After what started out as an unusually warm and dry January, the weather seemed to be making up for lost time by bringing lots of cold rain to the Vancouver metro area. But, starting Sunday, the city will likely get to enjoy some pretty balmy conditions.
From Sunday to Thursday, just under 2 inches of rain fell on the city, nearly half the amount to fall on the city through the entire month to date. The trend is expected to continue. Forecasters at the National Weather Service expect another inch of rain to fall on the city between Friday and tonight. That means that rivers and local streams might run higher than normal over the next few days, though the Weather Service isn’t expecting any regional flooding.
Starting Saturday night, things will begin to warm up.
“We have a warm front on Saturday night that’s going to move north of us, then it’s going to stall north of us. … We’ll be sitting under the warm area,” said Weather Service Senior Meteorologist Treena Jensen.
Sunday will likely be a pretty dry day, and the high could be at or near record temperatures, with the thermometer expected to reach the mid to upper 50s.
Monday will also likely be dry and warm, perhaps reaching the mid-50s again in the afternoon.
That’s in keeping with the trend for the month thus far. In January, Vancouver’s average highs are three degrees higher than normal.
Temperatures will backslide to the upper 40s Monday night and into Tuesday.
Since Oct. 1, Vancouver has had about 19 inches of rain, just shy of the 20.3 normal up to this point in the season.
Scott Pattee, a water supply specialist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, said La Nina is still pushing warm air up from the Southwest through Oregon and into Washington state. That is keeping snow elevations slightly higher than normal, causing the snowpack in the Lower Columbia Basin to remain lower than normal.
So far, the region has a snowpack 82 percent of normal, the second lowest in the state. While the state depends on snowpack to replenish its water supplies in the warmer months, Pattee said the local snow conditions aren’t something to worry about.
“Especially since you’ve got reservoir storage,” he said. “And since the snowpack is so good up north, the Columbia (River) is going to be fine.”
Indeed, the Upper Columbia Basin currently has a snowpack 126 percent of normal; the Central Columbia Basin has 97 percent of normal.
“We’re a little over halfway through the season, and we still have two good months of snow collection ahead,” Pattee said. “February and March can still be productive months.”
