I can tell you the weather forecast for this month, which is a continuation of April and not what we usually expect for May. It will be cooler and wetter than average, and that trend will remain with us for a while.
Plenty of snow is falling in the mountains and even down to the roadways on the passes.
This unusual weather will keep us from reaching normal temperatures and won’t provide much of a break in the rain, either.
We had heavy precipitation Friday around Clark County, with over an inch of rain in Vancouver and about 2 inches in our foothills. Enough is enough already. I see garden-planting delays.
As of 2 p.m. Saturday, the rainfall total so far in May here in Vancouver was 1.82 inches, with the average for the entire month at 2.51 inches. We’ll easily surpass that if extended forecasts are accurate.
There was a small tornado Friday in the Spokane Valley, about 2 miles west of Dishman. I saw some ugly-looking dark clouds here around the county Friday, too.
We enjoy humor with our sometimes-dismal weather reports. Observer Murphy Dennis up on Rawson Road said Friday that after nearly 2 inches of rain, the nightcrawlers brought out their life vests. Can you picture that?
Ellen Smart of Ridgefield sent in her rainfall total for April and said she didn’t know that it was that wet when she tallied it at 6.30 inches. “No wonder I had trees fall over in that snow!” she said. “The earth was more like chocolate pudding than earth. But I’d rather get wet and wet than hot and hot.”
Speaking of hot, last May saw only 1.04 inches of rain, and the last three days of that month had high temperatures of 82, 83 and 88 degrees. And then, do you remember the month after that? Whew.
Maybe we should be glad it is running cooler this year. Plenty of warm and pleasant days are coming eventually.
Meanwhile, we copy and paste the forecast for last week into this coming week. Our driest day may be Wednesday. No frosts, but we may reach the 30s if we get any clearing overnight.
