Weather Eye: Expect another dry day for a nice Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you all. We finally had clear evening skies, and I ventured out and observed Jupiter and Saturn, which some call the Christmas star. Actually it isn’t, it’s just two planets that haven’t been aligned like this so close to Christmas in a long while.

We couldn’t see it Monday evening as winter arrived because of the remaining clouds from that cold front that finally dashed through the county. Wednesday evening the skies were broken but it was still difficult to see it; however, some of you did from your vantage point.

Of course, when I viewed it, the two planets had separated by a couple of degrees so the sight was not as bright as Monday. But still, that won’t happen in my lifetime.

The fog persisted into the early afternoon Wednesday and kept us in the 30s a good share of the day. When skies did clear, we reached 47 degrees for a high, which is actually about 2 degrees above average for the date.

Today we have another dry day, but you’ll see some high cloudiness at times and east winds along the Columbia and highs again in the 40s. A nice Christmas Eve. Technically, we have an air stagnation advisory in our air shed due to an inversion, but locations along the river will be fine as the air will be mixing.

Rain arrives on Christmas Day: no snow — sorry, folks. We have a series of weather systems heading our way, but as of Wednesday night, forecast models were moving them south of our area. Maybe we aren’t so wet over the weekend and into early next week. Stay tuned since it can change, as you know well.

Checking in on the rainfall so far this month, Vancouver had 4.27 inches in the rain gauge, which is two-thirds of an inch below average. Seems we just can’t catch up. Normally in December we get 6.77 inches of rain. Last December, we measured 4.67 inches. It isn’t looking good to get another 2 inches of rain if we go into a split flow pattern.

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