warm Saturday afternoon, which bodes ill for wildfire behavior. There will be some precipitation along and behind the cold front which is expected sometime Sunday morning, with showers possible through the day and evening under cool temperatures in the fifties. Precipitation looks quite modest though, and heaviest to our north, with as much as a tenth or two of liquid expected to bring several inches of snow at the higher elevations. However, we may end up with even less as the latest weather forecast models are trending drier with the storm.
Columbus Day looks to be a brisk and dry fall day with highs once again in the fifties, but with breezy winds from the west or northwest. In fact, breezy winds look to continue through the work week as the jet stream, which separates the cold air to our north from the warm air to our south, sags over our region.
But temperatures will warm back toward average on Tuesday and Wednesday before another dry cool front passes by around Thursday and drops our high temperatures back into the fifties. Temperatures are expected to recover on Friday and into the following weekend before there is a possibility of another storm affecting our region later in the weekend. I’ll know more by my next regularly scheduled weather narrative on Sunday afternoon.
