Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you! We’ll try to keep the rain showers away, but, hey, if one occurs maybe a rainbow and a pot of gold for St. Paddy’s Day? A typical spring day is in the offing, I’d say.
The next batch of widespread rain will be late Friday and into Saturday with up to 1 inch of rain, which would catch us up to average for March. Speaking of average, our high temperature here in Vancouver on Wednesday was 57 degrees, 1 degree below the normal. The low was 41 degrees, 2 degrees above the normal low. How close is that? And as a bonus, we remained out of the 30s for the overnight temperature. We have had only five days without lows in the 30s this month.
After Saturday’s rain, I see a mixed bag of weather on tap. Forecast charts are at odds with solid conclusions. In jest, I would say going into next week we’ll have showers, a chance of showers, a slight chance of showers, and so on. High temperatures will be like a yo-yo from the low 50s to low 60s. Freezing levels bounce around, too, from 2,000 feet to 6,000 feet.
Looking back at last year on St. Patrick’s Day, our average monthly mean temperature was running 7.3 degrees below normal and the rainfall 1 inch below average. This year we are pretty close to average. I don’t worry much in the month of March; all it takes is a few good downpours to catch us up. At least this year we are running much warmer.