Favorable Breaks

We’ll catch a break from the steady rains, as systems spread out more over the next 2 weeks.  Grab your morn’n beverage.  Here goes—

Generally dry, cool day to end the week.  Another storm arrives tomorrow (Sat Dec 9).  Decent shot of rain & mountain snow, with the system moving rapidly to the east.  Sunday should be mixed, with a few showers early, then clearing by late afternoon.  Flooding issues should be minimal, given the rain break today.

Dry Run.  Looks dry & rather pleasant (for December) starting Mon Dec 11 and lasting through the entire week.  It will be chilly, with an offshore flow helping to mitigate fog issues.  Thursday could present few more clouds, and then the E-to-NE wind will increase notably on Fri, esp through the Columbia River Gorge - powerful east wind there to end the week.  Why?  A Low pressure system will be approaching from the SW, tightening the barometric gradient from east-to-west and setting up another wet Dec weekend.

The weekend of Dec 16, 17 has been trending as a ‘repeat’ of our immediate weekend.  Rain Sat, turning to showers on Sunday, with clearing.  NOTE!  There have been several model solutions indicating the potential for a fairly strong WIND PRODUCING center of Low pressure forming to the SW of OR, then moving northeast, up along the OR coast, inside of the 130º, Saturday morning.  As a result, in OR, it could be quite windy before sunrise Sat until around noon, Dec 16.  (Plenty of time for models to pin down this potential.)  Sunday should begin a clearing period, and it will be CHILLY.

Huge variation in model scenarios for the week before the long Christmas weekend.  One group of solutions suggests showery & Cool Mon Tue Dec 18,19, turning to light, steady rain for OR, heavy rain for NW WA & BC to end the week; the other indicates a dry run developing after Wed.  We’ll see.

White Watch.  (Our term for monitoring for the potential of a White Christmas around the PNW.)  As of Dec 8, there’s no indication for snow at the surface Dec 24,25.  Updates later.