Weather Eye: Fog, chance of showers tonight, Friday

Here’s hoping everyone had a joyous holiday and had a chance to visit with family and friends. At least the weather wasn’t much of a factor for holiday travel. A little snow over the passes and no hold ups at the airport.

I don’t bring much in the way of exciting news from the weather department. We’ll have lots of fog, clouds, maybe some frost, and a chance of showers tonight and early Friday. Then a better chance over the weekend. Kind of ‘bah humbug’ weather.

Temperatures will remain cool today with slowly rising high temperatures in the mid- to upper-40s, maybe close to 50 late in the weekend. Our normal high is 45 degrees. Even with some rain in the forecast, I don’t expect us to catch up to the monthly average but we are doing better this month than the past several months.

Christmas Eve remained cloudy and cool with the high and low temperatures only two degrees apart. The high was 40 and the low 38 degrees. We managed to get .02 of an inch out of those evening sprinkles. I had a couple reports of snow flurries in our higher foothills.

The three-month climate outlook for Western Washington calls for above average precipitation for the remaining days of winter. Boy, we really need that. The mountains in the southern Washington and northern Oregon Cascades are running at only 25 percent of normal for the snowpack at 5,000 feet.

I’m not especially concerned quite yet and will wait and see how January kicks off the new year. If the pattern remains the same, then we need to worry about our snowpack. The extended forecast models hint of colder weather and low snow levels in early January,

If visiting the southern Washington beaches for clamming or whatnot, be aware of dangerous sneaker waves. The surf is high and these waves come out of nowhere. OK, we will chat on Sunday and see what’s on the horizon for next week.