Did you enjoy the nice little break in between weather systems Wednesday? It was a most typical autumn day with areas of morning fog, clearing skies early, brilliant fall foliage and then back to clouds and sprinkles by early evening.
Did you get a chance to look at Mount St. Helens and Mount Hood? Wow! It actually appeared like winter on the mountains, a nice thick coat of white down to the timberline elevation. Unfortunately the next batch of rain today and Sunday will melt a good share of the snowpack until cooler air brings the snow level down on Monday. The next batch of cold air behind Sunday’s weather system should push the snow level down to the main mountain passes.
Weather watcher Tyler Mode of Battle Ground gave a perspective on the rainfall so far this month. “I’ve had more rain in the last 18 days than May, June, July, August and September combined. I had more rain in one day this month that I did in all of October 2013. It indeed has been a wet month. Vancouver’s rainfall total as of 5 p.m. Wednesday was 6.06 inches, 4.40 inches above average. A far cry from our average October rainfall of 3 inches.”
We will have rain off and on the next several days, with maybe Saturday the driest day. The National Weather Service in Portland gave this outlook statement Wednesday: “Saturday appears to be the best day of our current forecast cycle. It appears we will see partly sunny skies over much of the region, but as another rather active occluded front approaches, will see increasing clouds in the afternoon. Looks like a classic pumpkin patchy day, complete with a mix of sun and clouds, hot cocoa, and mud.”
