Happy Monday! We’re off to a calm start this morning with mainly dry weather and light wind with temps in the 40s. There is a large and powerful area of low pressure offshore, and the associated atmospheric river, aimed right at us. Rain will increase by about mid-day and the wind will pick up as well.
Thanks to the strength of the low and the position around Vancouver Island, wind will be strong later today and tonight. We have a Wind Advisory for most of western Washington and a High Wind Warning for the Coast. Most of the lowlands of western Washington will have sustained wind around 20-30 mph with gusts around 50-55 mph. The Coast will have 25-35 mph with gusts around 55-65 mph.
The Advisories/Warnings start at noon and go through tomorrow morning. We have decided to make it a PinPoint Alert Day today because of the windy and wet weather for tonight. The strongest wind will be from late this evening until very early tomorrow morning. However, even if the peak is late tonight and early tomorrow, it will still be windy on either side of the peak. Meaning, while the wind will ease, it will still be strong before and after the peak time period. With the longer duration of this wind event, we could see more power outages than during your average wind event.
As a result, I decided to make tomorrow morning a PinPoint Alert Day as well, but just for the morning hours.
We could see some thunderstorms tonight as the front moves through with snow levels getting closer to 3,500-4,000′. We’ll get at least a foot around Stevens with a couple of feet possible around Paradise. Snoqualmie will see some snow, but the snow will be rainy at times. Around 1-2″ of rain will fall in the lowlands.
The wind will continue to ease tomorrow morning, staying breezy but nowhere near as strong. The showers will taper off as well and everything will be calmer. In fact, outside of a few sprinkles on Thursday, we should be mainly dry for the week and much warmer. Highs will be around 60° until we hit the weekend with cooler conditions and some showers possible, especially on Sunday.
-Nick
Read the full article here