Weather Eye: Don’t put your storm gear away yet; cold days coming

Stormy weather continues in the Pacific Northwest as another front moved through last night. Blustery winds accompanied this storm with winds along the coast over 55 mph and inland 30-40 mph as of 6 p.m. Monday. There was even some lightning and thunder scattered around from the coast inland Monday evening.

The weather will remain unsettled the rest of the week, with a day or two of dry weather but more storms by the weekend. With each storm this weekend and beyond, the snow levels will be dropping and the Cascades will be building up an early snowpack. We will feel it here in the valleys with cool — or should I say cold — daytime high temperatures.

Appropriately, with the mountain snows, next week is the National Weather Service’s Winter Weather Safety and Awareness Week. This will run Oct. 21-27. For more information on this campaign, go to: http://wrh.noaa.gov/pqr/winterawareweek.php.

While Vancouver USA had received less than 1.5 inches of rain this month as of 5 p.m. Monday, my friend and weather observer Roland Derksen of the other Vancouver, in British Columbia, measured 3.3 inches just from Friday through Sunday, so rainfall is much heavier up north.

I have received so many emails about the number of frisky local squirrels. Really don’t know what that means weatherwise, as it always seems like the little critters are busy as a bee this time of the year, harvesting nuts of all kinds. There are several mentions of them in old weather lore, like: The higher their stash of food, the deeper the snows will be. Guess we will see how our winter pans out and if it is a tough one or not.

Weather observer Phil Delany above Dole Valley here in Clark County had measured over 4 inches of rain since Friday as of Monday morning. Autumn is here, folks, and the leaves are flying!

Patrick Timm is a local weather specialist. His column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Reach him at Weather Systems.