All you have to do is step outside to know it’s December.
Vancouver dipped to 24 degrees early Saturday and topped off at 46 degrees in the afternoon. Skies weren’t as clear as the past several days; a weak weather system is moving through the giant ridge of high pressure over us.
Any moisture will stay to our north, and skies should clear up by Monday. This was just the first attack on our high pressure. A series of weak storms will continue to erode our fair weather and showers will return by Thursday or Friday. Snow levels will drop and we’ll get rid of this inversion and gusty east winds.
And by inversion I mean a high of 46 in Vancouver and highs in the mid to upper 50s in ski areas such as Timberline. Things will reverse in a few days and we’ll get back to normal. But hey, it was a great run of sunny, dry weather.
Looking ahead to Christmas and New Year’s, what can we expect? Boy, I wish I knew the answer. Forecast models differ — we could go back into another inversion pattern with dry weather or we could get a cooler flow of air with some precipitation. We’ll chat about that in Tuesday’s column.
Rainfall reports are coming in from your friends and neighbors around the county for last month. We will share those in the near future. Do you remember how wet it was in November? Was it wetter or drier than average?
