Weather Eye: Enjoy sunny end of month; cold, rain on the way

Our last day in October will be sunny and mild with highs a bit above the normal 58 degrees. Great dry weather for trick-or-treating tonight, no plastic garbage bags or umbrellas needed. Mark this one in your memory banks.

As November rolls in on Wednesday we slip into a more winter-like air mass with snow falling down to the 2,000-foot level in the Washington Cascades and 3,000 feet in the Oregon Cascades. We will have a chilly rainy period lasting until Monday.

I think rainfall amounts Friday through Monday will be on the light side but temperatures will hover between 40 and 50 degrees around the clock. The only exception is if skies clear overnight, the outlying areas of the county will see 30s and maybe frost.

We had a good share of rain this month and the tally so far in Vancouver is 4.55 inches and that will go down in the record books at midnight tonight. Our average mean temperature will end up close to the normal of 54 degrees.

Easterly winds Monday which brought the clear skies warmed the entire region west of the Cascades into the 60s. It was 63 degrees from Bellingham to Vancouver and about a dozen cities in between. Even the ocean beaches basked under sunny skies and highs were 63 degrees also from Astoria, Long Beach and northward. The warmest I could find Monday was Shelton with 66 degrees. Great fall weather.

As mentioned above a cool air mass settles in the latter half of the week through the weekend which I’m sure is payback for the recent fair weather. It will feel quite chilly so dust of your winter attire and boots. A change of season and a change of clothing go hand in hand, right?

The woolly bears which are forecasting a cold winter will be hastily seeking a good place to hibernate the winter season away this week. Take good care and we will chat with sweaters on come Thursday.

Patrick Timm is a local weather specialist. His column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Reach him at http://patricktimm.com.

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